Spring is officially here, my friends, which means it’s time to wash away winter’s effect on your skin and bring back that radiant glow.
Start by stepping up your exfoliation. That can help get rid of dry, dull skin while fading age spots. Next, swap out your moisturizer. As the weather warms up, we need a lighter lotion as opposed to winter’s heavy creams. Our Calming Moisture is perfect-it helps reduce inflammation and redness while providing just the right amount of moisture and improving skin radiance. Plus it has beta glucan to help promote collagen production, which we all need to keep skin firm.
If you’re dealing with hyperpigmentation, try a natural lightening cream to help fade the dark blotches. You can also make your own with ingredients like papaya, honey, pumpkin, yogurt, citrus fruits, and potato juice.
All these things can help refresh and rejuvenate your skin, but what you really need for that bright spring look is a more taught, firm, and youthful appearance. Winter tends to drag skin down, exacerbating wrinkles, sagging, and bagging, so when spring comes around, you want to find ways to help skin bounce back again.
We’ve got some solutions for you. The best approach to restore the spring in your skin is to focus on elasticity.
What is Elastin in Skin?
We hear a lot about collagen for skin, but less about its close cousin, elastin. Collagen gives your skin strength, but elastin gives it it’s ability to bounce back.
When you’re young, you can pinch the skin under your eyes, and when you let it go, it will snap right back into place. As you age, however, you lose elastin, and it takes longer for skin to return to its original shape. Often, it remains stretched out and baggy looking.
What Happens to Elastin?
What causes skin to lose its elasticity?
Some of it is that we don’t produce as much elastin as we age. The skin simply doesn’t have as much as it used to rebuild and regenerate skin.
The elastin we do have also starts to lose its shape. We make a number of expressions over the years, after all, and eventually those connective tissues get stretched out.
Finally, environmental toxins, pollutants, and UV rays assault skin every day, gradually damaging elastin fibers and causing them to break down.
We can help delay this type of damage by protecting the skin with sunscreen, eating right, drinking plenty of water, and practicing good skin hygiene, but usually that’s not enough to stay looking your best. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to help restore the elastic spring in your skin.
5 Ways to Restore Skin Elasticity and Increase “Spring-Back”
To fortify your skin tissues and help increase your skin’s ability to spring back, try these five tips.
1. Try supplements.
A lot of the damage caused to elastin comes from free radicals, so any antioxidant supplement can help. These include grape seed extract, quercetin, lutein, and resveratrol.
Vitamin C works as an antioxidant, and also helps support collagen production. Omega-3 supplements (fish or flaxseed oil) help tame inflammation, which can help preserve the elastin that you already have.
2. Wear your tea.
Teas are full of nutrients that are good for your skin. In fact, in a 2014 study, researchers reported that ginkgo biloba and green tea extracts enhanced skin thickness, increased cell renewal, and helped with skin elasticity and skin barrier function.
Some teas actually help protect against elastin breakdown, and most have powerful protective antioxidants. In addition to drinking more iced tea this spring, save some to apply to your face. You can put some in a spray bottle and use it as a refreshing toner, put the cooled tea bags over your eyes for 10-15 minutes, or use the tea as a base to make your own homemade moisturizing mask. Add in yogurt, mashed berries, oatmeal, or eggs.
3. Use some argan oil.
Most natural oils are good for the skin, but we have some evidence that argan oil, in particular, may help to restore skin elasticity. In 2015, researchers reported that women who took argan oil supplements experienced significant increases in skin elasticity.
The researchers concluded: “Our findings suggest that the daily consumption and/or topical application of argan oil have an anti-aging effect on the skin demonstrated by the improvement of skin elasticity.”
4. Eat more yogurt, and consider a homemade yogurt mask.
Yogurt, particularly Greek yogurt, is high in protein, and proteins are important for the production of both collagen and elastin. Yogurt may also hold some of its own magic when it comes to elasticity.
In a 2011 study, for example, researchers applied facial masks to participants. Those who received the masks that contained yogurt experienced improvements in elasticity. Researchers concluded that the yogurt mask “successfully improved the moisture, brightness, skin radiance, and elasticity of treated skin.”
Yogurt also contains probiotics, which can help reduce inflammation and provide an anti-bacterial effect, helping to reduce redness and acne.
5. Exercise more.
It may be hard to imagine that your daily jog could improve your skin’s appearance, but some studies suggest it could do just that.
In 2014, The New York Times reported on a study that showed exercise could even help reverse skin aging. Researchers found that participants aged 40 and older who exercised frequently had healthier outer skin layers and thicker dermis layers. They described the skin as being closer to that of 20- and 30-year-olds, even in participants who were over 65.
Exercise also improves blood circulation, getting needed nutrients to the skin where it can use them to rebuild collagen and elastin.
How do you restore your skin’s “spring?”
