In my 30’s I noticed that I had more acne than when I did as a teenager. I never understood this. Then in my late 30’s my body really started to change quite a bit. I had a miscarriage at age 38 and from there much on the body started going downhill. As I slowly crept into my 40’s (I was moving a bit slower by then; not real sure I was going to enjoy these “40’s”!), I noticed a tremendous un-evenness to my skin texture, tone and color. Dry patches on jowls and temples, dry and oily at the same time on the chin and nose, thinning skin, color no longer even.
I was blessed with good looking skin from my mom… and most people around me still said they noticed nothing. But boy… I sure did.
Through my training as a Naturopath I finally found the answers as to what in the world was going on.
Replacement hormomes used from the earliest stage of menopause reduces the development of wrinkles and skin rigidity.
How does your skin age?
Skin aging is influenced by:
• Genetic differences
• Hormonal changes, e.g. estrogen and thyroxin
• Chronic sun exposure
• Wind, pollution.
Blame it on hormones
Menopause affects women differently. Some women notice very little difference in their bodies or moods, while others find the change extremely bothersome and disruptive. Estrogen, testosterone, progesterone and thyroid hormones all affect virtually all the tissues in the body, but everyone is influenced by them differently.
Hormones are mostly to blame for skin changes as we age. Hormones are chemical messengers produced in organs such as the ovaries, adrenal glands, and thyroid glands, and all have an effect on other tissues.
Much of the reason why our skin begins to suffer is primarily due to hormones — and there is a massive industry manufacturing products to try to alleviate the results of these hormonal changes, notably as women reach menopause in their 40s and 50s.
As menopause occurs, estrogen is reduced as is progesterone and testosterone, and while it has a direct effect on thinning bones, it also creates significant changes in the skin.
Women find:
• their skin becomes drier with increased wrinkles
• skin becomes more fragile, loses some of its elasticity, and is looser because the production of collagen is reduced
• older skin appears paler as the lack of estrogen reduces the number of blood vessels in the skin
• menopause also causes a reduction in the level of testosterone but not as significant a drop as in estrogen and progesterone.
Hormones and dry skin
Another hormone we have is thyroxin, produced by the thyroid gland, which influences skin appearance. Too much thyroxin shows a warm, smooth, sweaty, flushed skin. Under-activity of thyroxin produces a dry, coarse thickening of skin with reduced ability to sweat.
Hormones affect acne
The oil glands of the skin are in part controlled by the level and activity of the hormone testosterone in the skin. Testosterone is required to produce acne. This outcome can be seen in conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome, which produce some elevation in testosterone and in turn causes increased facial hair, irregular periods and acne. The imbalance of Estrogen to Progesterone, with the estrogen being higher and the progesterone being lower can also cause oily skin and much acne problems experienced in peri-menopause and actual menopause.
Thinning hair
Hair will thin after menopause. In some women, genetic factors produce significant thinning. Abnormalities in the level of a thyroid hormone, in addition to the amount of iron stored in the body, can influence the volume of hair.
Estrogen/progesterone balanced encourages hair to stay in its growing phase. This is seen in the significant thickening of hair towards the end of pregnancy. After menopause, however, the lower estrogen/progesterone amount allows the scalp hair to grow towards the falling out stage. The solution would be to increase the thyroid and adrenal hormones as needed by testing and ensure they are well balanced.
HRT and skin
Post menopausal women will notice that, unlike their scalp, facial hairs increase. This is usually handled by balancing the estrogens with progesterone.
Hormone replacement therapy has been used over the last 20 years to combat the signs of aging. NHRT (Natural Hormone Replacement Therapy) can promote a fuller-looking skin because the skin then becomes thicker with less loss of subcutaneous fat. Thinning and drying of vaginal surfaces is also minimized. This can also be achieved by using topical estrogen/progesterone cream. The use of estrogen/progesterone/testosterone creams has been shown to maintain the elasticity and fullness of skin after menopause. The key is making sure it is well balanced.
I work with both men and women on a daily basis who have concerns with not only their overall health but also their “looks”… their skin. Hormones becoming imbalanced and dropping at too low levels also affect males just as much as females… just in different ways. But interestingly enough… the skin issues are many times the same.
We’re dealing here, as you have read, with both the thyroid hormones and, adrenal hormones as we age. But let’s back up a bit here… hormones are produced by glands. Glands are part of your body that are fed the nutrients that you eat to help them operate at full capacity. Simply put…. if you don’t eat well with a balanced diet to support the cells in your body to regenerate and rebuild properly then the glands will NEVER work properly and therefore the hormones will STAY imbalanced no matter what you do! Whew… so that means… you HAVE to fix the diet… you have to supplement to help your body rebalance and rebuild as fast as possible. That is the ONLY way to fix any hormonal, health or aging problem.
