While there is no fountain of youth, there are ways to slow aging. Those ways include kicking bad habits that shrivel and sag even the fairest of them all.
According to a statistic given in an article in Globe Newswire, it’s projected that by the year 2019, the global anti-aging market will be worth 191.7 billion dollars! Clearly, a lot of people are investing in products and procedures to help keep themselves looking young and beautiful. But, as with any disease or condition, prevention is always far better than the cure, and the same holds true for anti-aging.
Unfortunately, there is no magic fountain of youth that will keep you young forever. But there are some particular habits and mistakes that, when avoided, can make you less likely to need anti-aging products and procedures. If you’re a person who is concerned about an aging appearance, it’s going to be important to avoid the things that make you age faster!
Highly Processed & Refined Foods
Foods that have been highly processed and refined not only lack the nutrients needed by the body to support proper functioning, they typically also contain synthetic chemicals and other harmful ingredients that are detrimental to health. These processed foods cause faster tissue breakdown and other cellular damage that leads to faster aging. Additionally, when the nutrients that the bodily tissues need to function optimally are not optimally supplied, both the function and appearance of the skin and other organs can suffer.
Smoking
Smoking is a habit that not only wreaks havoc on your health but certainly speeds up the aging process. Even smoking one cigarette causes a huge amount of oxidative stress. This oxidative stress causes wear and tear on the body’s cells, causing many issues such as aging, wrinkles, and other forms of degeneration.
Over the Counter Drugs
Too much drug use of any kind causes internal stress on the body that again causes dysfunction, breakdown, and lack of optimal functioning. Depending on the drug, some can cause water loss, loss of healthy fat tissue, toxicity and more that can leave you looking older and more frail.
Dehydration
Being improperly hydrated, especially chronically, surprisingly can make you look more aged. Water is essential for so many roles in the body that without enough of it, the function of the body suffers, which both directly and indirectly, can lead to quicker aging. Water gives your skin the soft, plump, vibrant, moist look that indicates health and youthfulness. Additionally, it helps internally to flush out toxins that can cause acne, red eyes, bags under the eyes, puffiness, and other ailments that certainly don’t scream youthfulness!
Lack of Sleep
Getting insufficient sleep is a major way to age yourself quite quickly! A chronic lack of sleep causes the body to shut down. Your eyes become bloodshot and red, baggy eyes, wrinkled skin, low energy, and many other symptoms that make anyone look older than they are! Sleep is so important both for health and for beauty that there’s even the common saying, “I need my beauty sleep!”
Stress
Being chronically stressed is another habit that wreaks havoc internally. Stress typically is also associated with other habits that hasten the aging process. When stressed, people tend to sleep more poorly, eat more poorly, take more medications and drugs, and other such things that disrupt health and advance aging. Chronic stress keeps stress hormones elevated in the bloodstream constantly, which can have negative effects on the complexion of your skin, both the coloration and wrinkles, and causes red eyes, and an overall slumped, broken down and aged function and appearance. Having these stress hormones elevated chronically can lead to a number of health problems, the least of which is wrinkles and aging!
Sedentary Living
Being inactive is a sure way of making your body look and feel older than it really is. Sedentary living typically causes you to have poor posture, become overweight, lethargic, and just plain droopy! Keeping your body moving and strong does a surprising amount for keeping you looking and feeling youthful from the inside out. Individuals who stay active as they get older typically age much better.
Excessive UV Ray Exposure
Getting too much exposure to UV rays, either from being out in the sun unprotected too much or from tanning bed use, really causes a lot of damage to the skin, leading to wrinkles, sun spots and other damage that makes you look old.
By consistently maintaining a wholesome, natural, active lifestyle, you’ll automatically be on a better track for avoiding fast aging. Following a diet of fresh, natural foods, being active, managing stress, and getting proper sleep can do leaps and bounds for helping you stay youthful!
