How Your Skin Ages Through Every Decade of Your Life

When it comes to aging skin, it helps to be ahead of the game. So here's what to expect throughout your life—and you can stay looking young.

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20s

Once you reach your twenties you might think you’ve gotten through the worst of it when it comes to your skin problems. No more breakouts or pesky blackheads, and you get to enjoy the next five or six years with no wrinkles and flawless skin, right? Wrong. Even though your skin is starting to settle down after the hormone upheaval throughout your teen years, it’s still producing oil. During this time, make sure to follow these beauty secrets for oily skin.

Around your mid-20s is when you will start to notice that your skin feels dry. Even though this seems like the blessing you’ve been waiting for, dryness means that fine lines will start to appear on your face. Many people first start to notice wrinkles forming around their mouth and eyes. Try these home remedies to fight dry skin.

The reason this happens to our skin at this time is because our body’s natural antioxidant production starts to decline in our twenties. Just using moisturizers and making sure to apply sunscreen won’t cut it, especially with the amount of stress that most people are put under during this time in their lives. To keep the wrinkles at bay, start using products with antioxidants. That can include things that contain vitamin C and/or E, green tea extract, and fruit acids.

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30s

Once you reach your thirties, your body’s metabolism starts to slow down. This causes the levels of collagen and elastin in your skin tissue to break down making your skin much thinner and less plump. Your skin is starting to get tired and it will become dryer and more sensitive. Avoid these everyday habits that cause wrinkles.

You will start to see deeper wrinkles around the eyes and mouth as well as age spots on your hands and possibly broken capillaries on your cheeks. Skin damage caused by too much sun will also start to show in your thirties. Dark sunspots may appear and your pores will become larger if the sun has damaged them. The skin under your eyes also becomes much more sensitive and delicate. You will start to notice that morning puffiness around your eyes will take longer to go down.

Niacinamide, also known as vitamin B3, is what you need to start using to rev up your metabolism to have younger-looking skin. Lucky for you, niacinamide can be found in many face creams. These are dermatologist’s tips for getting rid of wrinkles.

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40s

In your forties, the natural lifecycle of your skin cells begins to slow down a lot. You’ll start to see your face wrinkles deepen and become more defined and noticeable. Elastin levels are even lower, so your skin will start to sag and not bounce back. And dryness will continue to increase.

To keep your skin looking like it did in your twenties, you need to start incorporating more anti-aging skin-care ingredients into your daily routine. Make sure that your creams and cleansers include things such as retinol, glycolic acid, and peptides. They can help give your skin cells the energy boost that they have been lacking. Also eat these foods that can help fight wrinkles.

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50s and 60s

During your fifties your skin becomes increasingly drier, especially in women who are going through menopause, because of a decrease in estrogen levels. More sunspots will start to appear and the skin will feel rough. Around your fifties and sixties, your wrinkles and fine lines start to settle. Also around this time you may see the skin around your jaw and eyes start to sag. This is purely due to the effects of gravity after a long life.

When you start to see these effects for yourself, use rich moisturizers such as oils and petroleum jelly to help reverse the process. Another thing that can help reduce the appearance of wrinkles is exercise. Participating in aerobic exercises twice a week can transform the protein structure of the skin and have you looking young again. These are other dermatologist’s tips to keep your skin looking younger.

Source: marieclaire.com

Morgan Cutolo
Morgan is the Assistant Digital Managing Editor at Reader’s Digest. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2016 with a B.A. in Journalism. When she’s not writing for RD.com or keeping the 650+ pieces of content our team produces every month organized, she likes watching HGTV, going on Target runs, and searching through Instagram to find new corgi accounts to follow.