How To Get Carded At 40

Choices, not chronology, determine how old you look.

There are a lot of factors that affect how your skin ages. While certain things hold true, like the fact that your skin’s ability to produce collagen slows as you grow older, what determines how old you look has more to do with lifestyle than with chronology.

UV exposure, sleep, hydration, exercise, stress, diet, the products you use—all these things affect your aging calendar. But like a good executive assistant, it’s your job to set the agenda and manage the calendar by implementing your own strategic plan. Here are your top action items.

Move It Or Lose It

Start your day with some exercise to get blood flowing, remove toxins, and improve skin thickness. Regular exercise has been shown to stimulate collagen production and release human growth hormone (HGH), which improves skin elasticity and moisture retention. We like yoga because it works muscles deeply releasing tensions and toxins. Downward dog or other inversion positions have the added benefit of helping to reduce dark circles because the increased blood flow helps carry fluids away from the face.

Avoid Sugar

Foods with a high glycemic index—sugars, fruit juices, white bread, white rice, white pasta—are quickly converted into blood sugar, which leads to the formation of the aptly named AGEs (Advanced Glycation End Products). AGEs bind to proteins and cause the breakdown of collagen and elastin. Wrinkles, sagging and dull skin are the result. There’s no way around it, too much sugar is definitely not sweet.

Fight Free Radicals

Environmental pollutants, UV exposure, and smoking are all triggers for free radicals, the unstable electrons that roam around your body looking for healthy cells to latch onto. Free radicals break down collagen and accelerate aging in skin. Protect yourself by eating an antioxidant-rich diet and using antioxidant-rich products. Vivant’s Green Tea Antioxidant Cleanser, Skin Nourishing Toner, and Spin Trap Antioxidant Serum form a daily antioxidant trifecta.

Limit Sun Exposure

The number one factor in premature aging is sun exposure. UV radiation triggers free radicals that damage skin’s structural collagen and spur excess pigmentation. Daily sunscreen is essential. Look for products containing zinc, which is both a UV blocker and a boost for a healthy skin barrier.

Eat The Butter

Forget what you were told about fats being unhealthy. Grass fed butter contains antioxidants that protect skin from oxidative stress, plus skin-nourishing vitamins and acids that are vital components of healthy skin. Butter and other foods rich in polyunsaturated fats—salmon, avocados, nuts­, olive oil—feed not just your cravings, but your skin as well, reducing inflammation, strengthening cell walls, enhancing skin repair, and helping skin retain moisture. All important factors in keeping skin looking supple, firm, and glowing.

Get A Boost From Caffeine

Your favorite morning wake-up is not just good for your brain. It’s good for your skin. As an ingredient in skin care, caffeine is an anti-inflammatory that works by constricting blood vessels so it shrinks puffiness, brightens dark circles under the eyes, reduces redness, and perks up sagging skin. It’s also a powerful antioxidant that fights free radicals and helps to repair UV damage.

Find it in Vivant’s Wink Eye Rejuvenation Cream.

Power Up With Peptides

Firm up, perk up, and brighten up with the power of peptides. These regenerating little wonder workers are small chains of amino acids that form the building blocks of protein, the stuff that keeps skin looking firm and youthful. Peptides don’t just preserve what’s already there, they encourage your body to produce more collagen making them a top-level action item on your anti-aging agenda.

Find them in Vivant’s Rejuv Rx firming and lifting serum. See additional peptide products.

Hydration For Optimization

Water is the key element in more than half your body composition. It keeps cells healthy and all the body’s organs functioning properly. Your skin is your body’s largest and thirstiest organ. Sufficient hydration, both internal and external, is essential to maintaining elasticity and suppleness. Drink plenty of water. Eat foods rich in Omega 6 and Omega 3 fatty acids—nuts, seeds, salmon, mackerel, grass-fed beef, olive oil, flaxseed oil—to support a healthy skin barrier. Moisturize with nourishing, non-comedogenic ingredients like honey, lactic acid, niacinamide, oat protein, allantoin, aloe, grape seed oil, sea algae extract.

Get optimizing hydration with Vivant’s Marine Skin Nourishing Cream or Allantoin Sedating & Hydrating Lotion.

Start Early With Retinoids and Antioxidants

Imagine you just bought a beautiful linen sundress. You wear it to every bridal shower and art opening and Sunday brunch on your calendar for years. But you’re not always as careful as you should be with the treatment of this beauty. Sometimes you wash it in the regular cycle and put it in the dryer. You use spray starch to get the wrinkles out. You use an extra hot iron. Maybe you spill wine on it and scrub too hard to get it out. Please, tell us you didn’t smoke while wearing it, not even just that one puff when no one was looking. You pack it too tightly for long flights. You poke the sharp end of a brooch through it one too many times. You pull at loose threads. You forget to wash it after a particularly warm day in the sun and the sweat sets in and yellows the fabric. That dress is going to look like the rag you use for doggie bath time when you pull it out of the closet in ten years time. Fortunately, you can buy another dress, but your skin is even more delicate than the dress and there is no replacement. Start using antioxidant and vitamin A products in your twenties to protect your skin from the environmental damage that leads to premature aging.

Your top agenda action items: Spin Trap Antioxidant Serum, a potent Vitamin C & E concentrate to prevent and reverse free radical damage; Derm-A-Renew, daily vitamin A (retinoid) and peptide concentrate to accelerate cell turnover and decelerate the signs of aging.