Latest news with #skinaging
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Want Dewier Skin as You Age? This Nutrient May Help, New Study Suggests
Reviewed by Dietitian Jessica Ball, M.S., RD Key Points A new study suggests that carotenoids may help reduce skin aging. Carotenoids act like antioxidants and are abundant in fruits and vegetables. Eating carotenoid-rich foods with unsaturated fats may help your body better absorb them. It's no secret that eating more plants can be good for you. Besides their fiber, vitamins and minerals, they tend to be plentiful in antioxidants. Fruits and vegetables, especially, are loaded with antioxidants called carotenoids. Specifically, carotenoids are plant pigments responsible for the red, orange and yellow hues in many types of produce. The fruits and vegetables that contain carotenoids include sweet potatoes, pumpkins, carrots, mangoes, papayas, tomatoes, red and yellow peppers, oranges and apricots. And while not fitting into the expected color scheme, dark leafy greens, including spinach, kale and Swiss chard, fall into that category, too. There is some evidence that carotenoids may protect the skin. For this reason, some skincare companies even use these powerful plant compounds in their products. But what if you eat foods high in carotenoids? Can that also protect your skin? Researchers in Romania conducted a systematic review of previously published studies on carotenoids and skin aging. They published their results in Nutrients. Let's break down what they found. How Was This Study Conducted? Researchers searched for studies on the topic of skin health and carotenoids. After choosing ones that met their specific parameters, they ended up with 176 studies that were eligible for their systematic review. The included studies featured findings about topical carotenoids—like skincare products that include carotenoids—and dietary carotenoids. Only studies written in English were included in the analysis. What Did This Study Find? Researchers found that the included studies suggest that carotenoids protect skin from aging through several mechanisms. These include: Antioxidant Protection: Carotenoids may help neutralize and mitigate the effects of oxidative stress, a central mechanism in the pathology of skin aging. Plus, carotenoids' antioxidant mechanisms also support the production of hyaluronic acid, which plays a major role in skin hydration and elasticity. Photoprotection: Carotenoids may help dissipate UV rays and reduce the energy available to damage skin. Anti-inflammatory Properties: You may have heard of inflammaging, which is the result of chronic inflammation in our bodies, including our skin. Carotenoids may help calm inflammation and reduce the effect inflammation can have on skin. Collagen Production: Collagen is the most abundant structural protein in the dermis layer of the skin, the thick inner layer of our skin. It's necessary for maintaining skin's firmness and elasticity. Carotenoids may help enhance collagen synthesis and inhibit its breakdown. Skin Moisturization: Dry skin appears more aged and wrinkled, and unfortunately, as we age, our skin becomes drier. Carotenoids can help maintain skin's moisture levels by helping to enhance skin's barrier, along with their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant actions. Researchers also note that gut health is a key factor. When we eat foods rich in carotenoids, before they're broken down and released into the bloodstream to skin cells, they reside in the gut. The health of your gut environment will partly determine how much of the carotenoids your body can absorb and use—referred to as the bioavailability of the nutrients. Besides gut health, researchers also found that carotenoids have greater bioavailability when eaten with unsaturated fats or when lightly cooked. Because this was a systematic review, researchers may not have the same depth of interpretation of the results compared to the original study authors. In other words, the interpretation of results might be different from the original. Also, because studies are performed using varying methods, drawing consistent conclusions can be challenging. Lastly, there are no standardized guidelines for carotenoid consumption, so these researchers cannot make recommendations for an ideal amount of daily carotenoid intake. How Does This Apply to Real Life? We know that eating more plants—fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes—has many health benefits, from reduced inflammation and a healthier gut microbiome to a lower risk of disease and a healthier heart and brain. Now we can add healthier skin to the list. If you want to start including more carotenoids, go for delicious recipes that include deep orange winter squash, carrots and bell peppers. We have lots of leafy green recipes, including a few for smoothies. If tomatoes are your thing, you'll want to check out our healthy tomato recipes, which include soups, salads, apps, sandwiches and main dishes. Not to be outdone by the veggies, some fruits are also rich in carotenoids. Check out our healthy orange recipes (did you know you can eat the skin?). We also have lots of tasty mango recipes that will help you expand your tropical horizons. And