Collagen and elastin contribute significantly to the overall texture and resiliency of the skin. Collagen contributes to the firmness of the skin, while elastin helps the skin remain tight and recover from deformation.
What Causes Loose Skin?
Anything that damages or degrades these two proteins can lead to wrinkles, lines and the eventual inability of the skin to recover its shape. Loose or sagging skin is generally caused by the gradual loss of elastin and collagen over time, but several other factors can also leave you with the same problem, including:
- Excessive exposure to the sun’s UV rays
- Smoking
- Chronic dehydration
- Significant weight loss, including after pregnancy
- The gradual loss of subcutaneous fat beneath the skin that comes with age
Tips for Preventing Loose Skin
Skincare and Supplements
It’s recommended to try to ward off normal skin aging by daily use of a moisturizer. There is some evidence that taking supplements containing collagen and hyaluronic acid can slow down the effects of aging on the skin.
Antioxidant supplements may also help improve general skin appearance. Staying hydrated also has many important benefits.
Exercise and Health
Regular exercise will help maintain your muscle tone and have positive effects on your skin’s appearance. Maintaining a healthy weight will also, in addition to many other benefits, help your skin age as gracefully as possible.
If you’re under or overweight, try to return to a more healthy weight through a healthy balanced diet and exercise.
How to Tighten Loose Skin
– Regular facial exercises can help reduce looseness around the neck and cheeks, although it’s doubtful this can help with anything more than minor looseness. This type of exercise mainly helps tone up muscles beneath the skin, not change the resiliency of the skin itself.
– Regular use of specialized creams may provide some benefits in improving skin appearance and tightness.
– Dermal fillers can compensate for looseness in some areas when caused by loss of fat beneath the skin (either age-related or caused by excessive exercise).
– Laser skin resurfacing treatments are used primarily to address skin imperfections such as cosmetic spots, blemishes, and acne scars, but they will also stimulate the production of new collagen and elastin beneath the skin’s surface, helping to tighten loose skin.
– Laser skin tightening lasers can also be used to address loose skin by heating the skin’s collagen fibers, which causes them to contract and tighten. It will also have the long-term effect of stimulating ongoing collagen production.
Interested in Skin Tightening Treatments?
Your Laser Skin Care is highly experienced in the application of dermal fillers, and in the use of both laser skin resurfacing and laser skin tightening techniques. We can provide you with advice on the most suitable treatment, or combination of treatments for your particular situation.
Contact us to learn more about our skin tightening treatment options!
