Turning 40: The Decade of Skinvestment
There is a phrase that many of us are familiar with — life begins at 40! While this may be true psychologically, the same thing certainly cannot be said for our skin! Over 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry has taught me a lot about caring for the skin, including my own.
Your 40s are a great time to claim complete control of your life and begin laying the foundations you’ll later rely on at 50,60, and onwards. We also find that it is the time when people can focus on their health due to increasing necessity and accessibility. More often than not, these factors incorporate a focus on aesthetics – particularly the skin. In this blog post, I’ll share my tips and routine for keeping my skin looking younger and healthier both now and as you move through the subsequent few phases of your life.
Prevention is key!
A key theme throughout this blog is prevention. Whilst there are some fantastic products and treatments out there, it’s so important to focus on maintaining the natural glow you already have. To do this, I follow my personalised skincare tips and stick to them religiously.
The first thing that I learned is to ensure I have medical-grade skincare products, including SPFs, retinol, anti-oxidants and moisturisers. Ultimately, the goal is to have your skin soak in the ingredients you have applied to its surface, so having high-quality, effective products is crucial.
I also always take my makeup off before I go to bed, no matter how tired I am. This step is crucial in allowing your skin to breathe and repair overnight. My go-to overnight treatment is retinol. I contrast that with vitamin C in the morning (with a good SPF and moisturiser combo). If you’ve read any of our other blogs, you know precisely how Henriette and I feel about SPF. It is simply a non-negotiable must. Whether it’s winter, summer, rainy, or sub-tropical, inside or outside, the sun’s UV rays or blue light from devices can still penetrate your skin, accelerating wrinkles and causing damage.
Anti-Wrinkle Injections and other add-ons
Alongside the standard skincare practices, I have opted to supplement my routine with regular anti-wrinkle injections (Botox) to prevent static lines from forming. This choice is personal, and I have decided to have these injections to help target lines on my face. This approach stops wrinkles in their tracks before they form static, at rest lines, which require further treatment to tackle them.
To supplement this, I have regular skin booster and chemical peel treatments. Profhilo is my skin booster of choice because I’m focused on skin radiance. It has minimal downtime and can be done during a lunch break, and I love it for its dewy, glow effect.
At SKIN2, we also offer Redensity- a secondary skin booster brand at the clinic. I’ve had Redentisty in the past, which can be placed in specific areas such as upper lips lines. Redensity has helped me minimise the appearance of these ‘barcode lips lines’ and improve skin quality in this area. The beauty of having a range of skin boosters in our portfolio is that we can tailor the treatment to the individual problem. Between treatments, I switch between having chemical peels and microneedling to ‘reboot the skin’ and keep the skin cells fresh and rejuvenated.
One other treatment I have recently had is lip filler. We are cautious about the level of filler we use at SKIN2 as we want to ensure our clients leave feeling they have an enhancement of their natural look rather than a full-scale change to their lips aesthetics. I lead by example in this area and ensure the levels of soft filler are at a minimum.
These steps might sound daunting, but not every step of this plan is applied daily or even monthly. For example, having a collagen peel just once per quarter can make the skin appear younger and fresher. However, other procedures such as anti-wrinkle injections and skin boosters need to be topped up every three to six months.
Chemical peels are a great place to start if you’re new to the skincare game, and they are very affordable. There’s a treatment for every budget, every skin type, and every goal. Further, for those who wish to explore injectable skincare treatments and have reservations, we can help you ease into it by introducing other elements initially.
The most important part of your ‘skinvestment’ is doing your part. The closest comparison we can make in dentistry is that having in-clinic skin treatments alone without a consistent home care routine is like seeing the hygienist but not brushing between visits. However, with so many products and treatments on the market, it can be challenging to know where to start. I hope this blog has provided some insight into the key steps we need to include in our routines, but if you are still feeling overwhelmed, we have a bank of blogs that you can reference.
We offer personalised consultations that will help you develop a skin-care plan tailored to your needs. So whether you’re trying to combat wrinkles or get rid of acne, we can help you find products and treatments that will work for you. To book a consultation, call us at 0118 978 6083 or email [email protected]. We’ll help you get started on your journey through your Skinvestment years.