Now you have three ways to go about doing all this.
One: hit and miss and listening to every article you read and every person you meet and doing what works for others but may not work for you.
Two: specifically invest in correct testing to ensure a program is put together for YOUR body (not someone elses in the “general pool” of people!)
Three: after you have ensure your hormones and diet are well balanced… help Mother Nature a bit with a good skin cream to help rebuild from the outside in. So we’re introducing a FACE LIFT IN A JAR? Is that really possible? Does it REALLY work? Do you PROMISE?
I’m smiling as I write this… that is every question I’ve heard lately when I slowly introduced a new product I recently found to a few of my clients. The answers to the questions above are, yes, yes, yes…. and clinical trials have proven it!
Now with that said… let me clarify (oh yeah, there she goes… NOW she’s going to tell us the REAL truth!)… ok… you’re partially right… you see… your face is NOT going to magically be “up” by an inch or two… you may still have your jowls, you may still have a few wrinkles around the eyes… you may still have the moles, warts, whatever… let’s be real here… a face lift here in the United States costs well over $5000, I don’t think you’ll get the same results for $50, do you? But what exactly will you get?
You see… I too am eligible for AARP benefits! (only my older clients will know what that is!) That’s right… I’m now the grand-old age of 50. This body of mine has seen a few things and and certainly had been around the block. My face changed (or at least I sure thought it did) … and trust me… this wasn’t the only thing on my body that started sagging! (but we won’t go there in THIS newsletter!) So here I am… getting healthier, watching my intake of junk, exercising, but gravity was taking its toll!
For the last few years I have been researching how to handle this in a natural way without chemicals and electronics and expensive equipment and salon visits. This has not been an easy task. You see… my viewpoint is NOT to fight with Mother Nature, NOT to try to change my body back to where it was when I was 25… but to enhance it and help it and in the process know that by doing so I will look better!
And then I found out about: IDEBENOL (pronounced e-deb-in-all). Idebenol is a topical antioxidant that helps reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles and improve skin elasticity and firmness. Idebenol not only helps skin look better now, it also helps limit further damage, like wrinkles, dryness and thinning skin.
Think of an apple that you cut open and leave on the counter overnight… oxidation causes it to wrinkle and turn brown. Same thing happens in and outside our bodies! I’ve spoken to you at length about taking anti-oxidants as supplements and eating foods that are high in anti-oxidants for bettered health. So now… there’s a way to apply it topically to keep that “apple” (your face) from “turning brown”.
People (men and women) who have used it not only love it, but are buying it again and again…
The reason everybody is so excited about Idebenol is that it can virtually reverse the hands of time. I know, “reverse the hands of time” sounds a wee bit trite, but here’s one juicy little fact that will get you off your butt and running to your phone or computer to order: In a clinical trial conducted on women with an average age of 67, these mature women increased their Skin Renewal Rate, or “SR2,” so dramatically that it matched the skin renewal rate of women in their late 20s. That’s right. 67 year old skin with a renewal rate of a 29-year old. Amazing!
It turns out that Idebenol does more than just make you look younger. Idebenol is a highly selective free radical killer. But what in the world are free radicals, and how does killing them help your skin look younger, tighter, and firmer? Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that can severely damage skin cells. For more than three decades, researchers have known that free radicals accelerate the skin’s aging process. In scientific terms, free radicals initiate a destructive cascade of events that cause the denaturation of structural cellular protein, a loss of enzyme function, the depletion of natural cellular protectants, a shift in cell membrane lipid oxidation, and ultimately weaken the skin’s immune protective system - damaging DNA and predictably resulting in mutational events: like thinning skin, loss of elasticity, age spots and, of course, wrinkles- the classic signs of premature aging.
In every single test, products with IDEBENOL outperform all others! What exactly do the tests show? 96 out of 100 times: Long term effectiveness for wrinkle reduction, instant reduction of fine lines and wrinkles, antioxidant protective properties, delaying skin cell aging, skin renewal and collagen stimulating properties, skin smoothing and firming properties! That’s pretty strong results in my book! And the good news… the longer you use it the better you look because it continues doing its job as the cells rebuild and renew! Don’t be fooled by thinking it’s no longer working after you’ve used it for a while… if you stopped using it for a week or so you’d see the difference! and go right back to your little “Face Lift In a Jar”!