Anti Aging Skin Care

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Many of the external causes of aging skin are determined by the health and lifestyle decisions you make every day. Making unhealthy choices can cause prematurely aging skin, and this makes you look older, faster.

An important part of any anti-aging skin care program is to know what you may be doing that is harming your skin and speeding up your skin's aging process.

Here are 7 habits that contribute to aging skin, making you look older than your years:

1. Cigarette smoke: Whether you smoke, or you spend time with a smoker, cigarette smoke is damaging -- and aging -- to your skin. Research has shown that exposure to cigarette smoke significantly increases skin wrinkles and dryness. This is partly due to the behavior of smoking, and also because cigarette smoke depletes your body of Vitamin C, which is a key ingredient for keeping skin plump and moist.

Some researchers believe that exposure to cigarette smoke (whether you smoke or not) is as damaging to aging skin as exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays.

2. Sun exposure: Sun exposure is very aging to skin. Unprotected skin that is exposed to the sun becomes more mottled in appearance. Freckles can turn into brown sun spots, the skin takes on a dry, leathery appearance, and wrinkles and sagging increase. The risk of skin cancer is significantly increased by sun exposure.

The good news is that sun damage is avoidable, and if you start now, you can improve the condition of sun damaged skin.

* See your health care provider to assess the amount of sun damage you may have, and to rule out possible skin cancers. He or she may be able to prescribe medication that can help to reduce existing sun damage.

* If you want to avoid aging skin but don’t want to avoid the sun, make sure you use sunscreen that protects against both UVA and UVB rays. Choose sunscreen with SPF of 15 or higher, and use it all year-round, even on cloudy days. Clouds do not protect you from ultraviolet ray exposure.

3. Lack of exercise: Living a sedentary life contributes to aging skin, because exercise helps to tone your muscles and get your blood flowing. Exercise should be an important part of every anti-aging skin care program. Researchers have also discovered that sedentary older adults are at higher risk for dementia .

In addition to the physical benefits of exercise, the benefits of a regular exercise program will show on your face. Having a bright smile and lots of energy will help you look and feel younger, at any age.

4. Exposure to cold weather: Cold winds and low temperatures contribute to aging skin by making skin dry, so if you venture out in the cold be sure to use a good moisturizer.

It’s important to use moisturizer indoors too, as heated rooms can be very drying to skin. Consider using a humidifier to help keep your skin more comfortable and reduce the aging skin effects of heated rooms.

5. Alcohol use: Alcohol contributes to aging skin by dilating small blood vessels in the skin and increasing blood flow near the skin's surface. Over time, these blood vessels can become permanently damaged, creating a flushed appearance and broken vessels on the skin’s surface.

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Sunlight has a profound effect on the skin causing premature skin aging, skin cancer, and a host of skin changes. Exposure to ultraviolet light, UVA or UVB, from sunlight accounts for 90% of the symptoms of premature skin aging. Many skin changes that were commonly believed to be due to aging, such as easy bruising, are actually a result of prolonged exposure to UV radiation.

What is UV Radiation?
The sun gives off ultraviolet radiation that we divide into categories based on the wavelength.

* UVC - 100 to 290 nm
* UVB - 290 to 320 nm
* UVA - 320 to 400 nm

UVC Radiation
UVC radiation is almost completely absorbed by the ozone layer and does not affect the skin. UVC radiation can be found in artificial sources such as mercury arc lamps and germicidal lamps.

UVB Radiation
UVB affects the outer layer of skin, the epidermis, and is the primary agent responsible for sunburns. It is the most intense between the hours of 10:00 am and 2:00 pm when the sunlight is brightest. It is also more intense in the summer months accounting for 70% of a person's yearly UVB dose. UVB does not penetrate glass.

UVA Radiation
UVA was once thought to have a minor effect on skin damage, but now studies are showing that UVA is a major contributor to skin damage. UVA penetrates deeper into the skin and works more efficiently. The intensity of UVA radiation is more constant than UVB without the variations during the day and throughout the year. UVA is also not filtered by glass.

Damaging Effects of UVA and UVB
Both UVA and UVB radiation can cause skin damage including wrinkles, lowered immunity against infection, aging skin disorders, and cancer. However, we still do not fully understand the process. Some of the possible mechanisms for UV skin damage are collagen breakdown, the formation of free radicals, interfering with DNA repair, and inhibiting the immune system.

Collagen Breakdown
In the dermis, UV radiation causes collagen to break down at a higher rate than with just chronologic aging. Sunlight damages collagen fibers and causes the accumulation of abnormal elastin. When this sun-induced elastin accumulates, enzymes called metalloproteinases are produced in large quantities. Normally, metalloproteinases remodel sun-injured skin by manufacturing and reforming collagen. However, this process does not always work well and some of the metalloproteinases actually break down collagen. This results in the formation of disorganized collagen fibers known as solar scars. When the skin repeats this imperfect rebuilding process over and over wrinkles develop.

Free Radicals
UV radiation is one of the major creators of free radicals. Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules that have only one electron instead of two. Because electrons are found in pairs, the molecule must scavenge other molecules for another electron. When the second molecule looses its electron to the first molecule, it must then find another electron repeating the process. This process can damage cell function and alter genetic material. Free radical damage causes wrinkles by activating the metalloproteinases that break down collagen. They cause cancer by changing the genetic material, RNA and DNA, of the cell.

