Understanding Factors that Contribute to Decreases in Collagen

Collagen is the protein substance that is responsible for skin’s firm appearance. When collagen begins to deplete, the skin is no longer able to support itself, and it begins to “fold in” on itself. This aging process can result in fine lines and wrinkles, crepe-like skin or even deeper lines and wrinkles. No area on your body is immune from the breakdown of collagen, but as you’ll see below, the causes for decreases in collagen make your face the most likely place where you’ll first see visible signs. Though a personalized anti-aging skin care regimen that includes all three aspects of Inclusive Health® (Looking Better, Living Better and Feeling Better) can reduce the appearance of depleted collagen, you’ll make better decisions about how to structure your anti-aging regimen if you understand the factors that contribute to collagen breakdown.

Natural Aging Contributes to Collagen Decrease
Natural aging, known as Genetic Aging, is typically the most common cause of the depletion of collagen in an individual’s body. Over time, despite any preventative measures that you may take, the body just slows down in its production of collagen just like it slows down in many of its other functions. While a healthy diet that’s rich in Essential Fatty Acids and Antioxidants can help to keep skin firmer, the age at which your skin begins to slow down and deplete collagen is predetermined by your genetic makeup. You can decrease the speed and severity of the breakdown through healthy lifestyle choices, but the body’s natural aging progression will eventually lead to less natural collagen production.

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Understanding the Hormone Receptors in Your Face

Murad Resurgence® anti-aging products were specifically developed to combat the signs of Hormonal Aging. But in order to understand how Hormonal Aging leads to loose skin, wrinkles and lines, you first need to understand what a hormone receptor is and how it’s related to the aging of your skin. Once you understand the biology of Estrogen and hormone receptors, understanding how to combat the signs of aging skin associated with menopause will make more sense.

What Are Hormone Receptors?
A hormone receptor is a special protein that’s found within and on the surface of certain cells throughout the body. A receptor protein is like the “eyes and ears” of a cell. When certain hormones interact with the receptor or bind to it, the receptor tells the cells what to do. Think of it like an on-off switch. When Estrogen interacts with hormone receptors, the receptors tell the body to produce collagen. When there’s no Estrogen to tell the cells to produce collagen, production falls off and your skin become looser with deeper wrinkles.

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Senior Skin Care: Caring for Skin In Your Aging Years

Because skin starts to show signs of aging as soon as we reach adulthood, no matter what age you are, anti-aging skin care is important. However, as you reach middle age and beyond, shifts in your skin’s health and appearance mean that there are some skin care products and regimens are more important than they were when you were younger. What qualifies as ‘middle aged” or “senior years??” That depends on your Genetic Aging as well as how well you’ve taken care of yourself in the past. It’s not as simple as “when you’re 35 you’re middle aged and a senior at 65.” You’ll need to pay attention to your skin and look for the signs of aging skin discussed below and then make sure that you’re effectively treating and preventing them.

Sign of Aging Skin: Your Skin is Often Overly Dry and Flakey
As skin ages, it stops producing as much natural moisture and oil as it once did. When this happens, keeping skin hydrated both topically and internally becomes a primary skin care concern. Not only is skin producing less moisture, but it’s thinner so that it retains less of its own moisture. Addressing the drying out of skin, which also accentuates the appearance of wrinkles, is one of the most important steps in senior skin care.

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Murad Skin Care Product Spotlight: Renewing Eye Cream

A moisturizing eye cream is an essential part of any skin care regimen. The skin around your eyes is thinner than the rest of your face, and it doesn’t produce its own moisture. To keep youthful, healthy-looking skin and to prevent under-eye bags, wrinkles and puffiness, you need an eye treatment cream.  In this Murad product spotlight, we’ll introduce you to Murad Renewing Eye Cream from the Murad Resurgence® skin care line and share customer reviews and testimonials. After you’ve learned about this product, we think you’ll agree that using it as part of a complete skin care regimen can give you hydrated, healthy skin around your eyes that’s Better Every Day™.

About Murad Renewing Eye Cream
Murad Renewing Eye Cream is a “triple threat” treatment for the eye area, combating puffiness, crow’s feet and dark circles. How does one eye cream manage all three of these signs of tired and aging eyes? Murad Renewing Eye Cream treats and prevents under-eye damage with Murad’s Eye Brightening Complex which is designed to reduce dark circles and illuminate the eye area Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 reduces medium-to-deep eye wrinkles and diminishes puffiness around the eyes.

To give the eyes a smoother appearance, Wild Yam and Soybean work to increase moisture, elasticity and firmness while natural emollients boost moisture as well.

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Hormones and Your Skin: The Not Always Friendly Relationship

For many of use, when we’re a teenager, we hate what our hormones are doing to our skin. Overactive teenage hormones are the main culprit of acne breakouts and excessively oily skin. And, of course, we all hope that as we get older our hormones will regulate. However, hormones play a key role with your skin’s health through most of your life. Depending on your age, gender and genetic makeup, you may or may not have to understand the relationship between hormones and your skin. However, knowing what you can expect your skin to do as a result of your body’s hormones can prepare you to find the perfect skin care regimen.

The Teen Years: Overactive Hormones, Oil and Acne
When we hit puberty, almost without fail our hormones go into overdrive. For many, this doesn’t have an impact on their skin. However, for many people the overactive adrenal gland produces hormones that result in an excess production of oil (causing oily, shiny skin) and an excess production of skin cells (clogging pores and hair follicles and causing acne breakouts). Whether your skin care concern is finding an effective acne treatment or just finding a way to reduce oil and shine, hormones are the cause of skin imperfections for a huge number of people during their teen years. If you’re battling teenage acne and what to start a path to clear skin, a great place to start is the Murad Acne Treatment and Resource Center.

