DO wear 1½in heels. DON’T wear contacts . . . Amazingly SIMPLE ways to stay young
By Britain’s top doctors
We religiously slather on antiageing face creams, and spend hours at the gym trying to maintain a youthful physique, but it’s daily life that can accelerate the ageing process without us even noticing.
Here, Britain’s top doctors share their top anti-ageing tips — from how you dry your hair, to the shoes you wear, and even where you live — based on years of experience in their fields . . .
THROW AWAY YOUR CONTACT LENSES AND SAVE YOUR EYES
Harley Street ophthalmic surgeon allon Barsam is one of the UK’s leading eye surgeons. He says:
Wearing contact lenses age your eyes in a number of ways. First, everyone who wears lenses will have some inflammation of the eyelid — known as blepharitis — as a contact lens changes the way the body produces tears.
This causes a red rim around the eyes which people often put down to age or not sleeping. it can also cause swelling of the skin around the eye and inflammation that makes the whites of the eye less white.
Putting in and taking out your lenses can also cause problems. Depending on your technique you may pull on the lower or upper lid and this can cause the tissues around the eyes to get looser. Hard lenses also make it more difficult for the top lid to move over the surface of the eye, and over time the muscle that is supposed to lift the lid and keep the eye open can become weak and droopy.
glasses are an alternative, but these days vision correction surgery can treat everything from astigmatism and reading vision to long or short-sightedness, so you really don’t have to wear glasses or contact lenses at all.
ESCAPE FROM THE CITY — IT’S HEALTHIER IN THE COUNTRY
Dr Mervyn PatterSon is a cosmetic physician and the medical director of the Woodford Medical group of aesthetic clinics. He says:
look at where you live. if it’s in the heart of a city, you could be exposing your skin to huge amounts of pollution — and that’s something that is increasingly being associated with accelerating the signs of ageing. evidence around how air pollution affects the skin points to a close link between air pollution and facial pigmentation and wrinkling.
and much of this is traffic related — minute particulate matter in diesel emissions can penetrate the skin and trigger inflammatory responses, and ultimately unwanted pigment.
one solution, if you can, is to relocate away from the traffic, so moving to the fresher air of the countryside makes sense.
That’s not practical for everybody, so if you can’t, switch to using pollution-neutralising uV screens that contain zinc, titanium, iron oxides and antiinflammatory ingredients to mitigate some of the effects.
DITCH YOUR BALLET PUMPS
Dr tariq KHan has been a podiatrist for more than 20 years and combines clinical work with international academic posts. He says:
PeoPle think of flats as a ‘safe option’ but they’re as bad as very high heels because in a flat shoe, your foot is bearing weight on a very flat surface.
When we were evolving we walked barefoot but that was on soft terrain where our feet could mould to the surface to redistribute the weight and pressure on each foot. But now we almost always walk on hard, flat surfaces which feet can’t mould to and we need a small heel — an inch-and-a-half is ideal — to push off naturally.
Without one, the result is damage to the soft tissue and muscles in the soles of the feet in the form of plantar fasciitis and heel pain. But as the muscles are attached to bone, the damage goes right the way to the bone, deforming them, creating bunions and even breaks in the heel bone.
and it’s not just the feet that are affected.
if you have no arch support, as is the case in many flat shoes, such as ballet pumps, you can end up with knee, hip and back pain which can affect posture, making you look prematurely stooped and old.
CHUCK OUT YOUR POWERFUL HAIRDRYER
Dr vicKy Jolliffe is a consultant dermatologist with a special clinical interest in alopecia and hair loss. She says:
Hair loss or hair thinning is a common problem for women after the menopause, when the change in hormone levels can contribute to hair thinning.
The temptation is often to blast you hair with a dryer to get more volume at the roots, but actually that’s the last thing you should be doing.
Too much heat close to the hair, which is more fragile when it’s wet, can damage the fibre causing it to break, making it look as if you have even less hair. i’d advise using a hairdryer on a cool setting, or gently removing moisture with a towel.
if you are concerned about hair loss, you should seek professional advice, but sometimes simple changes to your routine can help. Try using a medicated shampoo which minimises inflammation and improves scalp condition, alongside cosmetic treatments such as hair thickening fibres that create the illusion of thicker hair.