DNA Repair
UV radiation can affect enzymes that help repair damaged DNA. Studies are being conducted looking into the role a specific enzyme called T4 endonuclease 5 (T4N5) has in repairing DNA.

Immune System Effects
The body has a defense system to attack developing cancer cells. These immune system factors include white blood cells called T lymphocytes and specialized skin cells in the dermis called Langerhans cells. When the skin is exposed to sunlight, certain chemicals are released that suppress these immune factors.

Cell Death
The last line of defense of the immune system is a process called apoptosis. Apoptosis is a process of cell-suicide that kills severely damaged cells so they cannot become cancerous. This cell-suicide is seen when you peel after a sunburn. There are certain factors, including UV exposure, that prevent this cell death allowing cells to continue to divide and possibly become cancerous.

Source from : About.com

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Journalist Gail Sheehy's painful passage through U.S. health system echoes that of many caregivers

MONDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) -- In her long struggle to care for her gravely ill husband, journalist and Passages author Gail Sheehy recalls one defining moment.

More than a year ago, her husband, publisher Clay Felker, was being discharged from a New York City rehabilitation facility after spending several months there in his long battle with throat cancer. As always, Sheehy was at his side.

"So, he has to come home now, and we've run out of benefits," Sheehy recalled at a recent media briefing in New York City. "We're coming out, and there's also nobody telling me what I have to do. He has a feeding tube, he has a tracheotomy, he has medications. I don't know where to start."

Desperate, she sought out and hired a "geriatric care manager" -- at $125 an hour -- to advise them. Their insurance might still pay for an at-home nurse, she found out, but only if it's a Medicare-approved nurse -- and there aren't any available in the city.

There are home health-care aides, of course, "but they cannot do medical services like giving a shot, taking care of a trach, changing a feeding tube," Sheehy said.

And then there's the quandary of how to pay for a nurse, should one be available. Once private insurance benefits end, the only option for most Americans is Medicaid, which requires that recipients have less than $5,000 in assets.

Her geriatric care manager spelled it out to Sheehy: If the couple first exhausts all their remaining assets, then Medicaid will cover Felker's nursing care.

And if Sheehy, in her late 60s, wasn't willing to give up all her assets and income?

"Then, you need to divorce him," the geriatric care manager told her.

In Sheehy's case, it never came to that. She and Felker scraped together enough money to hire qualified, in-home caregivers via the network of health care helpers known as the "gray market," and Felker's last months were spent at home, relatively serene. He died in July at age 82.

Sheehy called her 15-year journey with Felker through the U.S. health care system a "nightmare," and she wonders how less affluent and well-connected Americans are faring.

"I'm a journalist, I have a lot of contacts, I've worked all my life and done reasonably well. My husband was successful," she said. "But we had a hell of a time trying to maintain some quality of life."

The phenomenon of middle-class, middle-aged Americans stretched to their emotional and financial limits caring for sick spouses or parents is one that's already widespread and likely to get worse, experts say.

Some statistics:

* U.S. Census figures project that the number of Americans 65 or over will double by 2030, and that two-thirds of today's 65-year-olds will require some period of long-term care later in their lives.
* At the same time, according to one recent study, the number of geriatricians has actually declined in recent years, to about 7,750: that translates to one for every 4,254 older Americans. In addition, it's projected that the country will face a shortage of more than 800,000 nurses by 2020.
* According to U.S. government surveys, in 2004, there were 2.5 million Americans living in either nursing homes or assisted living facilities. The average cost of a private room in a nursing home, according to a recent MetLife study: $75,000 per year.
* The AARP notes that two-thirds of older Americans who needed long-term care now rely completely on unpaid help -- in most cases, family.

The trouble is, "caregivers just feel utterly unprepared for their role," said Carol Raphael, president of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, who joined Sheehy and other experts at the briefing on eldercare. Many of the family caregivers VNS staffers encounter feel left out of crucial decisions concerning their loved one's care, Raphael said. "They are often on the border -- they aren't even included in thinking about how care will be provided."

Another big challenge -- caregivers are often confronted with an array of doctors, procedures, paperwork and facilities, with no one to help pull it all together. "In the current system, there's no one accountable," Raphael said. "That's why it can cost you $125 an hour [for a geriatric care manager], because you're trying to fill that hole."

Too often, chronically ill patients and their families simply lurch from one crisis to the next, with no continuity of care to make sure that once patients leave the hospital, they aren't getting readmitted a few weeks later.

"Care has to be coordinated and supported," said AARP president Jennie Chin Hansen, who has 40 years of experience as a nurse. "We have to be preventing things from happening, because there are things that we know cause you to go to the hospital again: taking the wrong medications while you're back home, for example." Chin and other experts focused especially on the crucial 30 days after a hospital discharge. Close monitoring and follow-up during that month can greatly reduce unnecessary suffering and cost, they said.

Across America, much of the in-home care that is provided is carried out by home health care aides, who are often woefully under-trained, the experts said.

"They are the glue that is holding the home health care system together," said Raphael. But, she added, she is "shocked" that, in most states, "we have very minimum training requirements for these para-professional workers who are handling very complex cases."

In New York State, for example, home health care workers are required to undergo 120 hours of training before getting certification. That might sound OK, until you realize that nail technicians in California need to have 350 hours of training to be certified to work in a salon, Raphael said.

"The pay scale [for home health aides] is also relatively low, and they don't have health care benefits, on top of that," Chin added.

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Source from : HealthDay.com

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