From genes to exercise, what is REALLY causing ageing - and how can you SAVE your face?
AGEING happens to everyone - but when it comes to the face, some fare better than others.
Doctors share tips on how to avoid ageing
There are a range of reasons for this, and a new programme on Channel 4, Your Face Says It All, endeavoured to discover why.
Ageing starts to show at around the age of eight, as this is when the face stops looking cute and childlike, but still doesn’t look fully adult.
Puberty then sets in, changing the face.
Plastic surgeon Alex Karidis explained: “The production of testosterone will make a boy look like a man, and oestrogen will age the face of a women.
“The ageing process at this point is much softer and more subtle for women.
“The sex hormones affect skin texture - oestrogen makes women’s skin soft and dewy, testosterone makes men’s skin thicker.”
He also revealed that we lose collagen from the age of 20 onwards at a rate of one per cent a year.
Listing the main causing of ages, the programme highlighted the sun as a key factor in how we age.
Some experts estimate 80 per cent of ageing in caucasian skin is due to sun exposure.
However darker skin stays looking young, with sun exposure not tending to make as much difference- there are up to 2000 genes that are different in dark and light skin and scientists think these are genes linked to DNA repair, although research into what exactly they do is ongoing.
Smoking was also named as key culprit in ageing - and despite knowing the health risks, one in five people in Britain smoke.
If you smoke you are likely to look 10 - 12 years older than a non smoker, partly because nicotine reduces blood flow to the dermis - starving the skin of Vitamin C.
Alcohol was another culprit to ageing, because it dehydrates the skin and dilates blood vessels, making skin appear red and puffy.
From a certain age, you can have body or face, and fat is the key.
Following on from this, diet will also have a strong affect on how you age - with foods such as broccoli and cabbage thought to slow down ageing.
What you eat can have an affect on how you retain fat in the face.
Sugar is as bad for our face as our waistline and if eaten over a long period of time it will have a negative effect.
Surprisingly, exercise can cause ageing - with long distance running highlighted as being bad for the face.
Those who perform a lot of cardiovascular exercise from age 35 onwards lose facial volume, whereas younger people tend to hold onto the facial fat.
High impact sports affect the ligaments that keep the cheeks in place - if you are pounding the roads those ligaments get stretched, compounding the issue on top of the facial volume loss.
Sport in general is beneficial, however.
Good bone structure is crucial to how we age - but contrary to popular belief, the bones are not built like a wall, and do break down and change over time.
As we age the 14 bones in our face change their shape and volume, affecting how youthful we look.
Finally, stress can speed up ageing dramatically.
Alex Karidis said: “There are ageing ‘spurts’, where ageing seems to happen very quickly in a short space of time, and these can be brought on by stress.”
The programme did bust the myth that the nose and ears continue to grow as we age - and explained that in fact gravity pulls down on the tissues of the nose and lobes, stretching them out slowly over time.
Therefore they aren’t growing - but sagging.