I’ve seen this truth in my own life over and over again.  When I go on a week bender of eating really bad foods that are low in nutritional value, I see a marked difference in my skin. I actually notice a difference in how “old” my skin looks. Wrinkles tend to appear more readily, my skin seems to have a more greyish pallor instead of a healthy, peachy tone, and my hair even seems to suffer the consequences of my crappy diet choices.

However, when I’m on the ball and eating right, it’s a totally different story.  I not only feel beautiful, but that feeling translates into my skin, my hair, my body’s appearance and just my overall “aura” I suppose you could say.

Some of the most important nutrients that I’ve found make my skin glow and my hair glossy are omega 3 fatty acids, antioxidants, citrus fruits, and decaffeinated green tea.  When I’m not getting the omega 3′s  should be in my diet, I make sure I take a fish oil supplement a couple times a day. Fish oil, or any other omega 3 (high grade is the best) supplements, are one of the most powerful anti aging supplements you can take.

Omega 3 fatty acids are known mostly for heart protection, but they also make your skin glow. They allow your skin to maintain more moisture from the inside, so what you get is a more toned, taut look – naturally.  They also help regulate your blood sugar levels, which through a complex chain reaction, helps your collagen stores be more effective and less prone to breaking down and literally showing “cracks” in your skin’s structure.

Antioxidants are of vital importance as well. They make your skin glow from the inside, and they are of HUGE importance when it comes to battling sun damage. One really interesting fact is that consuming tomatoes actually has helped people prevent sun burn and subsequent sun damage to their skin which can lead to skin cancer and wrinkles and sun spots.

When you get tons of antioxidants in your diet, it’s sort of like your own natural form of “internal sunscreen”, since it provides your body with all the natural weapons it needs to combat free radical damage.

Well, a lot of new developments have made me rethink this possible anti aging strategy. One, there are no real long term toxic studies on these injections, and let’s not forget that the botulinum used in the formula is indeed still a toxic protein that in extreme cases can cause full paralyses and even death when consumed.  So, why would it not ever absorb into the body with each injection, and stay there forever, building to toxic levels?

That potential scares me, I won’t lie. So I’ve really resorted to more natural options first, being in my mid thirties. I use anti wrinkle creams that are high grade and natural, and I try to avoid any exposure to sunlight at all on my facial area, using a natural sunscreen by Dr. Mercola on it so that the sun’s rays don’t damage my skin there and also so that the potential toxins that are in most sunscreens don’t screw with my skin or my health either.

Then I read that Botox can actually cause wrinkles, because it makes other areas of your face show the emotions that the injected areas can’t, creating more wrinkles in another area. So in other words, damned where you don’ t get the injections, and it’s almost like you have to freeze your entire face and look like a freak to not get new wrinkles ANYWHERE on your face. And who wants to be an unemotive person?

The last thing I heard which pretty much cemented my decision to forgo ever trying Botox as an anti aging and wrinkle prevention strategy was that it may actually prevent you from FEELING emotions as deeply as you normally would.  That’s right, the fact that your face can express emotions such as crying, getting upset, smiling, laughing and all that good stuff that makes you – well – human – actually triggers deeper emotional responses in your brain that help you to actually feel things on a deeper level.

While that may be good for emotions like anger, frustration and sadness, it’s not good because you also may not be able to feel joy as deeply, and who wants to live like that!?

I also happen to floss every night, because I do believe that flossing is key to gum and tooth health, and because I also happen to have a problem with gum recession, which is prominent in my mom’s side of the family.  Apparently though, flossing may be key to keeping that youthful look as long as possible according to new findings. If you floss, you keep gum disease at bay, and also help keep your teeth in place where they should be for a much longer time, which makes you look younger.

Aging of you mouth actually has a lot to do with how young you look. They say that yellowing, stained teeth and receding gums can really add to your years in appearance, and also it has another impact that we may not have thought about.

Flossing actually helps keep the bones that hold your teeth in place in top shape. Because when you get gum disease, it often impacts the bones that are underlying in your jaw and elsewhere in your mouth, flossing helps prevent shifting and loss of bone mass. New research has also shown that your jaw and other facial structural bones, wear away with time, and this is something that cannot be fixed with surgery, which may explain why facelifts often look strange.

They don’t address the whole problem, which is a combination of sagging skin and the loss of bone mass underneath, which creates an overall less angled look.  So you basically lose a lot of your underlying facial structure as you age, and flossing can help keep that structure in the right place, helping to keep you looking younger for years longer, which is something that no wrinkle filling dermal filler, face freezing injections or facial surgery can currently do.

