What Your Skincare Regimen Should Look Like After 35

French women know that the earlier you start a comprehensive skincare regimen, the more youthful your skin will remain. Still, no matter what you do, your skin will thin and lose elasticity as you get older. When you reach your thirties and forties, different factors affect your skin, as it irrevocably starts to change and become more fragile. Small lines and wrinkles start to appear. Its power to regenerate, as well as its oil production diminishes, leaving your skin much drier. This is the time to update your beauty routine!

Perfect Your Cleansing Routine

Your cleansing routine should be adjusted so that you use products that are more hydrating. Whether your skin is oily or dry, the cleansing or exfoliating foams and the drying lotions of your teens and twenties are no longer an option.

Check Your Hormones

Most hormones have a role in skin regeneration. Hormonal fluctuations, whether they’re physiological (puberty, menopause) or the side effect of an illness (excessive or insufficient production) or linked to a lifestyle (stress, lack of sleep), all have an effect on the skin.

During perimenopause and menopause, when a woman’s hormonal production slows down, skin-protective estrogen levels drop considerably. This leads to a decrease in hydration and a decrease in the production of collagen fibers. The skin becomes less toned and less supple, as well as thinner and drier. In addition, many women have undiagnosed or under-treated hypothyroidism (not enough of the thyroid hormones that regulate your metabolism), which often leaves the skin dry, pale, and yellowish and can even thicken it, sometimes creating swelling.

Including anti-aging creams in your skincare can prove useful in reducing the visible effects of hormonal changes during perimenopause. For example, retinoids (vitamin-A acid, retinol, retinaldehyde) and fruit acids are useful to smooth the superficial layers. Retinoids also stimulate the deeper skin layers. Antioxidant-based creams (such as vitamin C, vitamin E, carotenoids, resveratrol, and polyphenols) decrease the harmful effects that pro-oxidant substances (linked to the environment, the sun in particular) can have on the skin. Other ingredients to look for include glycerols, essential fatty acids, hyaluronic acid, and ceramides.

Hydrate Your Skin

No matter your age, water loss is an ongoing process. That being said, you need to keep your skin hydrated for it to stay supple. A good hydrating moisturizer is an essential part of your skincare regimen.

When you reach your mid-thirties, you want more moisture and creams that will keep your natural glow. Keep your routine simple with a day cream applied directly on the skin or on top of a serum. This is also a good time to start using masks, which have a fast-acting potency that ensures results. Serum-infused sheet masks are extremely easy to use and clean up.

Drinking plenty of water has never been more important and investing in a humidifier for your bedroom will also help to avoid waking up in the morning with dry skin.

Don’t Forget the Eye Area!

No matter how old you are, an eye contour treatment should become part of your daily skincare routine. The skin under and around your eyes needs extra care because it’s thinner and more delicate than the rest of the skin on your face. Compounding this is the fact that there are also fewer sebaceous (oil) glands, so the skin in this area will always be drier, too, and more prone to fine lines and wrinkles. It also has more capillaries leading to your eyes, which often accounts for dark circles or a bluish tint if you are very fair.

Quick Solutions Are Not the Solution

You must always remember that it is easier to protect than to correct. That is something that, psychologically, we do not like to hear. It explains why botox and other instant treatments work so well. But even botox, in the long term, isn’t as effective. The dosage must be increased, it can alter your features, and the effect will never be as stunning as it was the first time.

Same goes for the different types of injections, such as fillers. An injection of hyaluronic acid works right away to firm up the cheeks and helps make the wrinkles disappear. It gives a lifting effect, but it doesn’t last. Especially if you do it too often—it creates pockets that have a tendency to deflate… And then you need more injections. That’s why you can see older women with their cheeks unnaturally high. And the day they stop the injections, they look much older because gravity takes over.

Natural Treatments

Instead, I recommend facial massages, as they will tone and hydrate the skin and give you a great glow. Just as working out tightens the muscles of your body, facial massage tightens your skin. Regularly practicing these methods of molding stimulates the muscles of the face in areas that usually hollow with age.

Another non-invasive treatment is microcurrent therapy. It uses an electrical current that flows through the skin and facial muscles, causing them to tighten. It feels like an hour of facial massaging! Electrical stimulation of the skin brings outstanding results and fights effectively against signs of aging like wrinkles and loss of elasticity. Like facial massage, it helps to enhance your natural collagen and elastin levels by improving circulation and reeducating the underlying facial muscles. It’s like a great workout for your face—and the more you do it, the more toned your skin will be.