So, how do we keep up with it all? How do we continue to compete and compare? Many people think the answer is in anti-aging treatments, surgery, injections, pills, potions and creams and millions of dollars is spent on these in the hope of remaining youthful.
Yet something very simple can have a much better affect than any or all of these largely cosmetic options that mostly are just on the surface of the skin and body.
This something simple is called "strengthening exercise". It's no secret that strength (resistance/weight) training exercise has important benefits for the entire body, both inside and outside. It's great for your body and it's ALSO GREAT for the skin that covers it.
After all, our skin is the largest organ of our body, and thus, the visual benefits of proper exercise can be significant. By firming and toning muscle tissue under previously loose, saggy skin a much more tight, toned, and youthful body will be created.
Everyone knows exercise can make you look better. But it turns out it can also make you younger. And, no, I don't just mean it can ONLY make you look younger. It can actually turn back the clock on every cell in your body
When researchers from McMaster University in Ontario biopsied the skin of adults 40 and older, they found that those participants who regularly exercised had skin that, on a microscopic level, was similar to that of 20- to 30-year-olds.
Strength training exercise has a positive effect on facial muscles as when a challenging exercise is performed, muscles in the face are tensed as well. This helps tone those muscles pulling the skin attached to them tighter, reducing wrinkles. You get a mini face lift at the same time included in your exercise session. How good it that?
Exercise also increases circulation and the delivery of oxygen, nutrients and skin-significant hormones to the skins cells, making your skin look more youthful. It also reduces body-wide inflammation and prevents free-radical damage. You can see this in people who exercise on a regular basis as they have fewer wrinkles and look so much younger compared to people who do not make time to exercise.
When you exercise, the tiny arteries in your skin open up, allowing more blood to reach the skin's surface and deliver nutrients that repair damage from the sun and environmental pollutants.
These nutrients also rev up the skin's collagen production, thwarting wrinkles. As we get more candles on our birthday cake, fibroblasts [the collagen-producing cells in the skin] get lazier and fewer in number but the nutrients delivered to the skin during exercise help fibroblasts work more efficiently, so your skin looks younger.
Sure we can get face lifts, liposuction and botox but there is not one plastic surgeon in the world that can sell us all-over, naturally built, vital-looking muscle. When muscles get toned and become stronger they take on a more pleasing shape, tighter and firmer.
If you wish to keep yourself looking youthful, toning up your muscle tissue is the best and cheapest beauty aid available. Having strong muscles improve, not only your looks, but your body shape and posture as well.