Alcohol: Drinking too much alcohol can dehydrate and damage your skin over time, leading to signs of premature aging. Poor sleep: Studies show that low quality (or not enough) sleep makes your cells age faster. Stress: When you're stressed, your brain pumps out cortisol, a stress hormone.
There are two main culprits that accelerate the aging process of our skin: sun exposure and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) .
Eating primarily processed foods and trying too many crash diets may speed up the rate at which your cells age. Research has shown that diets high in sugar and advanced glycation end products, or AGEs, also speed up your body's aging process.
When it comes to aging, some people are just luckier. Genetics play a significant role in how fast you age, so if your parents aged really well, that may be the case for you too. Your skin's thickness, color, and vascularity can determine how quickly damage or signs of aging like fine lines and wrinkles appear.
This is called extrinsic aging. As a result, premature aging can set in long before it was expected. In other words, your biological clock is more advanced than your chronological clock. Controllable factors such as stress, smoking and sun exposure can all play a role in expediting extrinsic aging.
Caffeine can cause your blood vessels to constrict, and as a result, the vessels at the surface of your skin won't deliver as many antioxidants and nutrients to promote collagen production. "The results of drinking too much coffee can cause the skin to wrinkle prematurely, and become more lax with time," says Dr.
Exercise is one of the best ways to delay aging. And with good reason: too much time sitting (sedentary behavior) is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and an early death. Aerobic activity is any activity that causes you to breathe harder than normal and your heart to beat faster.
Is it possible to reverse aging? You cannot wholly reverse aging—it's a normal part of life. However, you may be able to slow it down and help prevent age-related diseases by adopting a healthy lifestyle. That includes habits like eating a healthy diet, wearing sunscreen every day, and exercising (Shanbhag, 2019).
An individual who experiences chronic stress is more likely to make unhealthy lifestyle choices, which causes additional health problems. In other words, stress accelerates aging, and aging causes stress—it's a vicious cycle. Stress also affects the body on a cellular level.
According to the research, the average American starts feeling old at the age of 47. Similarly, the average respondent starts to really worry about age-related bodily changes around 50 years old.
They also identify “seven pillars” of aging, intertwined processes driving the aging process. They are: adaption to stress, epigenetics, inflammation, macromolecular damage, metabolism, proteostasis, and stem cells and regeneration. Through study of these processes, experts hope to find ways to slow down aging.
Get enough sleep, protect your skin with sunscreen, eat a balanced diet, exercise, and manage your stress. Those are only some of the many ways you can take care of your body as you go through the natural process of aging. If you take care of yourself, your body will thank you in the long run.
“Everyone wants a quick fix when it comes to making skin look better, but drinking more water isn't going to help get rid of wrinkles or plump up your skin unless you are extremely dehydrated,” says Elizabeth Damstetter, MD, a dermatologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Sleeping well can lower blood pressure, relax blood vessels and improve blood flow, bringing nutrients—and a healthy color—to the skin. Sleep also slows the aging of the heart and blood vessels. Poor circulation and arterial aging are major contributors to the appearance of aging on the skin and hair.
Beneath the surface, your body is aging too, and sleep loss can speed up the process. A study done by UCLA researchers discovered that just a single night of insufficient sleep can make an older adults' cells age quicker. This might not seem like a big deal, but it has the potential to bring on a lot of other diseases.
A thin face is the lead culprit because being slender causes a loss of volume in the face, Guyuron says. "This loss of volume creates jowls and makes wrinkles develop," he says. "The older we get, the more the face gets depleted. When you lose weight, this look is enhanced and aging is accelerated.
You might be surprised to know that your face is not actually the part of your body that ages the fastest. It is, in fact, your breasts. A study, published by the journal Genome Biology has found that breast tissue is the part of the body that's most sensitive to the affects of ageing.
Findings from a few studies suggest that eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables may help prevent damage that leads to premature skin aging. Findings from research studies also suggest that a diet containing lots of sugar or other refined carbohydrates can accelerate aging. Drink less alcohol.