Wrinkle Free Skin

Heavenly Pillar

This pressure point can be found about a thumb-length from the bottom of each ear lobe, and a half-inch below the base of your skull. It is excellent for reducing the appearance of swollen eyes, too.

Interestingly, you can use acupressure to restore facial beauty and create the appearance of wrinkle free skin--and what woman doesn't want a wrinkle free face!? Press on the points with gentle to medium pressure using the tips of your fingers for at least 15 seconds. After treating one side, be sure to treat the other before moving on to the next point.  

Acupressure Exercise #1: Facial Beauty 

This point is located at the bottom of each cheekbone, directly below your pupil. It helps with sagging, poor complexion, and blemishes.

Just because you’re not actually out in the sun when you go to a tanning salon, the risks are just as real. The truth is, ultraviolet radiation is ultraviolet radiation, whether it comes from the sun or from a tanning bed, and there is no such thing as a “safe tan.”

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, “The use of indoor tanning beds before the age of 35 has been associated with a significant increase in the risk of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Yet, more than 1 million Americans—70 percent of whom are girls and women—visit a tanning salon each day.” And new reports now state that the risk of melanoma from the use of tanning beds increases by an unbelievable 75 percent!

I know that most women believe that having “a little bit of color” makes them appear healthier. But the paler you are, the healthier your skin actually is…which means less risk of wrinkles (and who doesn't want a wrinkle free face!), premature aging, and skin cancer. I dare you to challenge the standard belief that tan=healthy. I encourage you to feel comfortable in your own skin and appreciate the natural tones and hues that make you so distinct.

Step 3 for Wrinkle Free Skin Around the Lips--Hydrate and moisturize.
Dehydrated skin causes deep, abundant creases, while plump, moist skin resists folding and keeps its shape. In conventional dermatology, lip line “ditches” are filled with painful injections of fillers, such as Botox. But there are luxurious, top-quality moisturizers that re-plump affected skin. The result is a smoother, fuller look than the somewhat fake appearance produced by injections.

One of my favorite products that creates excellent results is Trilane, which nourishes with premium squalane from olives, plus jojoba esters, both of which are virtually identical to a woman’s own skin oils and do what most moisturizers do not: They penetrate.

While I like to believe that lip lines (or wrinkles around the lips) are a distinctive part of a woman’s beauty, I certainly understand that it can be upsetting to see those fine lines around your lips. If your lip lines are bothering you, I encourage you to try what complementary dermatologists call combination therapy, which is based on two facts: 1) A woman’s skin rebuilds itself constantly, and 2) The aging of a woman’s face results from a multitude of factors, each requiring a different therapeutic approach. By combining gentle therapies that target the different processes that cause lip lines, you can significantly reduce those lines without side effects, exorbitant cost, or the need to hide for weeks while you heal from painful cosmetic procedures. Better yet, the effects are cumulative over time. 

Step 1 for Wrinkle Free Skin Around the Lips: Relax Your Lips
Skin, like bone, reshapes itself according to the forces that it is chronically exposed to. The predominant force that shapes your lips is the orbicularis oris muscle, which forms a pursestring-like ring around your mouth. Contracting this muscle causes your lips to “purse” and pulls the surrounding skin into radiating folds. With repetition, the folding creates creases in the skin’s deeper layers. This causes new layers of skin to accommodate and deepen that crease. Sucking on a cigarette, drinking straw, or similar object encourages this process. In conventional dermatology, Botox injections paralyze the culprit muscle fibers, but the same result can be had by simply not smoking or using drinking straws, and by not engaging in similar actions that contract the orbicularis oris muscle.

Along with providing your skin with important nutrients, proper female hormone balance is essential for healthy, moist, and resilient skin, particularly because of the action of estrogen on the skin. Estrogen is responsible for the deposition of fat under the skin, which gives rise to the soft and fine-textured skin that many women enjoy during their younger years. Estrogen also keeps the skin looking and feeling plump and healthy.

During your active reproductive years, your body produces enough estrogen to properly support the structure and texture of your skin. But when you enter the menopausen, your estrogen levels start dropping, which causes your skin to become drier, and the underlying collagen connective tissue, muscle, and fat tissues that give skin its support also begin to shrink, leading to more apparent creases and wrinkles.

While that all sounds like doom-and-gloom, keep your head up because there are plenty of nutrients you can take to rebalance and restore your hormones levels naturally, resulting in plumped up and moisturized skin. The following nutrients either create estrogen-like activity in your body or help you to produce more of your own estrogen. They also slow down the metabolism and excretion of the estrogen you do produce, thereby raising your own estrogen levels. You can use as many or as few of the following nutrients as you need to achieve your desired level of hormonal support. 

