10 Tips For Improving Your Skin

Getting great skin isn't a mystery! Check out these 10 easy tips to improve your skin.

Check your Water - The water you use to clean your skin is almost as important as the water you drink. Hard water isn't conducive to lathering, which forces you to use more product, and can dry out your skin. Soft water lets product lather easily, so you need less product to get the same results. Check your area's water quality by visiting the Environmental Protection Agency.

Be Wary of Wrinkle Fighters - There are tons of anti-wrinkle creams on the market, but they are not all made alike. Check the ingredients; a good anti-wrinkle cream contains Retinol, hydroxyl acids, coenzyme Q10, copper peptides, kinetin and green, black or green tea extracts. Try Neutrogena Healthy Skin Anti-Wrinkle Cream for wrinkle fighting care.

Have a healthy diet - Certain vitamins, like A, C, B3 and E, have been found to benefit the skin. Avoiding fatty foods and an abundance of dairy products if you have acne can also improve your skin tone.

Use Protection - The sun is your skin's worst enemy. Fight it off by applying SPF sunscreen every time you are outdoors. Make sure your sunscreen has UVB and UVA protection, like DDF Enhancing Sun Protection in SPF 30, which works with any type of skin and improves tone at the same time.

Catch your ZZZs - Sleep is nature's way of resetting and healing, and if you're not getting enough rest, your body isn't able to repair your skin - and sleep deprivation can trigger an increase in adrenaline and cortisol. Make sure you have a relaxing bedtime routine, go to sleep and wake up the same time every day and get at least seven to eight hours every day.

Pamper your skin - If your skin looks flaky and uneven, it's time for some hardcore moisturizing care. Try the Fresh Black Tea Instant Perfecting mask, which sloughs off dry, flaky skin, brightens your tone and soothes at the same time.

Minimize pores - Age, genetics, skin type and sun damage can cause unsightly large pores, and excessively oily skin can magnify the problem. Look for a product with salicylic acid that can hide and refine large pores on your face, like the Dr. Brandt Pores No More Pore Refiner.

Brighten blah skin - Free radicals, sun and stress can leave your skin looking less than glowing. Rejuvenate your lackluster skin with a skin peel or mask with antioxidants and vitamins, like Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare Extra Strength Alpha Beta Peel.

Chill out! - Stress increases the body's production of cortisol, which can make skin oily, and lowers the body's ability to fight off acne-inducing bacteria. To combat stress's effect on your skin, practice deep breathing, yoga or medication.

Wash up every night - One nighttime step you should never miss? Washing your face using an effective but gentle cleanser before bed gets rid of makeup, dirt, oil and bacteria that can cause problems. Try Dr. Brandt Time Arrest Creme Cleanser for cleaning and collagen enhancement.

About the author: Thomas is an award winning freelance writer with many years of experience under his belt covering health issues. When he’s not busy writing he is usually reviewing dermatology experts in Chicago or sharpening his water polo skills.

How Your Face Ages Over Time

It's a fact of life that everyone gets older. As we age, our body changes, and many of the changes we see take place in our faces. Everyone knows that the way they look changes over time; wrinkles form, facial features change and alter; but not everyone knows why and how this happens.

Three Zones
Looking at the human face, we can divide it into three separate areas or "zones." These zones are useful classifications when discussing the way the human face changes through the years. When discussing aging, these three areas are referred, so it is important to know exactly what portions of the face they encompass.

The upper face includes the area around your forehead, eyebrows and eyes. The mid-face includes the area under the eyes, the nose and the cheek regions of the face. The lower face includes everything below the nose such as the lips, chin and jawline.

Four Layers
Just as the face is divided into three regions, it is also made up of four basic layers. As a person ages, these layers change, giving the characteristic features of an aging human face. These four features, from deepest to most superficial are bone, muscle, the subcutaneous layer and skin.

Different decades see different changes take place in these layers and these combined changes are what case the various facial changes over time such as wrinkles and loss of face volume.

Bone
Although bones are generally thought of as unchanging once we reach adulthood, nothing could be father from the truth. As we age, our bones continue to change and alter, shifting subtly and taking on slightly different shapes.

Because bone is the foundation on which the shape of the other three layers are built, changes in bone structure, volume and shape can cause changes in the other layers. For example, your cheekbones may become less prominent as you age, causing a change in the shape and volume of your cheeks and affecting the three layers above.

Muscle
As we grow older, the strength and firmness of our muscles weakens. As a result, the muscles don't tend to spring back into shape as easily as they did when we were younger. 

As the face is the most expressive portion of our bodies, we are always using the muscles when making facial expressions. As these muscles become weaker over time, they don't snap back into their original shapes as they did earlier in life. Combined with the loss of elasticity in the skin, this causes the creases in the skin caused by repeated facial expressions to become permanent, creating wrinkles.

Subcutaneous Layer
The subcutaneous layer is the layer that lies just beneath the skin. It is also known as the fatty layer or the volume layer. This layer contains collagen, fat and a substance called hyaluronic acid.

While you might be familiar with collagen and fat, most people aren't as familiar with what hyaluronic acid is and what its function is. Essentially, this is an acid that is used in repairing skin tissue. When you become sunburned, the UV rays slow the body's production of this acid. As a result, the degradation of the skin increases significantly, thus causing the skin to peel. This is one reason why the use of sunscreen is important to reduce the effects of the sun's rays.

As we age, the volume of collagen, fat and hyaluronic acid decreases. This loss of volume can cause not only changes in how the face looks, often causing it to seem to droop, but the skin no longer snaps back as well as it once did.

Skin
The skin, or epidermis, is the most visible part of the aging process. The skin is closely tied to the subcutaneous level, and the point at which one ends and the other begins can be quite difficult to discern. 

As time drags on, the skin loses its own elasticity, the replacement of the outer layer of skin slows and the function of the sebaceous glands becomes lessened. The skin itself no longer snaps back, and wrinkles form over time.

It's a Combination! 
Like so many things in life, the effects of aging are not caused by one single thing but rather a combination. As bone changes, muscle loses strength, the subcutaneous level loses volume and the skin just no longer bounces back, the effects of aging, such as wrinkles and sagging skin, begin showing.

Bella Labella founded Bella Labs in 2009 to become a leading edge skin care supplement manufacturer. To learn more, follow Bella Labs on Twitter.