Babe, we’ve got some bad news and some good news. Let’s dive right in and discover how your skin ages and how you can fight back.

The Bad News

First, the bad news. Your skin starts aging in the mid twenties and there’s nothing you, us or an army of cosmetologists can do about it. This is what we call intrinsic aging in skin science. It’s the effect of the normal biological clocks running in all us babes and, as we all know, those are ruthless and cannot be bargained with.

So what are the effects of intrinsic aging? As your cells grow older, your skin will lose the bounce in connective tissue, which consists of collagen, glycosaminoglycans (hyaluronic acid) and elastin. You’ll notice this as fine wrinkles and thinner, drier and less elastic skin.

Let’s face the hard truth one last time: there’s nothing you can do about intrinsic (internal) aging. Should we all just pack up and go home? Heck no, because here comes the good news!

The Good News

Intrinsic skin aging is only responsible for 3-15% of all the aging effects on your skin! Turns out there’s another type of skin aging and it’s a big one: it’s the effects of our lifestyle, behaviour and other stuff like sunlight, air pollution and so on. We call this extrinsic aging.

And there’s more good news: when it comes to extrinsic aging, there’s a whole lot you can do about it! Considering extrinsic aging is responsible for 85-97% of skin aging effects, this is the fight to pick!

We’re not going to bore you with the usual stuff. Yes, smoking, alcohol, poor diet and lack of sleep are bad for your skin yadda yadda yadda … Babe, we ain’t your momma! You do what you have to do. Instead, let’s talk about anti-aging skincare!

Anti aging skincare

By now, you should know that this type of skincare focuses on extrinsic skin aging. Most of us aren’t too kind to our skin and the effects of that stack up. Anti-aging skincare helps reduce and repair the results.

There’s a bunch of different things you want your anti-aging skincare routine to do. Let’s do a quick tour.

Time to get radical

You gotta fight! For your right! To par .. err, to a healthy skin. You can put much of skin aging down to free radicals wreaking havoc on your skin. Without getting too sciency, let’s just say those are molecules that mess with your cells. And you got to fight ’em. You do that with antioxidants.

Here comes the Sun

You know, the Sun is sweet, but a little bit psycho. We love its touch on our skin, even as it messes it up. Photoaging, or exposure of skin to sunlight, is a major contributor to skin aging. But it’s just so darn fun being out in the sun, right? We hear you, babe. Two things: sunscreen for protection and antioxidants to combat skin damage.

There’s something in the water

And it’s not just a cool song! Water is essential in combating skin aging. Unfortunately, hydrating your cells isn’t as easy as stepping into the shower (though drinking a good amount of water does help). You need the stuff that delivers that sweet H2O to your skin cells. Stuff like hyaluronic acid, for example.

So, does it work?

First, let’s do a quick recap: there’s intrinsic skin aging, which you should forget about, and extrinsic skin aging, which you can fight. To do that (without really going into your lifestyle and so on) you need skincare with antioxidants, hydrating ingredients (like hyaluronic acid) and vitamins.

We’ll finish with the big question: does anti-aging skincare work? YES. Yes, it does. At least the good products do (like ours, which we personally stand behind). But the question you should really be asking is HOW does it work and WHAT are the ingredients that work.

You’ll find the answers to that in our next #SkinloveScience article. Don’t want to miss it? Leave your email below and we’ll remind you in a few days when it’s published.

PS: we know we said we ain’t your momma, but we do need to insist on something: wear sunscreen. Seriously.

PS 2: test your anti-aging skills – take our quiz!