• Boron is a trace mineral found in apples, grapes, almonds, legumes, and dark-green leafy vegetables. There is some evidence that boron enhances estrogenic activity. In one study, when women on estrogen therapy supplemented their normally low-boron diet with 3 mg of boron, their blood levels of estrogen were significantly elevated. Based on this research, I suggest taking 3 mg of boron per day.
• Para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) is a fat-soluble B vitamin necessary for the production of folic acid. It helps to safely and effectively impede the breakdown of estrogen in the liver. I recommend taking 400–500 mg of PABA a day in divided doses.
• Wheat germ oil is rich in vitamin E, which has mildly estrogenic properties. In fact, wheat germ oil contains the fatty acids and other nutrients that your body needs to support and produce hormones such as estrogen. I recommend taking 2,000–2,400 mg of wheat germ oil in capsule form a day, in divided doses.
• Cobalt slows down the excretion of estrogen, thus allowing you to better maintain your own production of estrogen. It is able to do this by stimulating the production of heme oxidase. This, in turn, promotes the breakdown of cytochrome p450, a substance that normally metabolizes and detoxifies estrogen. By breaking down this substance, cobalt helps to prevent estrogen metabolism and excretion. I suggest taking 400–500 mcg of cobalt a day. To further improve your cobalt status, you can also take 100–500 mcg of vitamin B12 a day. Research shows that cobalt is supplied in your body by B12. If you have adequate levels of B12, you likely have adequate amounts of cobalt, as well.
• Black cohosh is an estrogenic herb that was often prescribed in colonial times to treat a variety of menopausal symptoms. I recommend taking 40–80 mg of a standardized extract of black cohosh twice a day. This dose should contain 2–4 mg of the active components (triterpenes, calculated as 27-deoxyacteine). 

Dr. Lark has written several times about the benefits of olive oil for your skin. In particular, she raves about squalane, and has even created a squalane-based skin care line.

But while olive oil and squalane get all the attention, their lesser-known “sister” is largely ignored. And wrongly so.

With all the talk about olive oil, did you know that olives only contain 15 to 20 percent oil? More than 50 percent of an olive is juice…and that juice is a very rich source of polyphenols, amazing antioxidant compounds that have a wide range of therapeutic advantages, including protection against heart disease and cancer.

Until now, olive juice has been a mere byproduct of olive oil production. In fact, disposal of the juice has been costly for the industry. After all, 80 to 85 percent of all those olives is an awful lot of waste to dispose of.

Meanwhile, all this time, suppliers have been throwing away a more concentrated source of the very polyphenols that are responsible for the health benefits of olive oil! The principal polyphenol, hydroxytyrosol, has been shown to have the highest free radical-scavenging activity ever reported for a natural antioxidant.

As fascinating as this is, what, you may be asking, does this have to do with skin? Glad you asked.

Turns out, animal studies have shown that supplementing with olive pulp extract helps prevent UV damage to the skin, and helps keep skin in its normal, healthy state. Beyond its antioxidant capacity, several studies have also shown that hydroxytyrosol inhibits one of your main inflammatory pathways, thereby helping to reduce inflammation and puffiness in the skin.

The effect for you? Tighter-looking, glowing skin. Now who doesn’t want that!

Dr. Lark’s favorite brand of olive juice/olive pulp extract is Olivenol. It is available at most health food stores and supplement retailers like Vitamin Shoppe. Dr. Lark recommends 300 mg two to four times daily.

For more wrinkle free skin care secrets, visit Dr. Lark’s Web site.

DMAE gel is available online and at some health food stores. Apply a pea-sized dab twice a day to the skin of your neck and lower face, since tightening in the face can also tighten the neck. Ten minutes later, apply your favorite moisturizer, since gels can be drying. I personally love all-natural Trilane.

For more tips on how to achieve wrinkle free skin naturally, visit my Web site.
 

1. Close your eyes and rest your arms at your sides.
2. Touch your eyes gently with the tips of your fingers. See if your eyes feel tense or even hard. Are you noticing a feeling of tightness or tension in the muscles that surround your eyes? If so, you need to soften your gaze.
3. Take several slow, deep breaths.
4. Open your eyes, but instead of gazing intensely at the fine print of the page or monitor, soften your gaze by widening your field of vision to focus on the entire page or screen. You should be able to see all four-corners of what you are looking at. Look at the white space of the margin and the areas between the paragraphs. As you do this, you will begin to feel the tension in your eyes melt away. You can also do this step if you are watching television by looking at the empty spaces on the screen.
5. Close your eyes again, continuing to breathe slowly and effortlessly.
6. Open your eyes. Repeat the process of softening your gaze while looking at the white spaces on the page.

• Facial Beauty: This point is located at the bottom of each cheekbone, directly below your pupil. It helps with sagging, poor complexion, and blemishes.
• Heavenly Appearance: This is the indentation found directly below each ear lobe, just behind your jawbone. It helps to balance your thyroid gland, which in turn increases the luster of your skin.
• Heavenly Pillar: This pressure point can be found about a thumb-length from the bottom of each ear lobe, and a half-inch below the base of your skull. It is excellent for reducing the appearance of swollen eyes.

1. It is natural, in terms of no chemicals are used.
2. The person running the machine makes ALL the difference in the world.

Walk through any department store and you're bombarded with skin care products that claim to rejuvenate, rehydrate, replenish, and more. But if you turn that jar around and look at those products' ingredients, you'll find that most of them are impossible to pronounce...so how are you supposed to feel comfortable about what you're putting on your body?

Luckily, you don't have to spend money on a jar of chemicals to achieve incredible, wrinkle free skin. All you need to do is take a short walk to your kitchen.

Fruity Facial

All women want a wrinkle free face, along with freedom from acne, age spots, fine lines, and dryness. I love this natural skin care recipe so much because it contains avocado, a fruit high in iron, potassium, magnesium, and vitamins A, C, and E. And they are rich in oils that rejuvenate the skin, reduce eye puffiness, and leave skin soft, smooth, and nourished.

Combine:
1/2 cup non-instant oatmeal
1 cup mashed avocado
1-2 tablespoon honey

Blend ingredients until desired consistency. Apply mixture to skin and let dry for about 15 minutes. Rinse off.