The 7 S-Sins of Skin Ageing

How Your Understanding of Skin Starts With Your Lifestyle Roadmap

There’s one thing about getting older; it can’t be stopped. As much as we curse our friends settling down with bonds and babies or cover tell-tale signs of UV damage with make-up, the clock – unfortunately – carries on ticking. While change is good for us, to live your best life with your best skin, switching up your understanding not just of how your skin looks, but also why, is a game-changer. To do this, discovering the 7 S-Sins of Skin Ageing helps you uncover your specific lifestyle roadmap and pinpoint how to protect and treat to achieve a beautiful transformation.

Your S-Sins Profile: Why Your Lifestyle Roadmap Really Matters

Broken down, the 7 S-Sins are sun, sugar, stress, sleep, smoking, South African living, skin type, and your SPF use. Inherently, these elements are choices, and while this isn’t about making you feel guilty, life is about living after all.  It’s proof that making lifestyle changes does indeed affect skin. And in a very healthy way. As UV rays play a headline act (sun exposure, SA living, as well as the need for SPF use), altering the way you protect your skin will mean changing the course of how your skin ages. And the need is serious.

How Lifestyle Choices Accelerate or Slow Skin Ageing

Think about it this way: in South Africa, we’re lucky to relish up to 300 sunny days a year. Translation for skin damage? One of the highest UV levels that hits globally. For lighter skin, this equates to greater UV risk, and so if you’re not slathering on SPF50 daily (and reapplying throughout sun-exposed times), this is what you’re faced with: collagen loss, pigmentation, as well as precancerous change. Yikes. And an outdoorsy lifestyle doesn’t just involve the sun.

Consider dry air and pollution, both of which contribute to collagen breakdown and dehydrated skin. Two other collagen breakers are sugar and stress. While they wreak havoc with your precious collagen in different ways, these factors both cause skin to look dull and sadly can age your skin quicker than necessary. The fastest way to age a decade, though? Described as late nights and cigarettes, smoking and lack of sleep mean your skin doesn’t get the oxygen it needs. Healing slows, and so does a healthy complexion. You’re left with grey-toned lines and loss of firmness. Bad news, right?

How the 7 S-Sins Shape the Way Your Skin Ages

Now that you’ve covered the 7 S-Sins and understand the lifestyle factors that affect how your skin ages and why, you can make the best treatment choices. For sun-exposed skin and skin that’s been exposed to smoking and limited restorative sleep, stimulate collagen production with rejuvenating treatments like Laser Genesis. For dullness, consider chemical peels such as a Flash Peel, which brightens dry, ageing skin. Stress is a challenging component to manage and one that requires holistic treatment.

Apart from working on the internal with stress-balancing supplements, also look to health programs (nutrition, exercise, mindfulness), a calming facial that carves out time for you and your skin can be deeply relaxing. For tired, stressed, and dull-looking skin, the HydraTouch Facial is a multi-layered, advanced skin treatment that tackles de-ageing as well as issues like congestion, dehydration, puffiness, and mild sagging. Remember, having the right home care products on hand is also part of your lifestyle roadmap. This is key to being disciplined about your skin type, and its corresponding SPF.

Your skin type is the blueprint of how your skin ages, and so making the right prevention and treatment choices, dependent on lighter (burns faster) or darker tones (pigments very easily), spells out how your complexion may look down the line. All skin types need consistent SPF, and with this product, others that support it, like antioxidant-dosed serums (Vitamin C is a go-to) and collagen therapies from resilience. Remember, there’s safety in numbers.

In Conclusion

As thinking evolves around skin ageing, so too can our planning for how we protect and treat our faces. Research is a wonderful thing; it gives us insight into how our bodies work and how we can better take care of them for longevity. For skin that means health, so our complexions not only look amazing but feel incredible too. Here’s to the power of knowledge.