Tested anti-aging tips from the experts

Expert advice on keeping the years off your face.

The buzz from the beauty editor

I've been obsessed with the fight against aging since the tender age of 21. My mother, on the other hand, considers each birthday a blessing, and subsequently, her skin-care routine is of the soap-and-water variety. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium. Combine the courage to grow old gracefully with some simple, skin-saving anti-aging strategies, and you'll age happily and beautifully.

Insider information from the beauty bunch


Multitasking

"I believe all anti-aging products should combine multiple anti-aging ingredients so that the product/formula has the ability to: combat and protect against free-radical damage; soothe stressed skin to avoid free-radical damage; nourish and strengthen the skin; reduce the visible signs of aging through stimulating collagen production and the growth of healthy young cells -- without causing irritation and/or inflammation. When irritation or inflammation is present, free radicals run rampant and this can lead to premature aging. Ideally, the products should contain chirally correct ingredients, since [they] increase the effectiveness of the ingredients while reducing the chance of inflammation/irritation."

-- Shan Albert

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Anti-aging essentials

"Everyone in my office, male or female, regardless of age, is advised to use sunscreen with zinc oxide in the morning and a retinoid in the evening. The retinoid I choose depends on the skin they have. With acne, it's Retin-A, which kills two birds with one stone. It addresses acne and stimulates collagen. If a patient is in her 30s, then maybe it will be a retinol, which is less irritating. For a more mature woman in her 50s, with drier skin, I might prescribe Renova, which has mineral oil."
-- Jessica Wu, MD

Miracle workers

"I tend to dismiss any ingredient that promises, by itself, to rejuvenate the skin (what I call 'miracle ingredients') because skin aging is multi-factorial. Look, for example, at the news release that claimed a scientist at Clarkson University has discovered why older skin feels 'leathery': the cytoskeleton of epithelial cells becomes more rigid. I have no problem in accepting that the cytoskeleton, the protein net that helps the cell keep its shape, changes with the skin's age. But what about all the other changes we know happen in skin cells and in the dermis? Collagen and elastin, deep in the dermis, are modified in ways that affect their elasticity, and so the epidermis changes in many other ways in addition to whatever happens to the cytoskeleton. This miracle ingredient won't work for the other factors that make a skin look old. In short, miracle ingredients (the 'one" that will make you young again) work only for marketing."

-- Shan Albert

Peel appeal

"Home peels are essential, and they're gentle enough to use every day. The pH fluctuation from step one to step two [in MD Skincare's Alpha Beta Daily Face Peel] is a mechanism that allows the skin to produce more collagen and makes existing collagen resort to a more pristine structure."
-- Dennis Gross, MD

Triple threat

To prevent aging: "Protect the skin from inflammation and keep it calm, because inflammation results in the overproduction of destructive free radicals; protect the skin wtih antioxidants to keep destructive free radicals under control, and provide the skin with the nourishment it needs."
-- Shan Albert

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