this papaya smoothie recipe is creamy with warm cinnamon notes. To get the most from your carotenoids and increase their bioavailability, you can lightly cook them. (Tomatoes are an exception, as they can be cooked down more, including into sauces, and have more carotenoids available compared to raw tomatoes.) Also consider eating carotenoid-rich foods with a source of unsaturated fat, like sunflower or olive oil. The lipids in the oils form micelles, which encapsulate the carotenoids and transport them, increasing their bioavailability. Out of all the carotenoid-rich foods, these researchers highlight the papaya as having superior carotenoid micellarization. Besides nutrition, researchers note other lifestyle habits that influence skin and overall health, including physical activity, sleep and social interactions. It's also important to avoid tobacco use and reduce UV ray exposure for healthy skin. The research team also suggests that there's evidence that combining topical carotenoids (like in face cream) and consuming foods rich in carotenoids should be part of the ideal skincare routine. Our Expert Take This systematic review suggests that carotenoid-rich foods may help improve skin's elasticity, hydration levels and overall health. They also suggest other lifestyle habits that play a role in skin health. While this study focused on carotenoid-rich foods, there's not one magic bullet for healthy skin. They are, however, an important piece of the puzzle, and should be included along with a variety of other foods that contain other types of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats. 'Eating the rainbow' can provide you with more assurance that you're getting what your body needs for healthy aging—skin and all. Read the original article on EATINGWELL
Yahoo
08-08-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Scientists Finally Explain Why Your Skin Wrinkles As You Age
Those 'crow's feet' at the corners of your eyes really do deserve to be called laughter lines, according to a recent study by researchers from Binghamton University in New York. Using skin samples from people aged 16 to 91, the team confirmed the repeated stretching and releasing of skin in one direction strains the aged tissue in a way that leads to wrinkles in a similar fashion to the wearing of creases into your favorite pair of denim jeans. "This is no longer just a theory," says biomedical engineer Guy German. "We now have hard experimental evidence showing the physical mechanism behind aging." Related: Sleep Wrinkles Are a Real Thing, And It's All About How You Sleep While previous studies have explored the mechanics of dermal stress and degradation, this investigation is the first to physically test real skin samples with an instrument called a low-force tensometer and observe the resulting changes under a microscope. The stress applied by the tensometer was intended to mimic the wear and tear of everyday life. The researchers found that the skin contraction movements made in response to the stretches got bigger with age, causing buckling and wrinkling. Our skin is also in a semi-stretched state by default, the researchers found, and those forces also change as we get towards later life. The outer layer (stratum corneum) gradually gets stiffer, while the underlying layer gets softer as the density of its collagen scaffolding decreases. Over time, skin loses volume by pushing out fluid, the team's experiments showed, exacerbating the effects of wrinkles. This poroelastic quality of the skin is significant, and hasn't been recorded before. "If you stretch Silly Putty, for instance, it stretches horizontally, but it also shrinks in the other direction – it gets thinner," says German. "That's what skin does as well." "As you get older, that contraction gets bigger. And if your skin is contracted too much, it buckles. That's how wrinkles form." The research is about more than just knowing where wrinkles come from. By understanding the characteristics of our skin, and how they change over time, we can better understand (and treat) a variety of different skin diseases. It's not just the outer skin that the researchers are interested in, either: they suggest that their work could have implications for modeling other tissues. These techniques could be applied to wrinkles in the brain as well, for example. The findings here could also be important when it comes to caring for the skin – and assessing just how effective various anti-aging skin products actually are (especially as there are so many of them vying for our attention). In addition, the researchers make the link between the effects of chronological aging on the skin, and the damaging effects of exposure to the Sun's ultraviolet radiation – something that sunscreen can help prevent. "If you spend your life working outside, you're more likely to have more aged and wrinkled skin than those who are office workers, for example," says German. The research has been published in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. Related News Ancient Tools Suggest Indonesian 'Hobbits' Had a Mysterious Neighbor DNA Casts Doubt Over Theory on What Killed Napoleon's Forces Study Reveals How Many IVF Babies Have Been Born Worldwide Solve the daily Crossword
