Aging Eyelids

aging eyelids

The Truth About Collagen and Youth

When it comes to wrinkled skin, especially around the eyelids, collagen is not beneficial. While it goes against the convention of what people hear on commercials for beauty creams, the facts are this:
  • Collagen and elastin are the two protein complexes that provide structure below the skin surface. Collagen is rigid, whereas elastin - as its name implies - is elastic.
  • In youthful skin, the amounts of collagen and elastin allow the skin to be both taught and stretchy, like a rubber band. But as skin ages, the elastin content diminishes, allowing the "steel girder" protein of collagen to play the more dominant role. This is why plastic surgery doesn't replicate the appearance of youth - it only places the skin on stretch. The skin itself is still less elastic than in youth.
  • While it is not possible to reverse the appearance of aging in eyelid skin, there are nutritional factors that improve the appearance. Like all nutritional supplementation, it take 2-3 months to build up enough reserves of various ingredients. And once improvement is seen, these supplements have to continue to be taken, since their effects are temporary.

Hypoxia

Examine the skin around the eyelids and earlobe skin of chronic smokers and you will notice clusters of very fine wrinkles. This is a result of years of having slightly reduced blood supply and oxygen - known as hypoxia - to those tissues. While skin architecture changes to skin due to hypoxia are largely irreversible without surgery, the elimination of smoking and taking targeted nutritional supplementation to encourage healthy circulation play important roles in healthy tissue function.

Eyelash Loss

Loss of eyelashes occurs in both men and women as they age. Young hormonal balance appears to play an important role in both the structure and function of eyelash follicles.

Oxidation

As we now know, oxidation plays a major role - perhaps the major role - in many conditions associated with aging.
What is oxidation?
It is the formation of unstable forms of oxygen that are highly reactive and damaging to other molecules. Unlike the oxygen that we breath, unstable forms of oxygen combine with other molecules in tissues and make new abnormal molecules that are unhealthy for the body's tissues.
Antioxidant nutritional therapy works to neutralize these effects by combining with unstable oxygen forms and rendering the reactive molecules powerless to cause damage.

Dark Spots

Pigmentation increases with age due to several factors, including oxidation, trauma and exposure to the sun's UV light. Creams are ineffective at removing skin pigmentation because they fail to penetrate below the surface epidermis layer to the deeper dermis layer, where the melanin pigment resides.
The dark form of melanin is eumelanin, whereas the blonder form of melanin is pheomelanin. Nutritional supplementation is able to favor creation of blonde melanin rather than dark melanin.

Factors that increase the aged appearance of eyelid skin include:

  • Loss of elastin, which reduces the ratio of elastin to collagen
  • Hypoxia, or reduced oxygen circulation
  • Eyelash loss
  • Oxidative damage to tissues
  • Pigmentation ("dark spots")

These factors, combined, reduce the youthful appearance of a young healthy eyelid appearance. Creams and cosmetics fail to get below the skin's surface, where aging processes occur, while targeted nutritional supplementation delivers specific molecules via the bloodstream that address the root causes of aging appearance.

Lutein and Zeaxanthin, natural plant pigments called carotenoids, have been shown to not only benefit eye health, but also brain and skin health. They do this by helping to absorb harmful blue and ultraviolet light rays, and to act as antioxidants, which removes harmful metabolic products that would otherwise do more harmful damage. Plants themselves rely on these pigments, which allow growth from the sun's rays while dissipating the excess energy so that it does not harm the plant.