What Keeps Your Skin Looking Good?

There’s so much noise about what you need to do to preserve the appearance of healthy skin, but what really does the trick?

Understanding how your skin works will help you weed through all the information and products being thrown at you. Then, you’ll know what to trust, what to avoid, and what to do to help your skin keep its appearance as you age.

Your skin is made up of two building block proteins – collagen and elastin. If you protect and nourish both, you’ll worry less about premature aging, wrinkling, drooping, etc. First, let’s figure out how they work.

How Does Collagen Work?

You’ve probably heard of collagen – it’s turned into a pretty big buzzword in beauty and nutrition. But what is it?

Collagen is the building block protein for your skin that gives it strength and structure. It’s also in your hair, nails, muscles, organs… pretty much every functioning part of your body has collagen.

It’s not just a buzzword; collagen is a big deal.

Once your collagen levels begin to drop, you might notice that your skin begins to sag, droop, wrinkle, and look less radiant. Aside from your skin, you’ll notice that your hair begins to change and your muscles feel less strong – this is all collagen at work

Collagen begins to decline in your early 20’s. This process starts out slowly, and speeds up when you hit your 50’s. You probably won’t notice dramatic wrinkling until then, unless you partake in certain lifestyle factors that speed up its decrease.

Luckily, you can add more collagen into your system to combat its depletion. But first, let’s dive into how elastin works.

What is Elastin?

Elastin is the other major protein that makes up your skin. While collagen provides strength and structure, elastin gives you stretch and snap back.

When elastin declines, you’ll notice that your skin will wrinkle, lose firmness, become crepey, and develop stretch marks. Elastin decline becomes noticeable in your 30s and 40s but drops dramatically when you hit your 50s.

Unlike collagen, you can’t repair your elastin with a supplement. What you have is what you get.

So, it’s important to preserve it and keep what you have safe.

Protecting Collagen and Elastin for Healthy Skin

Reading this might feel like doomsday – we know the girlies want to maintain the appearance of your skin as you age. It doesn’t have to be, there are ways to slow damage to both proteins.

The best way to slow the appearance of aging from collagen and elastin production is protect them from damage. If you want to start taking better care of your skin, here are some things to keep in mind:

Avoid products that damage your skin. Unfortunately, a lot of makeup and beauty products use ingredients that aren’t safe for your skin. Our research project is on a mission to find out exactly which ingredients damage your collagen and elastin through a chemistry experiment that highlights how much damage each ingredient does. What we’ve found so far is that sulfates are some of the worst offenders. To find other ingredients to avoid, check out our banned ingredients list. Shop for clean makeup products when you can, and pay more attention to your ingredient lists.

Protect yourself from UV damage. Everything you hear about sunscreen being incredibly important is true. The UV from the sun is one of the biggest factors that will destroy your collagen and elastin. If you’re thinking about skipping sunscreen, think again.

Limit smoking, vaping, and drinking. Listen, we love to party as much as the next girl. If you enjoy these things in moderation, you’ll do your skin and body a huge favor. The stress that comes from overindulging takes a huge toll on your collagen and elastin, destroying them faster than you’d probably want.

Learn how to control chronic stress. We know life can be tough, and managing stress is hard. Making sure that you do your best to limit stress can do wonders for more than your mental health, it’ll save your physical health, too. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep, exercise, and nutrients to save your skin.  

Avoid environmental toxins. You might not be able to do much about the pollution in the air where you live, but if you keep up with gentle cleansing, you’ll help your skin avoid damage. Pay attention to the cleaners you use around your house as well and avoid getting heavy chemicals and detergents on your skin.

When it comes to collagen, taking supplements actually work, it’s not just a marketing scheme. We recommend that you make sure to get enough collagen through your diet, usually through eating meat or a collagen powder, so that you can rebuild the damaged collagen throughout your body.

Want to know what is a marketing technique? Skincare products with collagen. Don’t get us wrong – they do offer barrier support and hydration, but they aren’t actually helping you rebuild the collagen in your skin. Keep this in mind when building your skincare routine.

Are there skincare products that actually help rebuild your collagen? Yes, the following ingredients can trigger increased collagen production in your skin:

• Retinoids

• Vitamin C

• Peptides

• Chemical exfoliants (AHAs, BHAs)

Provanity Cosmetics is not only finding out what makeup ingredients are hurting your skin, but we’re taking our learnings and applying it to our products. We don’t think makeup should destroy your collagen and elastin, so we formulate our products to be as safe as possible. Explore our line of long-wear, clean makeup to save your skin without sacrificing your makeup look.