I decided to try his natural sunscreen, an SPF 30, because I started reading the labels on store bought sunscreens with traditional labels like Coppertone, Banana Boat and other popular brands, and saw a bevy of preservatives that are known toxins to the skin and body, and other chemical names that I didn’t even recognize.

I started to think, in my quest to be healthier by shield my skin to damage UV rays, I might actually be doing more harm than good by slathering on chemicals that inevitably leach into your blood stream.  So, I bought two of his natural sun products actually. One, I bought the Mercola natural sunscreen, and two I bought the Natural Tanning oil. Both come with green tea, which I like, because green tea is a great antioxidant, and is good for the skin both internally and externally, helping to reverse and stave off free radical damage.

Both products are eco friendly and biodegradable, which is a good sign that they are also non toxic to apply to human skin.  I bought the tanning oil too, because I do occasionally like to enjoy short bouts in the sun without mega sunscreen, so I can ensure I get my daily dose of vitamin D, which is proving to be ever more important in the grand scheme of things.  I love the tanning oil. It has a ton of good for your skin ingredients.

You MUST shake it well before every use, to make sure the extract and oils all mix together so you get maximum benefit.  It’s made of sunflower oil, green tea extract, coconut oil, which is a great skin protector, almost oil, lanolin, vitamin E, eucalyptus oil, and vitamin C.  No unrecognizable chemical names – nice huh!?  I have never gotten burned using this oil, and it feels great going on. I feel like it’s also protecting my skin, and I’m not putting any toxic chemicals on, so I feel safe leaving it on all day after the sun too.

The Mercola sunscreen is great too.  This one you must shake well before each use also. It also contains green tea extract.  In addition to almost the same ingredients as the tanning oil, it contains only the natural sunscreens in it of zinc oxide, a natural compound, and titanium dioxide, another naturally occurring compound. No parabens or other potentially cancer linked chemicals – and it works great.

You do have to reapply after going in the water, but it’s totally non toxic and you don’t feel like it’s plugging every pore when you put it on.Even the smell isn’t all “chemically” like you’re used to smelling when you open a bottle of traditional sunscreen. I’m sold!

There are several anti aging and wrinkle creams that help your skin to maintain this appearance and help boost collagen production. Home microderm kits and peels help regenerate skin and also boost collagen production as well.

Now, there’s evidence that chocolate, of course, of the dark variety since it has more of those super powerful antioxidants in it compared to lighter milk chocolate, may also help your skin to glow. It makes sense, since antioxidants in general tend to add to your skin’s youthful glow.  The reason that dark chocolate may help lend to your skin’s supple, smooth glow is that it helps to fight aging.

Antioxidants, which certain chocolate bars are rich in, attack molecules called free radicals. Free radicals are the destroyers of healthy skin cells. Because they destroy healthy skin cells and can even cause skin cell death and mutation, they contribute to aging. When antioxidants are in the blood stream, they attack these free radicals, allowing more healthy skin cells to stay healthy, which means your skin looks better, for a longer time.

Now, a Swiss chocolate maker is going to make chocolate even more special. They are working on creating a chocolate bar that has tons of flavanols, which are powerful antioxidants, in it.  This means even more anti aging ingredients which benefit the skin by preserving youthful attributes like elasticity, healthy tone and color, smoothness (no wrinkles), and lift.

This chocolate may be a great seller if it actually helps to do what it says. The only thing you have to watch out for with any chocolate is not to over do it.  Even if it’s dark, minimally sweetened chocolate, it still contains sugar and calories.  Sugar actually aids in the aging process because a high sugar diet helps to make the collagen cells rigid and fragile, which makes them break down quicker.

Collagen is an extremely important component in your skin’s elasticity, resilience and health as you age, and the depletion of collagen aids in the acceleration of the aging process of the skin.  You can help boost collagen production by using anti aging products that have exfoliants in them, which increase cell turnover and help to increase collagen production.

When you feel your 30s, it seems to be a period called “breeding”, when you are laden by family problems. By the time 40s attack you, your skin feels more and more ignored. If it’s so unrealistic to expect to have beautiful, flawless skin at any age, why do we pursue it so relentlessly? Being an optimistic person and believing that you can still have beautiful, pure skin, why wouldn’t you do something helpful for your look?

If you are unhappy with your appearance because it looks like more and more aged, you would definitely like to win a more youthful skin. However, there is not magic potion to stop the skin from aging, actually you can do a big step to help removing those wrinkles on your face, and even it will make you look younger. The feeling of getting older is not a positive one. It can ruin your abilities to be yourself, can make you unstable person, and you don’t need this unpleasant notion.

