Bypass the botox and live by these five top tips from Dr Sam Bunting to ensure you age with the utmost elegance
Knowing how to age well is one of the million dollar questions constantly being tackled in the beauty industry and by women worldwide. While studies suggest that one third of what controls how we will age is in fact determined by genetics, many of us still continue to either lather up with expensive anti-ageing creams or put our skin through painful procedures.
However, what if discovering the elixir of our youth is a little more simple than we thought? Pondering this thought, we reached out to leading Dermatologist and in-house expert, Dr Samantha Bunting , to see what pearls of everyday wisdom she had to ensure that we could all age with a little bit of grace and elegance.
1) Use prescription skincare – and start from an early age. In some ways it’s a blessing if a woman comes to see me in her 20s about adult acne; once we get that sorted (the Correction phase), we can move on to the fun bit – the Beautification phase. Teaching someone proper skincare habits at that point in their life is immensely valuable and can preserve their youthful appearance well into their 30s and beyond.
2) Keep your weight stable - Yo-yo dieting is very ageing as facial fat pads gives us our youthful contours and crash diets deflate them rapidly. Eat plenty - but of the right things. Minimise refined carbs, consume plenty of appetite-appeasing lean protein, guzzle down the green juice and snack on nuts. Also don’t forget to move your body!
3) Pamper your hands - This is an area that gets a lot of incidental sun exposure and is usually the least protected, plus they’re in and out of water all day. At night I recommend using a nourishing hand product like La Roche Posay Cicoplast Mains , £9.00 – it’s brilliant because it’s non-sticky but also contains Niacinamide, which fortifies the skin barrier function and brightens skin tone. I’d also recommend using a moisturising ‘proper’ sunscreen as a hand cream, reapplied throughout the course of the day – there’s nothing better than this for preventing age spots.
4) Shield your eyes – this is the earliest place that signs of ageing are creeping in. The skin here is thin and constantly being creased by the muscle underneath, so it needs to be cared for. Apply proper sunscreen daily, and do it right up to the lashes (amazing how many women don’t do this). Keep sunglasses at hand constantly to keep the area shielded. It’s also worth thinking about treatments like Botox. Once crows feet lines are visible when the face is still, they will only deepen with time and they are hard to eliminate once they become etched in.
5) Cultivate lush brows - If there’s one thing that ages a face, it’s thin sparse eyebrows. I love Kevyn Aucoin’s Eyebrow Pencil , £21 – such a great product for building definition stroke by stroke. If brows are really thin, then a product like Revitabrow , £71.28 can be used to boost what nature has given you.