Do wrinkles make us look ‘untrustworthy’?

By the doctor who has studied ALL the science

TO age gracefully is to embrace the lines that life has etched on our faces and find beauty in the wisdom now on display.

Will the rest of society see it shining through? Not according to a study that suggests we are rather more shallow than we’d like to think.

Researchers found that we believe people with wrinkles are less pleasant and trustworthy. Humboldt University of Berlin recruited 5 people who were asked to rate pictures of avatars with and without lines on their faces.

Participants had to judge how attractive, warm, pleasant, trustworthy, moral and balanced each person appeared.

They were also asked to rate the degree to which each face seemed to express happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust and surprise. Analysis, published in the journal Acta Psychologica, revealed wrinkly faces were deemed to be less attractive, pleasant and trustworthy. They were perceived as showing more negative emotions.

The effects were more pronounced for female faces, and the results remained the same across the age range of participants – 18 to 68. The researchers said: ‘These findings suggest older people may often be perceived as less pleasant for no other reason than the wrinkles in their face and the judgements of attractiveness and emotionality associated with them. Given that first impressions are hard to correct, this may have lasting implications.

‘The negative effects of wrinkles could speak in favour of the beauty industry’s mission to satisfy the collective demand for smooth foreheads and tight jawlines.’

WHAT if I told you there were ways to thicken your hair, plump your skin, lose your middle-aged spread and even banish hot flushes that all cost less than a basket of groceries at the supermarket? I’m a doctor and best-selling author who’s made it his mission to find and analyse the very latest science on ageing at the very deepest level. over the last three years, my team and I read more than 20,000 scientific papers to produce the most comprehensive summary of how we can slow the clock down, or even stop it. My new 600-page book how Not To Age (with 995 pages of references that I’ve put online) provides a guide to what the best brains in the field have recently discovered — and you’ll be surprised how much control you have over the rate at which you appear to age.

here, in the final part of my groundbreaking series, I’ll show you not only how to feel healthier and more energetic as you get older, but how to look younger too.

DAILY CUP OF COCOA SMOOTHES WRINKLES

The skin is the most conspicuous mirror of the ageing process. But as little as three per cent of skin ageing is due to genetic factors. The rest is from our lifestyle, with 80-90 per cent of facial ageing among people with lighter skin tones due to sun exposure. Those with darker skin are also affected, though they’re relatively protected due to their built-in melanin sunscreen.

That’s why all the studies and all the dermatologists now agree there is nothing more important to slow the signs of ageing than to protect your skin from the sun.

It should be a lifetime endeavour, involving sunscreen, sun-protective clothing, hats and sunglasses, and avoiding direct sunlight during the peak hours of 10am-4 pm.

Don’t sunbathe if you want to stay wrinkle-free, not even with sunscreens offering broad- spectrum protection against both UVA and UVB rays. We now know that other wavelengths not covered by sunscreens, such as near infrared, also contribute to skin ageing.

In scientific tests, people who use tanning beds appear significantly older than those who don’t, and those who sunbathe appear years older than they actually are, comparable to what is seen with smoking.

Green foods can help. Women who ate a daily spinach salad showed a significant increase in collagen production, accompanied by an increase in skin elasticity and a decrease of facial wrinkles.

This may have been due in part to an ‘inside- out’ sunscreen effect, since less DNA damage was noted after the same degree of UV radiation. Yes, ‘produce protection’ builds up your skin’s natural safeguards against sun damage through diet, though it only gets to about SPF4 (it’s there all the time though, while sunscreen comes off or you forget to apply it). Kale, apple, and a combination of rosemary and grapefruit extracts have similar effects.

The other cutting-edge, anti-wrinkling dietary tip may surprise you: hot cocoa. After drinking a cup with about two-and-a-half teaspoons of natural cocoa powder, subjects had a significant increase in blood flow within the skin within two hours.

Drunk every day for 12 weeks, skin thickness, density, and hydration improved compared to a placebo, and after 24 weeks, one study found a significant improvement in skin elasticity and a decrease in wrinkle depth — just from adding less than a tablespoon of cocoa powder to their daily diet.

Importantly, it has to be natural cocoa, not the kind that’s undergone what’s called Dutch processing.

You can buy both kinds from UK supermarkets — but if it has the words ‘Dutched’, ‘cocoa processed with alkali’ or ‘alkalized’ on the label, it’s the wrong kind.

FOOD THAT WORKS AS WELL AS HRT

IF You want to manage symptoms of menopause naturally, study after study shows the best strategy is, you’ve guessed it, to eat more plants and less meat. But phytoestro genrich foods like flaxseeds have an especially beneficial effect.

