make an olive oil bath, add ¼ cup olive oil along with a few drops of lavender or peppermint oil to the bathwater. In the winter or in low humidity, olive oil is the most natural of the moisturizers. Massage it into your skin, particularly the elbows, face, feet, and legs. Olive oil can also be used to moisturize the scalp and hair, the nails, and the lips.
CHECK IT. Treat your skin like a science experiment. Look at it. Inspect the pore size with a magnifying glass. See how much skin you can slough off with sandpaper (kidding on that one). Do it regularly—one of the ways to really assess skin health is to look at your skin often, to compare changes in things like pore size, oil, flakes, and wrinkles.
DON’T TRAP DIRT. Your skin needs to breathe for heat exchange and to get rid of toxins from the sebaceous glands. But your skin can’t breathe if it’s suffocated by a pancake-thick layer of makeup. While we’re not in a position to tell you to flush your cosmetics, we do believe that many women can be brainwashed to believe that makeup is absolutely necessary to improve their appearance. Healthy skin is nature’s ultimate cosmetic.
DROP THE FAT. High blood fat levels won’t just clog your arteries—they’ll clog your skin. Out-of-control levels of cholesterol and triglycerides can wreak havoc on your appearance. A hailstorm of yellow bumps, called xanthomas, results from high triglyceride levels. Scavenger cells clean up the fatty debris beneath the surface of the skin. Diets low in saturated and trans fats, blood sugar control, and LDL cholesterol–lowering and HDL cholesterol–raising medications are essential steps. Once blood fats are lowered, xanthomas can resolve, but this may take years. Adding niacin (300 mg or more twice a day—see your doc on these) and 162 mg of aspirin a day (with half a glass of warm water before and after to minimize stomach damage) will help reduce arterial inflammation and reduce the risk of wrinkles as well as erectile dysfunction.
CHECK FOR CO-Q10. Coenzyme Q10 helps prevent damage to lipids on the surface of the skin. It’s good to see Co-Q10 as an ingredient in skin products that you’re going to buy. But studies have shown that many products listing Co-Q10 as an ingredient either do not contain Co-Q10 or have less of it than advertised (a lot less—like 90 percent less). Check www.consumerlab.com or look for the USP-verified symbol on the bottle to ensure you are getting the ingredients for which you are paying. After 2011, the FDA will be monitoring to ensure that what is on the label is what is in the bottle, but you should start earlier than that.
LAY OFF THE BOOZE. Alcohol dehydrates the skin and increases the leakiness of capillaries, so more water moves from the bloodstream into soft tissues. Combined with the horizontal position during sleep, this results in facial puffiness, stretched skin, and faster wrinkle formation. While we’re knocking vices, cigarettes not only damage your arteries to contribute to the formation of wrinkles, but they’re also responsible for vertical lines above the lips. That’s partly because cigarettes deplete levels of a gas called nitric oxide from the inner lining cells of your small arteries (and large ones, too). That short-lived gas helps gives skin some of its flexibility, so cigarettes and saturated fats take away your skin’s flexibility and contribute to wrinkles. Combine that with decades of puckering your lips around those cancer sticks and you’ve got prune lips. So when you quit, you often look younger as the nitric oxide returns and the vertical lines decrease.
ENLIST THE PROS. Some say wrinkles look distinguished. Some say they make you look older than a French cathedral. If you fall into the category where you want wrinkles on your skin as much as you want them on your wedding dress, then you have several professional options, besides the do-it-yourself tactics we’ve outlined above.
Injectible fillers. These plump up the tissue to eliminate wrinkles. Collagen injections are being replaced by hyaluronic acid because it lasts longer and your body can attack your own collagen if you use a lot of that cow stuff—not a good situation. Hyaluronic acid physically plumps up the dermis, making wrinkles virtually disappear. How long these fillers last depends on their thickness and the exact chemicals they are made from. The thinner ones (for fine lines) hurt less but have a shorter duration, while the thicker ones (for big wrinkles) that act more like caulk are inserted deeper and last longer. On average, they last between six and twenty-four months.
Paralyzing agents such as Botox. Originally approved to eliminate excessive twitching of the eye muscles, Botox weakens muscles, smoothing the skin and diminishing wrinkles. A very low dose of botulism toxin is inserted directly into a muscle and deadens its nerves for an average of four months. It’s most often and best used for creases between or around the eyes and the forehead. Daring surgeons inject it around the mouth, sometimes creating the ultra-beautiful effect of drooling. Yes, people have died from Botox, but the doses that were used were at least ten times the cosmetic dose. Around the eyes, go ahead and talk to your doc about Botox if you don’t want to scowl.
TRY A PATTY FACIAL. Stimulating the lymph drainage of your face can cleanse toxins and reduce facial swelling. Best of all, it only takes one minute in the shower. With the water caressing your face, gently sweep your hands from your chin down to your neck. This rubs the large nymph nodes (which always swell when your throat hurts) and stimulates the large ducts to drain waste fluid from the face. Then move up as you pat your fingers from the middle of your face outward toward your ears. Start below the lips and move up to beneath the nose, then the bridge of the nose, under the eyes, and finally the forehead.
ERASE THE MARKS. Here’s what you can do about some of the spots, blemishes, and lines that may make you feel like jumping out of your skin.
What’s On Your Skin: Age Spots
What They Are: Flat, round, brownish spots that look like freckles. Benign age spots aren’t dangerous.
What You Can Do: If they bother you, see a dermatologist or plastic surgeon who can treat them with bleaching creams, laser therapy, or such procedures as chemical peels. Using sunscreen can prevent the development of more spots. Sun makes them darker so use sunscreen—at least an SPF 30 with three-to four-star UVA protection. Common skin cream ingredients such as vitamin C, vitamin A, glycolic acid, emblica, and licorice extract can lighten brown spots when used for months (more in Chapter 4), and so can niacin.
What’s On Your Skin: Stretch Marks
What They Are: These scarlike marks appear when the skin stretches beyond its elastic capability and the underlying connective tissue tears.
What You Can Do: They tend to diminish over time after the early redness subsides, but there’s no known nonsurgical treatment to eliminate the marks. Treatments such as laser therapy or Retin-A are not effective in diminishing the appearance of scars.
What’s On Your Skin: Varicose Veins
What They Are: When valves preventing backflow of blood returning to the heart become weakened (often because of pregnancy or weight gain), blood pools in the veins of the legs, causing them to bulge.
What You Can Do: You can reduce some of the symptoms (like pain and swelling) by elevating your legs to promote blood drainage to the heart and avoiding standing for long periods of time. Wearing compression stockings while standing can stall their development. Various kinds of surgery can also address varicose veins—either by removing them or by closing them off.
Step 1: WATCH WHAT YOU’RE WASHING
You have an acid mantle (like cellophane) that forms a protective layer on your skin to inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria and fungi. If it loses this acidity, the skin becomes more prone to damage and infection. How do you lose the acidity? By washing your face with ordinary soap. Most of the soaps we use are basic in nature, which counteracts the acidity, so you end up removing the mantle that seals in moisture. Now, we’re not trying to encourage that outdoor look or manly smell by not washing. Use pH-balanced soaps and cleansers; if they are gentle enough