Do you wonder which anti aging treatment is best for your skin?

Maybe it sounds impossible, but almost every anti aging skin care product available in the markets contains compounds which as a matter of fact will damage your skin’s health gradually. In most cases, the best anti aging cream that suits to your skin appears to be very cheap.

If the recommended product costs a lot, it does not mean that it must be very effective one. If you want to achieve some positive results, you should immediately forget about big names on the packaging. The important thing that plays the main role is to get the right one for you and you will face with the bright side. So take your time and check the ingredients, it’s the only way to make sure that you selected the effective and healthy one.

Many sufferers claimed that green tea may have many beneficial conditions for aging skin. Natural fruit and vegetable masks are very famed treatments. The lemon makes a lot for your skin, leaves a refreshed imprint on the exhausted face. However, mineral oil appears to prevent the skin from “breathing.” It closes the pores, prohibits the ability of the skin to eliminate toxins, all this can lead to acne flare ups, making it one of the anti aging ingredients to avoid.

The substances like ethanol, ethyl alcohol, methanol, benzyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol and SD don’t act in the same way, but are commonly found in skin care products and are very drying and irritating for the skin. Be very careful, it’s not about something you can repair it or buy it. It’s about your skin, the most important external part of your body. Only if you are very cautious you won’t have problems later in your life. Do the effort on your side and be proud of your young, wrinkle free skin at older age.

You are still bound to have emotional expressions, and since some of your muscles are essentially paralyzed from moving, your face overcompensates, and your facial muscles that normally wouldn’t move that much at all while making certain expressions, start to move allover the place, and voila, you have newly formed wrinkles in other places where you may not have gotten them otherwise.

Botox is probably the most popular outpatient, nonsurgical method of anti aging for the skin today in dermatological practice. It’s wildly popular in Hollywood, where most women get the injections in their aging hot spots, like their crows feet area and their forehead area, where emotive wrinkles tend to really show up thanks to smiling, laughing, and all that other awesome stuff we do when we are having fun.

Squinting is also a big culprit, helping to add to those unfortunate crows feet. But being expressionless surely isn’t the answer, and it looks like Botox may not be the awesome cure all that we thought it was.  You may want to think twice about Botox anyways honestly. What do we really know about the long term effects of injecting this poison into our bodies repeatedly – SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR?!

Nothing really, and I’m sure that the cosmetic companies that are making billions off of this would be slow to tell us if it did.  There are tons of excellent nonsurgical anti aging creams out there that really help you to keep your youthful good looks longer, and there are even some devices and tools you can use including the very effective method of facial exercises, and of course peels and in home microderm that can all help you maintain that young, awesome skin for longer.

Collagen is supposedly stimulated when any type of friction is experienced on the exterior of the skin.  This is why treatments like massage, microdermabrasion, and any other exterior skin treatment where there is friction and pressure is thought to help stimulate the skin into making more collagen.  There are also certain light therapies that are thought to help stimulate the collagen production as well.

Other therapies that are thought to stimulate collagen production are ones that essentially strip away the outer layer of the skin, revealing fresh new skin cells. Microderm of course also falls into this category. But so do products that use exfoliation as their primary means of skin renewal, like retinols which are used in the Revitol line of anti aging products, chemical peels, laser resurfacing, and a variety of other types of laser therapies and exfoliation therapies.

There are several over the counter products that you can use to help stimulate skin cell renewal in your own home. Actually, the Clarisonic which I just reviewed is one of them, then there are countless high quality microdermabrasion skin care systems. There are also some excellent do it yourself chemical peels as well which use the power of acids to slough off the dead skin cells and reveal new, more radiant skin.

I receive my cylindrical bottle of Invicible Scars in the mail, and was impressed by the sleek bottle and package. I also received a brochure and instruction manual on the product and how to use it. You need to use the product twice a day, which is easy since I applied the product to my scar that I wanted to help reduce, which is a surgery scar about the size of a dime on my lower leg. I had gotten a birthmark removed from this area almost two years ago.

While the women at Invicible Scars told me that this scar may not heal as effectively because it was over a year old, I still experienced impressive results with Invicible Scars.  With my particular scar, since they removed the skin and the birthmark, they went down a fraction of an inch into my flesh to remove it. This caused an indentation in the area, which really bothered me.  It also of course caused hyperpigmentation, as scars often do, and so the area is noticeably more of a ruddy-reddish color than the rest of my leg is.