Six Habits That Age Your Face

1. Six Habits That Age Your Face

Habit #1 Sleeping on Your Side or Stomach.

I see one major reason for eye bags, puffiness, and under-eye wrinkles: If you're over 40 and you try to imitate the sleeping position of this woman in our picture, you'll be committing quite an assault on your own good looks. Many people every morning wake up with creases and puffiness on their faces and think it's normal. It's not.

I can often tell just by looking at a person's face which side she usually sleeps on. Do you have eye bags and creases around your eyes? I'll wager you're sleeping on your side or, even worse, on your stomach. It's gravity.

Sleep on your side or your tummy, and all your body fluids get lodged under your facial skin. Add in the creases due to folds and you'll awaken with a distorted face. Do it every day and it stays on your face, threatening to become permanent. Sure, it's not easy to change your favorite sleeping position. Old habits die hard. But you can do it. And you'll be glad of the results. More information in What is the Best Way to Sleep?
 

Habit #2 Going Out Without a Hat

Freckles, liver spots, red blotches, wrinkles, and dry skin—the sun “takes the heat” for them all. And the older we get, the more we blame old Sol.

Doing one thing wrong, such as eating processed food, forces you to do another—covering yourself with sunblock. The sun exposes your diet. Fry, grill and bake your food, and these burnt offerings will show up on your skin. More information in my book Quantum Eating.

Since age 33, I haven't left home without a hat or cap. It’s a great habit to develop. Sunlight is vital to life. For example, for healthy bones and muscles, it’s a must. But overexposure can destroy collagen, the integrity of which is fundamental in forestalling wrinkles. Preventing overexposure when you are young will go a long way in keeping damage from showing up later.

But what if you’re no longer as young as you once were? Just start from wherever you are. Sunbathe only in the gentle morning rays for about 30 minutes a day. Keep your face, in particular, out of direct sunlight—always. Squinting does create wrinkles.

Habit #3 Neglecting a Daily Beauty Routine

Dead skin cells accumulate on the face, just as they do on the body. Some will slough off naturally, but these flaky, dehydrated cells need some help to “get lost.”

Body brushing and face brushing are essential components of a health and beauty regimen, and should be done daily. If you don’t exfoliate regularly, your skin will become dry, thin and sensitive. And this is just one aspect of premature aging.

There is also the degenerative process of the underlying tissues to think about. Collagen and elastin production slows with age, causing older elastin fibers simply to wear out. Skin loses its elasticity and fibrous support. As skin loses its overall vitality, fat cells, too, tend to become smaller and less able to fill in weak areas. If toxins from the underlying tissues are not dislodged regularly, it will lead to breakouts, water retention, and large pores.

Daily Knuckle Massage, RejuvaCup Massage and/or Strigil Scraping even better—are necessary to prevent your skin from sagging, creasing, and drying up.

One of my readers wrote: Everyone else stresses that you should be so tender with your facial skin. You, Tonya, by contrast, seem to advocate rather beating up your face—LOL!

My goal is to learn from people who possess beautiful skin, regardless of their age, and not to rely on skin “professionals.” Mainstream cosmetologists and dermatologists teach treating aging skin tenderly and gently, or it will misbehave. They’re right: everything old and fragile must be treated with great care.

But, remember the days when your skin never needed this gentle care? I say get the garbage out of your body and out from the underlying tissues of the skin even if it means living through temporary breakouts. Nourish your skin with superb living nutrition from the inside; speed up the turnover of the skin cells with a strict beauty routine, and it will become resilient and youthful again. More information in my eBook Guide to an Ageless Face.

Habit #4 Cooked Food Addiction

Around age 50, we start losing our looks, our attractiveness. Because of physical and chemical changes in our bodies, we take on a certain resemblance to the opposite sex.

Men’s features become more feminine, women’s more masculine, and we lose our “girlishness.” In women, menopause exacerbates the situation. It all gets more dramatic as we move into our 60s and 70s.

My belief: One primary cause of the opposite sex resemblance is eating cooked foods—meat and dairy, especially. In my experience, eating plenty of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds in their unprocessed form is the only way to prevent this from happening. More information in my book Quantum Eating.
 

Habit #5 Eating at Night

We’re all addicted to culture and its prescriptions. The media bombards us with messages saying not only is it okay to indulge in nighttime eating, but it’s a good thing. In my book, Quantum Eating, using scientific research and personal experience, I’m building a case that stopping eating in the late afternoon is the best thing you can do to improve your health and your looks.

Your balanced hormones will have a lot to say about how you age. Let us consider human growth hormone. It's one of many endocrine hormones. It is the most abundant hormone secreted by the pituitary gland. As with estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, melanin, and DHEA, human growth hormone production declines as we age. What makes GH special is that the body can produce large amounts of GH right into old age.

However, this hormone is superior to all the other hormones because when it is replaced, it supposedly not only prevents further biological aging, but reverses its signs and symptoms. Growth hormone levels go up when insulin levels go down, about four hours after a meal. Dr. James D. Jamieson and Dr. L. E. Dorman, experts on hormone replacement therapies in their book, Growth Hormone: Reversing Human Aging Naturally, state:

It is at this point that the fat burning potential of GH tends to be at its daytime peak. But remember, the largest burst of GH is released during the early hours of sleep—hence, our evening eating habits are crucial to maximizing this nighttime secretion. By avoiding food during the last four hours before bedtime we may enhance circadian growth hormone release, and fat burning potential.

More information in Intermittent Fasting: A Sure Way to Health and Longevity.

Habit #6 Judgmental Thoughts

The cooked food addiction is a hard one to break, but here’s a tougher one—our addiction to judgment. If you are born human, the need to judge is pretty much part of your makeup.

We don't like what other people are eating, what they're saying, how they're making a living. It's so marvelously easy to make judgments, isn't it?

Many older individuals look less attractive not because of their wrinkles, but because of where these wrinkles are positioned. Such people can look angry, embittered, and judgmental. It's because the emotions these facial features express have held dominance throughout their lives.

Analogy: the internet. As we are all aware, once you write an unkind judgmental comment on the internet—even if you delete the remark—it’s still out there, somewhere. And discoverable. Ditto with our negative thoughts and oral remarks.

You might think that momentary negativity has blown away in the wind. You might not see it today. But its imprint remains. As years go by, many people discover that the creases and furrows show up nearly overnight. Using our WrinkAlign patches will definitely help.

But here’s what will help even more…Strive to stay aware, always, of your own thoughts. Train yourself to be grateful, accepting of what is. Achieve this, and you’ll be vastly happier. And in your older years, you’ll be called beautiful.