In fact, just two daily teaspoons’ worth of ground flaxseeds alone can significantly decrease menopausal symptoms. In a head-to-head trial of flaxseeds versus Hrt (typically, bioidentical estrogen plus a form of progesterone), the flaxseeds reduced menopausal symptoms to about the same extent as the hormone pills.

Research has consistently proved the effectiveness of soy too. The soy in the Japanese diet, foods like tofu, and edamame, might explain why there’s no term for ‘hot flush’ in the Japanese language and why just 15 per cent of women suffer them, compared to 80-85 per cent of women eating a Western diet.

The equivalent of about two servings of soy foods a day has been found to reduce hot flush frequency by about 20 per cent, and severity by around 25 per cent.

The bottom line, wrote one consensus panel of experts, is that soy can be considered a first-line treatment for symptoms of menopausal hot flushes and night sweats.

Fennel seeds can more broadly improve symptoms including psychological and sexual symptoms. So can fenugreek. one-and-a-half teaspoons a day can ease the symptoms of early menopause, so make sure you add the leaves or seeds to homemade curries.

HEALTHY WEIGHT EQUALS LONGER LIFE

Alas, we can’t blame our age for putting on weight. Resting metabolic rate ( the calories we burn just to keep us alive) remains stable from 20 until 60, after which it only declines by about ten calories a day per year. Not enough to make a difference.

But we should certainly try to keep that weight off. obesity is associated with accelerated cellular ageing throughout the body, presumably due to the oxidative stress and systemic inflammation that accompany excess body fat. It’s bad for our brains, our joints and our hearts.

Indeed, after the age of 40, obesity may reduce life expectancy by as much as six or seven years.

What about the good news? The riskiest fat — the visceral fat which shows around our waistlines — is the easiest to lose. our body appears to preferentially shed it first and just a five to ten per cent loss of body weight in fat gives significant improvements in blood sugars, blood pressure, cholesterol and inflammation. It’s truly life-prolonging.

So, what’s the best weightloss diet?

In studies, it’s that a wholefood, plant-based diet that works the best, probably because healthier foods are simply less dense in calories.

Research shows when people eat a plant-based diet they tend to eat about 600 fewer calories a day compared to those on a high- fat ketogenic diet. All fat is not equal,

though. A calorie from one source isn’t always as fattening as a calorie from any other.

So, if you ate the same amount of calories and same amount of fat but replaced meat and butter with nuts, avocados and olive oil, you could lose nearly six more pounds of fat in just one month.

Why is that? One reason saturated fats may be more fattening is that they may be stored immediately rather than burned. Can we eat to improve our muscle tone and make our time in the gym more productive? Yes! Popeye was right to eat spinach.

If he’d added blueberries and garlic, he might have been even more ripped.

EAT FRUIT AND VEG TO KEEP HAIR YOUNG

Why do we go grey? The pigment generating cells that give our hair colour are found in the hair follicle, but as we get older, they become depleted by free radicals — the unstable, potentially damaging molecules we make as a reaction to poor diet, stress and pollution. When they stop working, we start to go grey — though hair isn’t really grey, or even white, but the pale yellowish tinge of the keratin protein it’s made of.

Like polar bears, it looks white because of the way light reflects off it. Can we do anything to slow the process down? Caucasian hair starts greying at the age of about 35-40, and since a single hair grows for roughly three-and-ahalf years before falling out, to be replaced by another, we have a cycle of about ten hairs before the pigment cells stop working.

Your best bet is to maximise the antioxidant compounds you eat to fight free radicals, and you can boost them with a plant-based diet. high-antioxidant fruits and vegetables include broccoli and blueberries (low ones are bananas and iceberg lettuce), but there is no need to cherry-pick individual foods. Simply strive to include a variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs at every meal.

Eyelashes don’t go grey at the same time because they have their own stock of antioxidants. Try not to put on too much weight: obese people tend to grey early — probably because being overweight increases inflammation and oxidative stress, which damages follicles. And if you’re not eating meat or dairy, take a vitamin B12 supplement.

hair thinning is another deeply undesirable consequence of ageing, affecting at least 50 per cent of women by age 50 and 40 percent of men by 35. hair loss is not caused by washing or brushing your hair too much.

Today, population studies have found eating raw vegetables and fresh herbs has a protective effect, as does the frequent intake of soy milk. Drinking soy beverages on a weekly basis was associated with 62 per cent lower odds of moderate to severe hair loss.

■ Adapted from How Not to Age by Michael Greger(pan Macmillan, £22). © Michael Greger 2023. to order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid to March 9, 2024; UK p&p free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.