The loss of skin elasticity can occur at any point in your life, but it’s especially pronounced during menopause. This is primarily because of the significant drop in your estrogen levels.
But what exactly does estrogen have to do with your skin?
In this article, we’ll discuss how your hormones are related to skin elasticity, along with other reasons why your skin might lose its tightness. Of course, we’ll also talk about valuable tips that can help you manage or even reverse it.
Research shows that exercise can drastically improve skin tissue. Aside from improving your blood circulation — something that’s needed to maintain skin health — it also reduces skin sagging through muscle building.
Menopause involves considerable fluctuations in a woman’s hormones. At this time, women suffer from low estrogen levels, which lead to a variety of symptoms such as:
- Hot flashes
- Night sweats and chills
- Sleep issues
- Headaches
- Irritability and mood swings
- Dry and wrinkly skin
- Thinning hair
- Vaginal dryness
- Breast sagging
- Weight gain
Estrogen plays a huge role on skin physiology. It’s responsible for modulating the epidermal keratinocytes, melanocytes, and dermal fibroblasts.
Additionally, estrogen affects the function of sebaceous glands and hair follicles. Simply put, having the right estrogen levels is essential in maintaining collagen production, skin hydration, skin thickness, elasticity, and its ability to heal wounds.
Main Reasons Why Your Skin Loses Its Elasticity
While hormones may often be the culprit as to why the skin sags, there are other factors that you can look into if you’re trying to solve a recurring skin problem. Once you figure out what the root cause is, you can then apply skincare solutions that directly address it.
1. Aging
Aside from estrogen deficiency during menopause, aging also causes the body to reduce its production of collagen and elastin. These two proteins are responsible for keeping the skin elastic and firm.
2. Unprotected Sun Exposure
Too much sun exposure can speed up the decline of collagen and elastin. Staying too long in the sun can prematurely kick start the skin aging process, leading to wrinkled and saggy skin.
3. Rapid Weight Loss
If you thought that obesity is just bad for your internal systems, apparently, it’s also bad for your skin. That’s because all the extra weight stretches and damages your collagen and elastin fibers.
4. Certain Lifestyle Factors
Poor nutrition, cigarette smoking, and excessive alcohol drinking can also mess up your skin’s condition.
Bringing Back Your Skin’s Firmness
No matter where you currently are in life, it’s never too late to start taking care of your skin. Here are 6 tips that can help enhance your skin’s firmness and elasticity:
1. Lifestyle Overhaul
Are you a heavy smoker, a couch potato, or both? Alluring as your current lifestyle may seem, you’ll have to consider giving it up if you wish to have nice skin.
Studies show that smokers’ skin is less elastic than those of non-smokers. If you’re a smoker who’s also going through menopause, the skin aging process is bound to worsen because of estrogen deficiencies and the nicotine in your system.
Additionally, research shows that exercise can drastically improve skin tissue. Aside from improving your blood circulation — something that’s needed to maintain skin health — it also reduces skin sagging through muscle building.
Resistance or weight training is highly recommended, as it helps improve your muscle mass. Pilates and face yoga are also great go-to’s, because they tighten the muscles all over your body.
Lastly, don’t forget to drink enough water every day. Aside from helping your body flush out its toxins faster, it also keeps your skin taut and hydrated.
2. Weight Loss
Losing weight is usually recommended to minimize your risk for serious diseases. Apparently, eliminating those extra fats can also enhance and firm your skin.
Of course, you should see to it that you’re losing weight in a healthy way. Speeding up the weight loss process through fad diets may give you the numbers you want faster, but it may not lead to aesthetically pleasing results.
3. Antioxidants
Adding antioxidants to your diet can also improve your skin significantly. Examples of antioxidants include vitamins C and E, lycopene, and carotenoids.
Antioxidants are substances that keep free radicals at bay. Free radicals, on the other hand, are molecules that harm your body in a multitude of ways.
Your systems must maintain the right balance between antioxidants and free radicals; otherwise it will lead to oxidative stress. This can damage the cells in your body, which will eventually manifest in your skin.
4. Firming Creams
This is one product that’s worth adding to your skincare regimen. With consistent use, firming creams can improve your skin’s appearance and make those wrinkles and age lines less visible.
Make sure that you choose a product that contains retinoids in them. Like antioxidants, retinoids protect your skin against free radicals and boosts collagen production.
5. Sun Protection
As mentioned in the previous section, skin aging speeds up when you’re always under the sun without wearing any sunscreen. Make sure that you always apply sunscreen, especially when you plan to go out for longer periods.
6. Phytoestrogens
Oftentimes, estrogen deficiencies in menopausal women are treated using estrogen therapy. Unfortunately, synthetic estrogens can lead to unwanted side effects, and worse, it may increase a woman’s risk for cancer.
This is where phytoestrogens come in. Phytoestrogens are plant-based substances that behave similarly to estrogen.
You can find phytoestrogens in soy products, legumes, whole grains, flax seeds, sesame seeds, split peas, and sometimes, even in beer.
It’s also found abundantly in an herb called Pueraria mirifica. Hence, skincare products with Pueraria mirifica, like those of Mirifica Science’s, can be an effective solution to your skin elasticity issues.
Because phytoestrogens are very potent in Pueraria mirifica, products that have it are generally recommended for skin and estrogen-related issues.
Skincare products with Pueraria mirifica, like those of Mirifica Science’s, can be an effective solution to your skin elasticity issues.
Reclaim Your Skin’s Glow with These Tips
Undeniably, women (and even men) are bound to face skin issues as they grow older. While there’s no way to turn back the clock, fortunately, there are many things that you can do to improve and maintain your skin’s health.
By following the tips above, you can slow down the loss of skin elasticity. For menopausal women, who will be experiencing this due to hormonal issues, using skincare products with Pueraria mirifica is mostly an effective solution.