Smiling Helps Prevent Aging, Wrinkles
November 15, 2010 by admin
Filed under News Stories
November 15th, 2010
Natural News
By: Jonathan Benson
The old adage that it takes more muscle power to frown than to smile may finally be put to rest, at least in terms of how using those muscles affects the aging process. According to Heike Hoefler, a German fitness trainer, actively working facial muscles by smiling helps to reduce wrinkles, lines, and other appearances of aging.
“Active facial gymnastics is super effective,” Hoefler is quoted as saying in China Daily. “It can reduce expression lines.”
And that is exactly what she helps her class participants achieve. By teaching them how to smile more through the use of various smiling exercises, Hoefler is helping her students to avoid things like “anger lines” between the eyebrows, wrinkles around the mouth, and horizontal forehead lines.
Facial skin is composed of a tapestry of elastic and collagen fibers that bind with water to give it a firm, toned appearance. But as a person ages, these fibers become increasingly less able to bind with water, resulting in sagging skin, wrinkles, and other undesirable appearances.
While there are numerous skin creams available that help to slow this process, Hoefler says it is helpful to practice smiling exercises as well. In the same way that working arms and legs in the weight room tightens and builds muscles, smiling helps to improve firmness in the cheeks, chin, and skin around the eyes.
One exercise Hoefler recommends is holding a strong smile for six seconds, followed by a ten-second break. When performing this exercise, she says it is best to press your thumb and a finger from each hand on the corners of both your eyes and mouth to hold the skin in place. Doing this will prevent wrinkles from forming in those spots as a result of the exercise.
Another useful exercise is pushing air in your mouth from one cheek to the other using your mouth muscles, holding it on each side for a few seconds before switching. And sticking out your tongue, she says, will work your chin muscles and help prevent saggy skin from forming.
I am 32 yrs old and while I don’t really have deep wrinkles yet! I use the Olive Night Creme (from Made from Earth) – it does help out with deep creases on the sides of my mouth, commonly referred to as laugh lines. But it has smoothed these out and made a more soft and smoother texture. This even helped out my frown lines as well. Some describe a tingle sensation, but I dont feel that.
Wooo whoooo!! I’m ganna live forever and be as smooth as a baby’s butt.
I noticed something about my family and some of my friend’s families: Mine didn’t take much stuff seriously and we cracked each other up all the time no matter what we were doing. It was just fun all the time.
Some of my friends’ families hated each other and did nothing but fight and would probably go weeks without even smiling. Those friends were always sick and they didn’t have much money.
Me and my family were all skinny, healthy (despite all the drinking), and prosperous.