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Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall. Are You Obsessing About Your Skin?

In the movie “Mirror, Mirror,” Julie Roberts plays an evil queen who doesn’t want to give up her youth and beauty (you might recognize it as a modernized version of the Snow White fairy tale). While the movie is a fun way to relax and unwind on a Friday night, there’s a question that we all should ask ourselves. Whether your skin care concern is acne treatment, anti-aging, anti-wrinkle, combination skin, oily skin, dry skin or any mixture of these — are you obsessing over perfect skin to the point that you’re doing more damage than good?

Obsessing Over Acne-Prone Skin: Increasing the Chance of Acne Scars

If your skin type is prone to acne blemishes, then it’s easy to obsess. The more frequently that you breakout, the more often you’ll find yourself in front of the mirror trying to get rid of blemish after blemish. There are two risks here. The first is that it’s likely that your blemishes are more visible to you than they are to anybody else. That doesn’t mean that you don’t want to treat and heal them, but it does mean that the more that you stare at them the more they’ll look large and red to you! The second risk is that, typically, when a person spends hours in the mirror looking at their blemishes, they also pick at those blemishes. When you pick at or pop an acne blemish, you risk getting acne scars or post-acne marks. While a blemish may be unsightly, an acne scar or post-acne mark is just as bad – and harder to treat.

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What’s Your Anti-Aging Skin Care IQ?

As soon as we see the signs of aging on our skin, for many of us the first response is to go out and immediately begin to buy anti-aging skin care products. However, if you don’t understand how (and why) your skin is beginning to look older than you want it to, it’s easy to go down the wrong path and select the wrong treatments and solutions. So do you know enough to get started with anti-aging skin care? Take the Murad Anti-Aging Skin Care IQ quiz to see where your anti-aging skin IQ is!

1. Which of the following are anti-aging skin care concerns?

a) Wrinkles and fine lines

b) Loose skin

c) Age spots and sun spots

d) All of the above

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What is an Alpha Hydroxy Acid (AHA)?

If you read through the descriptions of the Murad skin care products, you’ll notice that everything from acne treatment products to anti-aging skin care products mention Alpha Hydroxy Acids (usually called AHAs) in the ingredient listing. In fact, it’s usually listed as one of the most important ingredients in the product. And, if you research other skin care products, you’ll notice that AHAs are often considered to be one of the most important skin care ingredients overall to look for. Hopefully, though, you’re not the kind of person who will just buy a skin care product with a particular ingredient because everybody has told you to. So, what is an AHA and why is it important to skin care?

The Origin of AHAs

AHAs are natural acids that are found in everyday foods. After all, long before there was medicine there was food. There are actually many different types of AHAs, but you’ll usually hear five specific ones prioritized. Citric Acid is found in citrus fruits. Malic Acid is found in apples. Tartaric Acid is found in grapes. The two most common AHAs utilized in skin care products, however, are Glycolic Acid (found in sugar cane) and Lactic Acid (found in sour milk).

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Murad Anti-Aging Product Spotlight: Intensive Wrinkle Reducer® for Eyes

Murad Intensive Wrinkle Reducer for Eyes is one of the eye treatments featured in the Murad Age Reform® skin care line for Genetic Aging. Why is this anti-wrinkle eye treatment so powerful and able to combat crow’s feet and under-eye wrinkles so dramatically? In this anti-aging product spotlight, we’ll tell you everything that you need to know about this advanced eye wrinkle treatment.

Who is Murad Intensive Wrinkle Reducer for Eyes Right For?

If you’ve begun to show fine lines and wrinkles around your eyes such as crow’s feet or under-eye wrinkles, then this powerful eye treatment is an excellent way to visibly diminish wrinkles while also improving the firmness around your eyes overall. Murad Intensive Wrinkle Reducer for Eyes is designed to fight  eye wrinkles that have begun to form and need to be stopped before they become deeper or more prominent. Why do eyes need special care? The skin around your eyes is thinner and weaker than the rest of your face. It also doesn’t produce its own moisture like the rest of your skin does, and it’s less likely to have had proper sun protection during the course of your life. All of these factors combine to make the area around your eyes the most likely spot for you to develop (and to need to combat) lines and wrinkles.

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How Much Sun Did You Get This Summer? Assessing the Damage of Summer

No matter how responsible you were about sun protection this summer, the chances are that your skin was exposed to UV rays more than usual. Even if you practiced responsible skin care and always used sun block or sunscreen, you still absorbed environmental damage from the sun. If you were less responsible, then you may have absorbed enough UV radiation to lead to age and sun spots in the future, premature wrinkles and even skin diseases. While you can’t travel back in time and stay out of the sun entirely you can help to undo some of the damage that carefree, relaxing summer days may have done to your skin.

Start With Your Diet. Fill Up With Antioxidants

Each episode of UV exposure that you experienced over the summer causes a surge in the level of free radicals in your system.  These free radical surges damaged your collagen, elastin or melanin—damage that cumulates and eventually results in older looking, damaged skin. Internal Careis the e pillars of Inclusive Health™ that focuses on changing the environment without your cells to neutralize free radicals and help you build healthy skin always from the inside. Focus on a diet that’s rich in fresh fruits and vegetables. You may want to emphasize foods that are particularly high in antioxidants such as pomegranates, blueberries, acai, darker greens and even green tea. Getting stronger skin begins beneath the surface of the skin, so be sure to eat antioxidant rich foods and take antioxidant rich internal dietary supplements.

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