We know anti-ageing and longevity is an inside job, but unfortunately, it is the outside that most people judge how old we are. The colour and thickness of our hair, the tone and glow of our skin, the number of wrinkles and lines showing up on our face, and the tightness and firmness of our neck and jaw line – these are all the factors that dictate whether we look youthful or aged.
Can we do anything about this? Can we look younger and reverse the ravages that time has inflicted on us?
Absolutely! But it takes more than just following the latest advice dished out by beauty magazines or the cosmetic industry. Nips, tucks, creams, cleanses, and clever makeup can only mask the deterioration of our skin for so long. We need to go deeper if we want true age defying beauty.
Scientists have known for over a decade that ageing, disease development, and how fast we age, is 90% lifestyle choices and behaviours and only 10% gene programming. This has been referred to as the 90/10 rule of ageing, meaning that we can influence an amazing 90% of our health and youthfulness by the way we live our lives.
Scientists have been studying our genes for over 3 decades and they finished mapping the complete genome in the early 2000’s. During this period of genetic research, they discovered that we have also developed an ‘epigene’ that provides us with a second layer of instructions over our gene that can switch our genes on and off. This was an amazing discovery and coined the phrase “Genetics load the gun, but it is the environment (epigenetics) that pulls the trigger”. It is the sum of all exposures in an individual’s life, from diet and lifestyle to behaviour and the mind, and how the body responds to them, that dictate how a person’s genes will perform and what our future health will look like.
To break this down a bit further, let us look at diabetes. We might have been born with a gene defect programming us towards developing diabetes. If we spend decades eating a diet high in processed and refined sugary foods and have a sedentary lifestyle where we sit for many hours a day, then we are likely to develop diabetes and suffer the negative effects of that terrible disease. However, if we eat whole, live, plant-based meals such as what we find in the Mediterranean diet and we have an active lifestyle keeping our weight and fitness in the optimal range, then we can keep that ‘diabetic gene’ from expressing itself and stay healthy all our life – our epigene helps keep us diabetes free.
This new understanding of our epigenetics brings us to the topic of our ageing skin, how young we look, and the wrinkles that start to show up on our face. Is this genetic? Is this programmed into our genes? Is this deterioration inevitable so why fight it? That is certainly what we have been told to believe by the previously. But it’s not true! We can prevent premature ageing! We can reverse the visible signs of ageing! And it’s not as hard as you may think.
Here is a list of things we can do to improve our epigenetics, regenerate our skin, and keep us looking young forever –
- Let’s start with the obvious – don’t smoke, don’t get sunburnt, limit the consumption of alcohol to low levels, limit harsh chemicals and pollution exposure to our skin, and don’t take drugs. These can add 10-20 years to your skin and make you look much older than you are.
- Look after your gut. Your outside mirrors your inside – your outer membrane mirrors the inner membrane of your gut. A toxic, inflamed, and leaky gut lining shows up as conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, blemishes, fungal infections, dandruff, rashes, and spots. Cut the processed convenience foods, eat more whole foods that nourish the gut and feed your microbiome more prebiotics and fermented foods such as kimchi, sauerkraut, and yoghurt.
- Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Your skin needs a constant supply of moisture to plump out the cells and boost the circulation of all those building blocks your skin requires to heal and regenerate. Use filtered water, herbal teas, soups, bone broths, and smoothies.
- Get more sleep. Scientists have proven that regeneration of skin and the inner dermal layers occur while you are sleeping. Lack of sleep also makes you look more haggard and drawn during the day. Try to aim for 8 hours most nights of the week.
- Don’t use harsh cleaning methods on your skin. Constant cleaning and washing your skin removes the protective oils from your skin and disrupts the microbiome of your skin. Yes – your skin has its own microbiome like that of your digestive tract. There are billions of microbes that live on the skin and we need to keep them happy and healthy if we want perfect skin.
- Smile and laugh more. We now know that the muscles in the face hold everything in place – lose muscle tone and everything starts to sag. Research has found that smiling and having a good laugh not only boosts your happy mood chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine but also exercises our facial muscles to build tone and strength and hold our face in its correct position.
- Nourish the inner cells of the dermal matrix with powerful nutrients that target the repair and regeneration of your skin, hair, nails, and joints, like those we have included in our scientifically advanced skin and joint supplement - Derma-Glow. Scientists have achieved amazing results when trialling bioactive collagen peptides, hyaluronic acid, astaxanthin, essential fatty acids, DNA biotin, skin antioxidants, and skin building blocks. When combined, these ingredients go to work deep under the skin surface to take years off your looks and return your skin, hair and nails to their optimal condition and strength.
Current research shows that it is vital to continuously replace lost building blocks in our skin and to be proactive with looking after our skin as early as possible.
As you age, your skin starts to age, your cheeks shrink, and gravity pulls your skin down to your jaw. Your body is making less collagen, and what collagen it does make is far less elastic, causing your skin to become thin and floppy. This thinning is also happening to the cartilage in your joints and causes your bones to become thinner too. There comes a time, when there just isn’t enough collagen to underpin the architecture of your facial skin and bones.
The body does continue to produce collagen throughout your life, but that manufacturing process gets slower and slower and your epigenetics get less responsive and damaged. After age twenty-five, you are losing collagen at a rate of 1 percent per year, and that rate increases up to 2 percent in your forties. By the age of sixty, you have lost half of all your collagen!
The loss is even higher with hyaluronic acid. A person in their 70’s has only a quarter of the amount of hyaluronic acid in their skin compared to a 19-year-old person. Because the turnover for the skin is said to be about 28 days, functionality, and preservation of our skin through oral ingestion of hyaluronic acid, will require long-term continuous intake to replenish supplies and activate skin regeneration receptors and genes.
The bottom line is, if you want to look as young as possible, for as long as possible, you need to focus on your skin every day. Start to put into practise the techniques listed above and get yourself into a good routine. Give yourself a constant daily supply of pure rich collagen peptides, age-defying hyaluronic acid, DNA repairing astaxanthin and beta-carotene, luxurious marine algae, and powerful skin antioxidants to regenerate your dermal matrix and to keep the surface of your skin smooth, plump and vibrant - all available in our Hydra Derma-Glow.
Once this new growth begins in the deep layers of your skin, lines and wrinkles are filled out, elasticity is restored – your skin will be hydrated, glowing, soft, and smooth, hair full of body and bounce, and nails beautiful and strong.
Molecules. 2019 Nov; 24(22): 4031. Published online 2019 Nov 7. doi: 10.3390/molecules24224031 Hydrolysed Collagen - Sources and Applications. Arely León-López, Alejandro Morales-Peñaloza, Víctor Manuel Martínez-Juárez, Apolonio Vargas-Torres, Dimitrios I. Zeugolis, and Gabriel Aguirre-Álvarez
Clin Cosmet Investing Dermatol. 2017; 10: 267–273. Published online 2017 Jul 18. doi: 10.2147/CCID.S141845 Oral hyaluronan relieves wrinkles: a double-blinded, placebo-controlled study over a 12-week period. Mariko Oe, Seigo Sakai, Hideto Yoshida, Nao Okado, Haruna Kaneda, Yasunobu Masuda, and Osamu Urushibata
