HM’s Food & Wine Magazine

The 30’s is the age somewhere in the middle of your life, still with youthful vigor and sense of looking good. You may have settled into your career, have a perfect family or be beautifully single. You feel comfortable and confident in your fabulous shoes, decent clothes though you may be noticing a few wrinkles in your path - or on your face. But there are many options you can do to prevent aging, sun damage, and beautify your skin well.

The first and vital step is to prevent sun tanning and adopt an anti-aging skin care routine. Nowadays with women smoking and scorching their skin outdoors even more, skin care in your 30’s has evolved from working exclusively on prevention to a heavy dose of skin treatment as well.

Limit Sun Exposure
Excessive sun exposure in your earlier years has caused wrinkles and fine lines, in addition to drying your skin. So, reversing the damage from your earlier golden days is vital by adding anti-aging products to your routine. And for any age: sunscreen is the most important to keep off the sun damage.

Anti-Aging Building Blocks
In your 30’s, you have to build the skin care regimen of your 20’s - typically a cleanser, exfoliating product and moisturizer - by incorporating anti-aging formulas.  An eye cream is always effective as a preventive measure and treatment for under eye dark circles and crow’s foot.

Though many products help with darkness around the eye and smoothing wrinkles and lines, it’s good to know which ingredient is doing what. Look for eye creams that include Retinol, alpha hydroxy acids, copper, and vitamin C, because they stimulate collagen growth. Ingredients like vitamin K, kojic acid, and hydroquinone lighten the dark circles around the eyes.

Just as wrinkles around the eyes begin to appear, so do the fine lines on the rest of your face. Again, blame your collagen, or the lack thereof, for dwindling as you age. Because retinoid products, derivatives of vitamin A, stimulate the production of collagen, they reduce brown spots, smoothen wrinkles and other signs of aging. Unlike many anti-aging formulas, retinoids’ efficacy has been always appreciated.

Acne
The products mentioned above also help treat acne. Though you’re thinking acne is an unattractive blemish of the past, unfortunately, it doesn’t completely disappear in your 30’s too. Instead it arrives before and during your periods.

Retinoid products should be used by medical prescription only and have side effects of redness and irritation. Dermatologists, however, say these side effects will last about 4 to 6 weeks after which you’ll reap the glowing benefits. Retinol products are offered over the counter, but are less potent and not as effective as retinoid treatments.

Moisturize
You should also start using serums daily, which are said to penetrate deep into the skin and provide hydration, giving radiance to a dull complexion. Always apply serums before your moisturizer.

Your skin care routine will contain many steps - sunscreen, cleanser, exfoliating product, eye cream, serum, and other anti-aging products. Though this sounds way too much, remember you only have one beautiful face, so treat it with kindness, and with some great effective products.

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