OHHHHH MY AGING SKIN!

In the aesthetics’ world, many nurses “stare a little too long”, and I too, can be guilty of this. I am not judging you by any means, it is just the hazard of my two decades long career and the nurse in me, that wants to help with everyone's beauty and skincare (whether you asked for it or not!)

What am I searching your face for? In the biz, we refer to it as the “global signs of aging” or “visible signs of aging.” I cannot see what is happening internally that results in aging. I cannot see your DNA or your genetics, but I can see the visible manifestations of that internal aging and those caused by the number one cause of aging - UV damage, and other culprits such as environmental pollution and lifestyle. Aging is a multifactorial, dynamic process and fortunately there are many modalities to address the process. Of course, there is NOTHING wrong with aging per se, I mean, we cannot live a long life without it. BUT there are those of us who want to look good for our age because it makes us feel good! Let me share with you what I look for when I do a patient assessment and educate you how to look at yourself with grace, set realistic expectations so that you engage in beauty steps that enhance your looks (not drastically change them) and thus, enhance your life. I am frustrated at the world where everyone is starting to look the same, individual features that are beautiful and unique to an individual are blurred and changed because there is a standard of beauty that has been declared. I see beauty in everyone - there is something or many things that are beautiful in everyone who walks through my office doors, friends, or family I see, or in strangers I meet on the street. And even though I love what I do in my office, all the procedures and treatments that make up my medical aesthetics career, the one thing you will hear me say over and over again, is this: work on your skin quality. Make your skin healthy, and you will be delighted by the outcome. They say the eyes are the window to your soul and the skin is the reflection of your health. I could not agree more - but I am getting ahead of myself. SO, what do we look for?

I was asked the other day; how do I know I am aging well? That is a loaded question and one that is not easy to answer. Comparing ourselves to others is a recipe for disaster made much easier to do with our love/hate relationship with social media. We cannot compare ourselves to others because we don’t have the same life story. We should take notice of how we look, how we feel and how we choose to age. Gracefully letting it just happen or gracefully fighting it with every means possible. Both are good and it’s up to you. My mom does nothing, I do everything. Both are simply fine. The thing that makes me sad is I have received texts saying: “Help me I’m ugly!” Trying to be funny? Probably. Desperate cry for help? Maybe. I blame it on our culture where youth is everything and getting old, or at least LOOKING old, is undesirable to lots of people. We get down on ourselves and criticize how we look. Don’t get me wrong; it is HARD to get older but the alternative is death so we need a fundamental change in our brains that will allow us to accept what’s happening. We should do what we can to improve it to the extent we want to and go out there and live our best lives. That is my goal anyway and something I need to remind myself to do every day.

We age on the inside and we age from the outside too. There is not much we can do about our genetics, the traits of our parents and grandparents, are what they are. We can, however, minimize the external forces contributing to aging and try to treat, correct, support, or reverse some of the visible signs of aging, if we choose to do so (I do not want anyone to feel they must do anything at all other than wear daily sunscreen to reduce skin cancer). I will focus on the manifestations of aging from my perspective. As an aesthetic nurse. I will focus on the things I look for in my daily practice with each one of my patients. I am known for standing at the foot of the exam table and carefully looking at everyone from all angles, as the patient often laughs and squirms in their seat hating the scrutiny but loving how earnest, I am too. Patients also look directly at me too, especially when I’m up close, and personal to them, so it goes both ways. It makes us giggle because I look so serious, this is just beauty after all we ask, right? Well, it is serious business to me- it's my job!  

Focusing on the face, aging depletes the major substances in our skin, thinning and narrowing of our boney structures, flattening and descent of our youthful fat pads and weakening and loss of support from our muscles and ligaments. Skin quality, sagging, bagging, eye socket hollowing, decreased muscle tone can all be signs of normal aging. Even though our skin is just one piece of the aging face puzzle, I will focus on this for the blog today.  

The global signs or most visibly noticeable or dramatic signs of aging or simply the sh*t that happens to our skin when we age are:

• Skin hydration/moisturization changes- usually seen as dry & dehydrated  
• Skin cell turnover changes- usually seen as dull, less bright appearance
• Skin tone/coloration changes- usually seen as dark spots, unevenness, and discolorations
• Skin texture changes- usually seen as roughness, scaliness, less soft
• Skin consistency changes- usually seen as fine lines and wrinkles and surface imperfections
• Skin firmness/elasticity changes- usually seen as sagging of the lower face and bagging of the lower eye area
• Skin quality changes- usually a result of all of the above and seen as an overall loss of youthful features: smooth, plump, vibrant, lively and “alive” skin

All these changes happen to some degree to all of us. It depends, as said earlier, on our genetic predisposition and the life we have led. Lifestyle choices have a great deal to do with how our skin ages. The number one contributor to skin aging is the sun and the resultant UV photodamage it causes from chronic daily or intense intermittent exposure. It all adds up and is the single most important thing that contributes most to both skin aging and skin cancer development. Other major contributors include pollution exposure, smoking, excessive drinking and overall nutrition and water intake. We can do a lot to alter the course of skin aging and it is never too late to start the process. If you are like me, I see every day as another opportunity to drink lots of water, be perfect with my sunscreen application, etc.

