Why Skin Gets Saggy: Breakdown of Collagen and Elastin Fibers

I’m sure you are able to remember whenever you used to wake up in the morning looking every bit as good, or even better, than you did before you went to sleep. Now you most likely wake up with lines from scrunching your forehead against the pillow or your hand. The reason is that while you age, the elastin and collagen fibers that give your skin layer support, resiliency, and elasticity breakdown.

Gravity Surprisingly, the gravity that keeps you “down to earth” also pulls down the skin on your own face, making it sag round the jaw and chin. To counteract gravity, try a few seconds to five minutes of inversion exercises. This is the modern term for those head and shoulder ‘balances’ (hanging inverted) yogis have been practicing for centuries. Its benefits are multiple: By ‘inverting’ the unrelenting pull of gravity, it reverses blood circulation in your body, diverting it from the limbs to the brain, eyes, ears and facial skin, thus increasing the look and health of the epidermis. In addition, it has a stimulating influence on the lymph system, which is in part responsible for nourishing skin cells and eliminating their wastes; additionally, it tightens abdominals, eliminates tension and improves posture.

Try 10 minutes of laying over a slant board, or a 2-minute headstand. Or try this hip bend: Stand with your feet several inches apart and parallel, knees slightly relaxed. Bend at the hips so your head and arms are hanging. Straighten your knees slowly. Hold for one minute (longer if you’re able to). Practice until your torso goes lower as your legs straighten.

Poor Posture When you slump you actually exacerbate the downward pull of gravity. Plus, no matter your age, poor posture in and of itself actually makes skin look as though it’s sagging. Fortunately, poor posture is a wrinkle you are able to remedy within minutes. Try this posture primer: Stand with your heels two inches from a wall; head, shoulders, elbows and buttocks against the wall and your hands on your hips. Bend your knees slightly and tighten your abdominals when you tilt your pelvis so that the small of your back flattens against the wall. Tilt it back and forth 10 times until you get the feel of a posture-perfect back. Then, to strengthen it, tilt your pelvis and bend your knees more; rise up and down ten times, keeping your torso pressed against the wall. Repeat 2 to 3 times a day.

Osteoporosis You’ll lose about fifty percent of your bone mass in your life because of osteoporosis (the gradual thinning and increasing porosity of bones, which is often accelerated by many factors). As your skull shrinks, your skin doesn’t, and your face winds up with a lot of excess flab.

Why Skin Gets Saggy: Breakdown of Collagen and Elastin Fibers

Repeated Weight Loss and Gain Imagine a deflated balloon: That’s exactly how your face will look should you lose weight too quickly. Never lose more than two pounds weekly! And never allow yourself to gain (and eventually lose) more than a total of ten pounds. Although a few pounds won’t really age your skin, more will. With each weight gain, your skin will stretch to support the fat. Then, once you lose it, particularly if you lose it too quickly, your skin will eventually sag. The consequences of subsequent weight gain and weight loss are cumulative.

Loss of Subcutaneous Fat Good news: You’ll lose fat with age. Try not to get too excited; it is a double-edged sword. The bad news is that without its fat cushion, that contains some support fibers as well as giving skin support of its own, your face will sag. Loss of subcutaneous fat is usually the reason for double chins.

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