Skin Care Guide

The Elements

Facial skin typically looks its best during a woman's 20s. The process of producing healthy new skin cells and removing or shedding old cells takes about 28 days. As you age, your skin becomes thinner and often drier. Thinning skin is a result of a breakdown of collagen fibres. As it ages, skin loses elasticity, especially if it has been exposed to excessive sunlight, and becomes more fragile. It dries out because the skin's structure weakens and it doesn't retain moisture as well as younger skin. However, there are a number of dietary and lifestyle changes that you can make to help keep your skin healthy and young looking.

Because exposure to the sun influences how well your skin ages, protecting the skin from the sun is the single most important practice in skin care. Continuous exposure to the sun will wrinkle, dry out, and age the skin, leaving it coarse and thick. Uneven pigmentation - from freckles to brown spots - is another side effect of frequent sunning.

The most serious consequence of sun exposure is skin cancer. Some statistics show that half of all reported cases of cancer are skin cancer. Skin cancer can take up to 20 years to develop; children who experience as few as two to three sunburns are believed to have an increased risk of developing skin cancer later in life.