GIVE YOUR TEETH A POWER SHOWER
Dr ricHarD MarqUeS is one of the UK’s leading celebrity dentists specialising in complex restorative, aesthetic and implant dentistry. He says:
We all know that staining and yellowing of the teeth is very ageing, and that if you lose teeth, you can lose the structure of your face. But people don’t realise you can lose bone density without losing your teeth, and that can make your face appear narrower, and cause sagging.
This can happen naturally as we age — most of us know that over time gums recede, but the bone underneath the gums can also recede — and it’s a process that is accelerated if you have gum disease, so maintaining healthy gums is crucial.
That means regular dental and hygienist check-ups, and maybe seeing a gum specialist as well.
Cleaning between the teeth is important because if bacteria builds up here you can get gum disease.
one of the treatments we use in the surgery is something called airflow which is a solution of water and bicarbonate which is blasted at the teeth.
it’s not heavily abrasive, but it dissolves and cleans stains and
cleans between the teeth helping to prevent gum disease.
I also recommend a supplement called Coenzyme Q10 as there’s a lot of evidence that this can help maintain gum health.
GET A STAND FOR YOUR PHONE AND TABLET
AlexAnder MontgoMery is a consultant spinal and orthopaedic surgeon at Barts nHS trust and also works privately for london Sports orthopaedics. He says:
TeCh neCk is the overall term used to refer to problems of the upper back, shoulders and neck that are caused by hunching over phones and tablets.
These can be anything from pain and stiffness to skin laxity and double chins. It really is the curse of our generation although I think we won’t know the true effects of it until the generation who have grown up with this technology reach middle age.
But one of the issues I know it creates is what I call a ‘pigeon neck’, where the neck is constantly jutting forward — this not only looks unnatural, but can be very ageing. Over time people can stiffen up in this position and it can become permanent — you see it in computer workers who have been in the City for years.
I’ve seen this in thousands of patients over the past five years.
Obviously avoiding using technology isn’t really an option, but given that we spend an estimated four to five hours a day on our phones, a solution is to ensure it’s at eye level, so you’re not looking down at it. One way you can do this is to get a mount or stand for your phone so it’s held in a position where your neck can be neutral, rather than flexed.
But my best advice is to see an expert pilates instructor who can help resolve all aspects of potential postural issues.’
KEEP A DIARY TO REWIRE YOU BRAIN
dr ricHArd SHerry is a clinical and counselling psychologist whose company, Psychological Systems, supports all aspects of mental wellbeing. He says: ReseaRCh suggests mental and emotional stress can have a direct impact on our appearance, and can actually accelerate the rate at which we age.
as such, it makes sense to build practical anti-stress habits into our daily routine.
One type of habit that everyone should be doing is keeping a diary — or as we like to refer to it in psychological terms, ‘reflective journaling’.
The idea is that writing things down helps to explore emotions — it allows the the emotional, reactive mind to meet analytical reasoning, resulting in what is referred to as ‘the wise mind’, a balance between emotional and rational.
Journaling has been shown to help regulate emotions and rewire our brains, and has even been used in the recovery of people who suffer depression, borderline personality disorders or PostTraumatic stress Disorder.
NEVER DRINK WATER FROM THE TAP
dr MArion gluck has been helping women resolve hormone issues for more than 25 years. She says:
we aRe surrounded by hormones and hormone-mimicking compounds in our environment — they’re in plastic containers and bottles, in perfumes, pesticides and intensively-farmed meats.
The problem is they either create an excess of the hormone, or they block the receptors, meaning the body behaves as though it doesn’t have enough of that hormone.
One of the worst culprits is tap water. since hRT and the contraceptive Pill have been widely prescribed, our waste water has been full of hormones.
It’s one of the reasons why male fish have started to display female characteristics, why oestrogen-related cancers, such as breast cancer, uterine cancers and ovarian cancers are on the rise — water is full of oestrogen which is not removed by the usual filtration systems.
This causes a hormonal imbalance which can lead to mood swings, but also to weight gain, something we often refer to as middle-aged spread, but which is often related to hormones in our environment.
The answer is to drink bottled water from natural sources (from glass bottles, not plastic) or to invest a reverse osmosis filtration system. Many argue that the hormones in water are negligible, but it’s the cumulative effect that you should worry about.