Should We Try To Prevent Aging?
AS I ENTERED MIDLIFE and fought the inevitability of the latter years of my life, I often asked myself how hard should we try to prevent aging?
The question came up again recently as I flipped through a copy of my teenage daughter's InStyle magazine, and I was bombarded by a lot of marketing messages about what would make my skin look its youngest and best.
And I realized that foodstuffs top the list for what marketers in 2007 want me to believe will improve my skin - that is, food smeared on my skin, not ingested.
Rice, wheat proteins, fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices, lycopene, shiitake mushroom complex, Asian yuzu seed extract, vitamins C, E, A, and D are all pitched as ingredients we should try to prevent aging.
Really?
And then, of course, there are all the highly scientific-sounding substances. Now I'm as gullible as the next person and Iíll try anything to prevent aging. Iíd love nothing more than to find a skin cream that magically makes my skin dewy and young looking.
I've tried a lot of them over the years, and I've done so by willfully ignoring my natural skepticism. Do I really think poly-collagen/glycolic acid will prevent aging? Or a mineral skin osmoter?
Can a product with 44 ingredients really protect my skin from free radicals? What are free radicals? And all the various “complexes” - alpha-hydroxy, anti-aging glyco-nutrient, rejuvenating shiitake...
I'm overwhelmed by the hype surrounding what we should try to prevent aging and frankly I am confused by the choices. Counting just the specifically anti-aging ads in the magazine, there were 18 different companies, many with multiple products, representing almost 12 percent of all the ads. And I didn't even count the teeth-whitening or hair-brightening ads.
The one advertised treatment that I definitely know is good for skin is quitting cigarettes ñ and is there anyone out there that has to ask ìshould we try this to prevent agingî when it comes to stopping smoking?
That itís good for the skin was the pitch that Nicoderm CQ was making - “Stop now and discover the results of healthier skin. Get serious.” In other words: if the increased risks of heart attack, stroke and lung cancer don't convince you, stop smoking because your skin will look better.
If an appeal to vanity gets enough people to ask ìshould we try this to prevent agingî and itís what it takes to help people quit smoking, I'm all for it.
But that ad reminded me that what counts in the skin game probably isn't so much what we put on it, but what we don't put in our bodies. Less is really more. And if we truly want to prevent aging, we should look to our diet instead of the cosmetics counter.
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