In the last few years there has been a lot of pressure to use multiple skincare steps to address the multiple manifestations to aging without concern for the overall number of products in the regimen. Just looking above at the most common visible signs of aging you have upwards of 20 issues to address. If dryness is your issue you can choose from a hyaluronic acid, ceramide, or shea butter serum. If you have roughness or scaling you should look toward acids or retinoids, niacinamide, peptides. For fine lines and wrinkles, Vitamin C and peptides. For age spots and hyperpigmentation… and the list goes on. There’s so much to do. Where do you begin? Before I created THE ROUTE, this is the point where I would throw my hands up in frustration. How could I possibly expect myself, much less my patients, to apply a zillion single ingredient focused products to address all the individual skin changes. I couldn’t and I didn’t want it for myself, and I certainly didn’t expect patients to follow suit.

For me, I want to address it all, I want all the tried and true as well as the latest and greatest, I want it to work, and I want it now. Sound familiar? SO, I look at it as a skin multivitamin. Our bodies need vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants and much like the skin, our bodies can manufacture some, their production decreases with age and we need to supplement through our diet or through supplements. SO are we going to take one pill to get our Vitamin C, another pill to get our Vitamin B, another for, and so on. You see where I’m going, we’d be taking 50 different pills morning and night. Thank goodness for the daily multivitamin. Same goes for the skin, it’s almost impossible for the things we eat to reach our skin in any meaningful way so we must supplement it in the form of topical skincare. We need formulations that have ingredients that penetrate the skin and act in a way that replenishes that which the skin has lost or has diminished production of or restore that which has been diminished or supplement that which is no longer produced. An understanding of how the skin ages and the ingredients that help the most, in an expert formula, can be achieved. The skin and its complex system need a lot of help and treating each issue with an individual product is not only impractical but also silly. You don’t need more than a few wisely chosen and master-expertly formulated multi-tasking products day and night to do an outstanding job for your skin!

Our new, breakthrough product, THE PINK PEPTIDE BOOST™, is a multi-tasking serum that treats the visible or global signs of aging in one affordable, luxurious product.

It’s beautiful, natural pink color is derived from our unique, skin calming Vitamin B12.  

Skin brightness and discoloration are addressed by our patented and stable Vitamin C derivative- the gold standard antioxidant.

A complex of Niacinamide, ADT and Glutamine that have a positive impact on skin degradation.  

PGA Amino acids aid skin hydration, collagen and elastin production and improve skin tone.

Palmitoyl Glycine is a key amino acid that helps skin firmness and improves wrinkles.

Di, Tri and Oligopeptides communicate directly with skin cells to help improve skin tone, suppleness, sagging, firmness, and production of hyaluronic acid & collagen.  

Epidermic Growth Factor (EGF) is a peptide found natively in our body that acts on repair, growth and differentiation of new skin cells. In the skin, they help increase the production of collagen, HA and elastin.  

As we age, our body produces less EGF to counteract these processes. Our natural plant encapsulated EGF growth factor peptide acts in the deep epidermis to help reverse the aging effect on the skin. Human growth factors are a hotly debated topic in skincare and we have discovered a natural plant derived peptide alternative we can all feel good about! Safety and efficacy are our primary concerns, and we have both!  

THE PINK PEPTIDE BOOST™ is the perfect way to love yourself and boost your skin’s beauty at any age. It combines the best of nature and technology, which is what we are all about at THE ROUTE! Try it because you are intrigued by the beautiful pink color and luxurious feel of the serum. Continue using it because you witness your skin improve daily. Our clinical studies prove it works and you will see a difference in no time! I know this will quickly become a favorite of yours because I know I can’t live without it. When I’m worried, I may be at the bottom of the bottle and get that sense of panic I may run out - I know I have a winner! Get yours today, the wait is over! You are going to LOVE it! It’s a Nurse Nancy skincare BFF promise!

XOX  

Stay Happy & Healthy,

Nurse Nancy