The trick to youthful looks starts with a look back at old photographs of a younger you. Maybe it’s a playground or beach shot where you have a great carefree moment. You have shiny, bouncy hair, perfectly arched eyebrows, a natural healthy glow, clear eyes, a happy smile (and hopefully most of your teeth), warm round cheeks and dark, full lashes. There is not a wrinkle in sight! Fortunately, most of us still feel almost as good as we did then, so why can’t we look that young again? Maybe a little magic will do the trick!
Rosy cheeks can be had with makeup and a healthy glow comes from eating properly and getting enough sleep and just enough sun for proper vitamin D levels. Exercise can help with weight balance (not too skinny and not too heavy) and muscle tone so we can show off bare arms, legs and tummy. Getting enough hydration also helps keep skin elastic and more frequent use of moisturizers are now needed everywhere on the body paying special attention to our hands. Hands and necks can really define our age! Clear eyes are helped by proper sleep, natural tear-type eye drops and wearing sunglasses when driving as well as walking and playing outdoors. Eyelashes can be made to look darker and fuller with makeup or even lash extensions (no mascara needed!).
Eyebrows start to lighten up, thin out and even turn white! A regular visit to a brow boutique or salon can keep us perfectly manicured there, and there are professional eyebrow dyes or tints to darken and highlight what still remains of our eye “frame”. I was using eyelash mascara on my brows, then voila, out comes a new product made especially for eyebrows (looks the same to me!). However, I now use that to darken and fill in thinning brows. Lips also seem to thin, and although there are a lot of lipstick brands that tout “luscious lips”, lips need to be plumped up first for the full effect! Lip plumpers sold over the counter tend to wear off in no time, but a professional series of injections works wonders (on your pocketbook as well!).
As we age, the outer ring of our iris begins to fade making eyes look old. Colorful contacts can enliven our eyes. Our teeth tend to yellow with age as well as wear down. Regular visits to the dentist will keep our teeth healthy, but veneers or tooth-colored fillings to replace worn edges and all of the whitening products out there can rejuvenate our smiles. The skin around our lips also begins to pucker and we begin to develop “jowls” due to loss of collagen and muscle tone and connectivity under the skin in these areas. Keeping weight down helps for the jowl area and never having smoked, sucked heavily on drinking straws or any other similar motion (playing the French horn?) would mean that the lines above your lips might be spared from deep creases for a bit longer in life, but eventually we could all use some of the new rejuvenating injectables meant to decrease lines and plump tissue to keep those lines from reforming.
But the biggest magic trick is to replace lost hair! There is a laser hair brush on the market that is absolutely the best thinning hair treatment. The Nutreve Personal Hair Therapy Laser contains 35 pulsing cool temperature lasers that increase the blood flow to the base of the hair follicle allowing each to produce a thicker, shinier hair shaft. Using it every other day for just 15 to 20 minutes is a breeze, and with rechargeable batteries it is only a one-time cost. Any type or ethnicity of hair, dyed, natural, straightened, etc. is a candidate for laser hair restoration. Because it is a natural hair loss treatment it is also safe for a person taking any type of prescription medication or using any other type of hair loss treatment. Shampoos and conditioners help with body and shine, but for true volume and thick, youthful hair only the laser hair brush treatment “does the trick”!
