The Dermatology Blog

Last week one of my patients complained that she gets facials every month for her wrinkles, but that she still has prominent wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. “What,” she asked, “is she doing wrong?”

Facials are the third most popular treatment in spas after nails and massage. They come in many flavors like: mineral masks, steam treatments, microdermabrasions, LED light treatments, blu-light, and even oxygen facials.

Facials can be beneficial; they extract clogged pores, exfoliate dull, scaly skin, and give you a deep, invigorating cleansing, leaving your face smooth and silky. But facials cannot treat wrinkles, broken blood vessles, or brown spots.

Facials are done by aestheticians who are not licensed to practice medicine. Aestheticians cannot administer treatments that penetrate the skin or have  biologic effects (by definition, this would be considered medicine and must be administered by a licensed practitioner such as a physician or registered nurse).  Deeper problems such as wrinkles require invasive treatments which cross the line from cosmetics to medicine.

Facial massages or electrostimulations, which are supposed to tone your skin, don’t. Toning or building muscle requires intense and repeated activity. Just like building biceps, firming musles on your face would require working out. The problem is that wrinkles on your face are caused by contracting muscles — crow’s feet are caused by contracting muscles around your eyes; frown lines are caused by furrowing your brow; lip lines are caused by contracting the muscles around your mouth. Any treatment then that firms facial muscles would only make wrinkles worse.

Other treatments such as oxygen facials and mineral treatments have no evidence to support them, (unless you count “Madonna said so” as evidence). Save your money and have your daughter apply a mud mask the next time you go to the beach.

Photo: Arkansas Shutterbug (flickr)

For post-menopausal women, decreasing estrogen levels might contribute to skin aging. Common skin changes associated with being post-menopausal include atrophy (thinning of the skin), wrinkling, dryness, laxity, sallow complexion, and poor wound healing. There are estrogen receptors in the skin and it is thought that the decrease in estrogen that accompanies menopause leads to a loss of estrogen activity and to these undesirable skin changes.

Read more…

Crow’s feet are the wrinkles that form on your temple and cheek around your eyes. The best advice I have about crow’s feet, or any wrinkles for that matter, is to put off getting them for as long as possible. All wrinkles can be improved with cosmetics, but the more winkles you have, the more difficult and expensive it is to improve them. Read more…

Crow’s feet — the fine lines that radiate from the corners of your eyes – are among the first wrinkles to form and can surface as early as your 30’s. They are dynamic wrinkles, meaning they’re most noticeable when you contract the muscles in your face, such as when you squint or smile.

Many factors contribute to crow’s feet including sun exposure, squinting, smoking, and menopause. Sun exposure is probably the most important of these. Over years, solar radiation in the form of UVA light damages elastin and collagen leading to lax skin that hangs loosely instead of clinging tight to the underlying muscles. The result is sagging, wrinkled skin.

The more natural pigment you have in your skin, the more you are protected from harmful ultraviolet radiation. This is why people with darker skin tend to have fewer crow’s feet than those with lighter skin.

Squinting contributes to crow’s feet as a result of countless contractions of the muscles around the eyes; years of squinting eventually form permanent wrinkles. Crow’s feet overlie the large muscle that surrounds your eye called the ocularis orbis. When you squeeze your eyes tight, you are contracting this muscle, forming wrinkles that radiate from the corners of your eyes to your temples. Under constant tension, as in an afternoon at the beach, the skin becomes fixed in that wrinkled position, and over years, changes in the collagen make these wrinkles permanent.

Smoking causes wrinkles by damaging collagen and elastin fibers and by depriving the skin of blood flow and oxygen. It also contributes to dynamic wrinkles like crow’s feet because you squint to keep smoke out of your eyes.

Estrogen helps prevent wrinkles by maintaining your skin’s collagen, elasticity, and hydration. Since estrogen is decreased following menopause, it can worsen your crow’s feet. Studies have demonstrated that women lose 1 to 2% of their collagen every year after menopause and that hormone replacement therapy might help maintain women’s skin’s thickness and elasticity, minimizing wrinkles.

Post written by Jeffrey Benabio, MD for The Derm Blog.

Photo: Jacob Theo, Flickr.com

The FDA has approved a new treatment for wrinkles. It’s a collagen filler that can be injected into frown lines to smooth them out, giving your face a younger, smoother appearance. The product, Evolence®, lasts 6 months according to its maker, Colbar LifeScience, (a Johnson and Johnson-owned company). Read more…