What can I do to prevent wrinkles?

The most guaranteed way to prevent premature fine lines and wrinkles is to change your lifestyle habits. While you cannot change the photodamage from the past, you can eat a diet rich in antioxidants, the compounds that attack free radicals in the body and destroy them. Exercise moderately and avoid the damaging effects of extreme hot or cold temperatures. Get healing sleep and prevent the ravages of life’s stressors from robbing you of sexy, ageless skin. Most importantly, start today to avoid the UV rays of the sun, which are known to destroy elastin and collagen over time, leading to premature aging.

If you are going outdoors, avoid the sun’s strongest hours of 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. When you go out in the sun, always wear a sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15 and reapply every two hours. If you live in the south, spend time out of doors, have fair skin or a history of skin cancer in your family, use sun products with an SPF of at least 30, and apply hourly or as often as it takes to prevent your skin from turning pink. Also, don’t smoke, as this accelerates the normal aging process of the skin. Even after only 10 years of smoking, the skin changes and wrinkles are irreversible.

There is no wrinkle cure. Treatment starts with prevention. You need to limit your sun exposure to twenty minutes a day, or religiously use a zinc oxide-containing sun block if you must be in the sun. Elimination of smoking and its toxins will help maximize your genetic potential. Drugs such as tretinoin, alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs), and topical vitamin C stimulate the formation of collagen and elastin and help prevent your dermis from deteriorating. The dermis can actually thicken with long-term use of these drugs.

Once you have wrinkles, prevention is a moot point. You can use skin creams to limit ongoing damage, but only more aggressive treatments will reverse them. Wrinkles are treated by filling them, by sanding, lasering, peeling, or shrinking them, by stretching them out, or by stopping the constant pull on the skin that continually recreates them.