Hair and Beauty Tips

Anyone who reads my writing on anti aging will no that I’m not against anti aging wrinkle creams or even surgery in some special cases. However, these should be your last lines of defense. Anti aging wrinkle creams can be effective, but not as effective as natural preventative approaches. I read of a woman that I mention on my site that was in her 70’s but looked like she was in her 40’s. What was attributed to her looking 30 years younger than her age? She drank vegetable juice everyday that she prepared herself at home.

Anti aging wrinkle creams can be effective, but you’re fighting an uphill losing battle if you don’t first take care of your dietary health. A study that appeared in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition in 2001 found that certain foods may actually eliminate wrinkles. These diets included abundant amounts of fruits, a lot of vegetables (ideally 1 pound of vegetables a day for each 50 pounds of body weight), and a fair amount of unsaturated fats. These foods were found to decrease or eliminate wrinkles because they enhanced the skin’s ability to defend against the damage from sun exposure. Another key part of the diet was that it was extremely low in processed sugar. I have a feeling that too much sugar can make a healthy diet and anti aging wrinkle creams useless.

The healthy diet appears to be significantly more effective than even the best anti aging wrinkle creams. However, important to the diet was the understanding that not all vegetables are created equal. Munching down a bunch of carrots and celery will not cut it. The most effective vegetables were of the green and leafy varieties. Add a couple pounds of these to your diet each day and watch the wrinkles disappear. Beans, olive oil and nuts were also found to be powerful anti aging foods.

This study also drew some other fascinating conclusions. For example, those who participated in the study that smoked cigarettes also found improvements in skin quality and smoothness when their diet included the foods mentioned above. If you are unable to stop smoking — smoking is a major contributor to premature aging — then a combination of a diet rich in leafy green vegetables could have you looking years younger in no time at all. The foundation of a healthy diet would also make the anti aging wrinkle creams even more effective.

The study also found that age does not make a difference. That is, it doesn’t matter how old you are, if you start eating a diet rich in leaf green vegetables and the other foods mentioned above, your skin will start to look younger and smoother. And if you must, add in one of the good anti aging wrinkle creams to perhaps even achieve greater results.

The authors developed a theory to why this diet resulted in younger looking skin. All these foods contain extremely high amounts of antioxidants. The major antioxidants are vitamins like A, C and E. How do the fats help the skin? The experts believe that these fats slow down or stop the oxidation of skin cells. Many of the anti aging wrinkle creams contain antioxidants, too. My feeling is it’s better to eat them than apply them to the skin.

What does all this mean? Anti aging wrinkle creams can be effective measures to slow aging of the skin, but they won’t be the least bit effective if you have a poor diet, spend a lot of time in the sun and smoke cigarettes. Anti aging wrinkle creams will only be able to undo some of the skin damage your lifestyle causes. The ideal scenario, on the other hand, is to quit smoking, limit sun exposure, stay away from foods that contain oxidative toxins (mostly processed foods), and eat a diet of fresh foods with high levels of antioxidants. Perhaps only in these circumstances can the often expensive anti aging wrinkle creams fully perform the magic they are supposed to.