Have you ever wondered what your face will look like in the future? And what causes wrinkles in your face and how to avoid them? Or maybe you’re concerned already about how your skin is changing and that it seems to be going downhill?

Well, you’re not alone, I think most of us have. But I am here to teach you something crucial about your skin and your future face. And how you can control your aging process.

In this very first blog post of mine, I’ll give a short summary of what causes wrinkles and other signs of aging. Hopefully, it will motivate you to learn more about how to nurture your skin and slow down aging naturally. This post is sort of a glimpse of what this blog will be all about.

Keep reading and I’ll explain some vital facts about aging and how your daily choices will affect how you will look in the future. As an example, I will disclose how time has affected my own skin and face and how I’ve taken control over the skin-appearance and the result I have today.

Genes and aging: How does it hang together?

Many people seem to think it’s the genes that determine how fast or slow your skin will age. To some extent they are right, and to some they are wrong. Let me explain.

Genes do play an important role when it comes to your skin’s basic condition and how fast or slow it will lose firmness and texture over the years.

This is called the intrinsic aging, or chronological aging. You can almost from the name itself figure out it has to do with internal factors.

It’s a degenerative process that over time, simply put, will make your cells lose their power to rejuvenate and regenerate. And as a result, the skin will lose elasticity and develop signs of aging.

The intrinsic aging also include some of the speed that other tissues are broken down. Such as facial bone mass, fat, and muscles.

The speed of this process is something you inherit and therefore varies from person to person.

Now to the interesting part: How much do our genes actually affect the speed we develop wrinkles, lines, and sagginess?

The answer has changed during years of science, but today it’s thought that around 20-30 % of our skin’s aging process is due to our genetics. That is a perceivable role yes, but not that huge that many people like to think.

What’s more interesting is what else we can learn about the remaining 70-80 % of what causes wrinkles and other visible signs of aging.

That is what this blog will cover because those numbers mean that despite your genetic baseline you still have major potential to change and improve the condition and look of your skin. And to choose how fast your skin will age.

The part of aging you can control

“The best way to predict the future is to create it”

Abraham Lincoln

I love that quote because when it comes to skin health and aging nothing can be more true. As explained above, the large visible part of how your skin will age is not dependant on your genes. Instead, it is dependant on and controlled by, YOU.

The big part of your skin’s aging process and the number of wrinkles and lines you have or will have is due to what is called the extrinsic aging. Or in other words, aging caused by external factors.

Those factors are for example UV-radiation, stress, nutritional imbalance, inflammations, and pollutions. This is what you affect through your daily choices when it comes to skincare, sun protection, diet, and lifestyle.

Since these circumstances seem to account for the majority of the speed your skin will age, that means you are pretty much in control of how many wrinkles and lines you will get in the future. Good news for everyone!

The good news does not stop right there. There is actually one more, and this one should make you even more excited. Protective actions for preventing external aging will also, to some degree, help you slow down the intrinsic aging.

The right lifestyle, diet, and even some skincare products have been found to probably be able to turn on and off certain genes and affect the way we age internally. And the same is true for the opposite. External factors that damage your skin will alter some of your genes to increase aging even more.

This phenomenon is called epigenetics and its science is still in its infancy. I am not going to deepen in that subject right now. But it is worth mentioning that our choices may have an even larger effect than those 70-80 percent that we talked about earlier.

My own aging journey

A younger version of myself. Just about to graduate high school. I started to care for my skin at a pretty young age but not exactly rigorously and not knowing a lot.

Still, I tried my best with some common sense, some advice from my mom, and sometimes influenced by product advertising. I was fortunate to have good skin throughout the years but I also made many mistakes due to unawareness.

It wasn’t until I got closer to my mid 30ths that I started to develop a deeper interest in skin care and anti aging. And today, several years later I am confident that those actions in taking care of my skin and prevent it from aging has really paid off.

This picture is taken almost 21 years after high school graduation. Now, I actually think I look more rested in this photo. While on the first photo I think the lightning wasn’t very good and the picture is old. I also think I look very tired probably because of late party nights. Those days were rough haha. Trying to be a good student and a party princess at the same time.

Anyway, I can promise you that if it wasn’t for the proactive steps I’ve been taking, I would for sure look different today. Recent years I have been obsessed with eating the most skin-friendly diet and getting a redundancy of the most skin-beneficial nutrients, using the best sun protection, and learning all there is about skincare products and lifestyle changes that affect your skin. And this has for sure made an impact.

I surprise people I meet when I tell them how old I am and I get tons of questions about my skincare routine and my “secrets” for staying young.

I am grateful for the way my skin has turned out during these 21 years that have passed by. Of course, I can always wish I would have had the knowledge I have today, back then. That would have preserved my skin even more. And also saved my skin from damage and sensitivity problems that I have experienced due to the wrong kind of products, stress, etc.

With this blog, I wish to share the knowledge I have today and everything new I learn. So that you all can start doing the right things and transform your skin to the best version possible. Regardless of what age you are! The younger the better of course, but it is never ever too late.

Everything you do today will affect how you look tomorrow and in the coming years!

What will you look like in the future?

Well as explained, what your face and skin will look like when you get older is a lot up to you!

What causes wrinkles and many other signs of aging are not that much about your genetics. But much more in your lifestyle, your choice of skincare and protection, and your environment.

In this blog, I am dedicated to helping you take the right actions for a smoother and younger looking skin. We cannot control time, but what we can control is how fast we will age. We cannot get eternal youth. But we can make sure we age slowly and that we look our best no matter what age we are.

I believe that by looking younger than your real age, you will also feel more satisfied with getting older.

In the following posts, I will dig much deeper into this subject. I will educate and guide you step by step to the anti-aging solutions I have discovered and tried myself.

Your skin is exposed to many challenges every day that increase the speed of aging. Such as UV-radiation, stress, nutrient deprivation, inflammations and more. I’ll do my best to explain the solutions that you need to prevent and delay skin aging. And to some degree even reverse it.

To start out make sure you read my post about the 3 most powerful rules to delay aging. Hope you’ll enjoy this site and let me know if you have any questions!

Until next time!

Ann