Your Choice: Resistance Training or Botox by Jerry Brainum 10/24

 

 

Aging takes a physical toll on everyone. Some people age better than others, but facial aging is one obvious sign of aging that is hard to disguise. I've seen champion bodybuilders who, from the neck down, looked 20 to 30 years younger than their chronological age, but from the neck up, it's a different story. Unless you're willing to resort to various plastic surgery cosmetic operations, the face will give away your age, but not always. I have observed with bodybuilders that those who were sun worshipers in their youth paid a heavy price for skin aging when they got older. And it's indisputable that sun exposure is the primary cause of facial aging. I've heard dermatologists say that if you began applying sun-blocking lotion to a child and kept it up for years, that person at 50 would look as young as they were at 20. The effect of the sun on skin aging is that potent. 

But what about sun exposure causes such an extreme change in the skin? The age-inducing action of the sun on the skin is called photoaging and is caused mainly by exposure to the sun's ultraviolet or UV rays. The UV-A spectrum of light emitted from the sun can penetrate all layers of the skin and, in doing so, cause DNA damage to the skin cells. With enough DNA damage, skin cancer can result. Skin cancers can range from highly treatable forms to the deadly melanoma type that has a 50% mortality rate. That is the type of skin cancer that killed Reg Park, 3-time Mr.Universe and mentor of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The UV-A light also breaks down the structural proteins in the skin, collagen and elastin. Collagen gives the skin structural integrity, while elastin, as the name implies, provides elasticity to the skin; when both proteins are degraded by UV-A light, it leads to lines and wrinkles forming on the face. What's interesting about this is that the lines and wrinkles caused by sun exposure only become evident with increased age. That has to do with losing skin hydration and fat with age. Bodybuilding sun worshipers who spent hours in the sun in their 20s begin to show lines and wrinkles when they turn around 40. What happens there is with age, the skin proteins become less efficient at repair, and coupled with a natural loss of fat in the face, the wrinkles and lines come out in bold relief. The same thing can happen with rapid weight loss. An extensive loss of fat also entails losing fat in the face, and the loss of facial fat brings out the lines and wrinkles that were always there but were disguised by facial fat. Many people who used the GLP-1 agonist drugs such as Ozympic lost 40 pounds or more but also showed greatly increased signs of facial . . .