Are Facial Exercises Damaging? You Must Know the Truth

Your Skin is not Underwear

In his YouTube video, Effects of Facial Exercises on Your Skin, Dr. Schultz states that instead of benefiting your face, facial exercises will make you lose tone and encourage lines and wrinkles. He cautions that stretching and twisting of the facial muscles will eventually stretch the skin’s elastin to its final limit so that it can no longer snap back, like an old pair of underwear.

Not a good analogy! There is an unbridgeable difference between the elastin fibers in your face and the elastic band in a pair of old underwear. Your skin, the largest organ of your body is living and constantly regenerating, but an article of clothing can only degenerate.

It's not Like a Paperclip Either

The doctor asserts that by creasing or folding the skin, you are damaging the collagen, and doing so will simply wear out your skin, like bending and unbending a paper clip until it breaks. However, it is not so much that collagen “breaks down” under the influence of exercise, but that the body produces less collagen with poor diet and the effects of aging. My approach: Boost the body’s capability to produce useful collagen via raw foods.

Are Facial Muscles So Different?

Dr. Schultz claims that while exercising the body results in improved muscle tone which can firm the skin covering it, the same rule does not apply to the face. And why not? He does not give a satisfying explanation and instead just says it’s because when you move the underlying muscles you are also moving the skin. But of course the same is true for the muscles of your body-you are always moving the skin when you flex a muscle.

We make about 15,000 facial expressions every day. Our skin is nothing like a paperclip, because in our younger years these expressions leave no trace at all. Our skin is a living organ, on the face as well as everywhere else on our bodies. It is capable of remarkable rejuvenation.

Why doesn’t everyone have flawless skin then? The effects of poor diet, pollution, and years of neglect result in the degenerative processes happening faster than the regenerative ones. That is why I insist you add raw foods to your facial exercise routine to tip the scales in your favor!

It is apparent that Dr. Schultz shies away from facial exercises himself. Doctors often display rather more a spirit of rationalism than empiricism—that is, a spirit of “pure reason” where perhaps more practical experience is warranted.

Rethink Damage

“Damage”…such a dangerous term, and a relative one. Did you know every form of strength-building or muscle-building exercise involves “damage”? Weightlifting (strength-building) “damages” muscle cells. (“No pain, no gain,” as bodybuilders say, even while grimacing.)

Every esthetician knows, and every dermatologist for that matter, that you have to damage the outer skin layer of the skin in order to cause it to regenerate. This is performed by estheticians, cosmetologists and makeup artists and is referred to as “controlled skin damage.” It initiates the natural skin repair and renewal of cells.

Exfoliation is considered mild damage to differentiate it from more aggressive forms such as dermabrasion or chemical peels. These methods coax the skin to produce higher levels of collagen and elastin and encourage a faster renewal process, which usually takes about 28 days, but starts to take longer as we get older.

In my book, Rawsome Flex, I give more reasons in support of performing facial exercises as well as outlining a systematic facial exercise routine, which I practice daily. What about you? At least now you have more information to decide for yourself …