Human beings are creatures that are seen to age almost every second. This is no cause for alarm since it is normal. As much as we would hate to admit it, aging is a part of us, and there is nothing we can do about it. While aging naturally is no cause for alarm, you should be concerned about premature aging.
Premature Aging?
Premature aging is the name given to the process whereby a person gets older in a quicker way as compared to normal. This condition is observed in people who seem to look older than their actual age. Premature aging does not refer to the skin looking older alone; it also concerns the body as a whole, where you not only look old but also feel old.
Naturally, a person should be able to see the signs of old age at around the age of 30, but premature aging can set in anywhere along the line as you grow older. It can come as early as 20, depending on the kind of lifestyle you encourage. What are some of the signs that can suggest that a person is aging faster? Let’s explore.
Signs And Symptoms Of Premature Aging
The following are some of the signs that show that you are aging prematurely:
Your Skin Becomes Dull
One clear sign of premature aging is when you start to notice that the luster in your skin is no longer there. Your skin basically loses it’s natural glow. This happens when the epidermis (the outer layer of your skin) begins to lose it’s moisture. In the process, your skin is unable to replace the dead skin cells, thereby causing your skin to appear dull. The dullness comes as a result of the dead skin cells on your skin.
Your Pores Become Visible
Another sign of premature aging is enlarged pores. These pores make your appearance more mature. It happens that, in the process of premature aging, your skin quickly loses its elasticity, which in turn leads to more visible pores.
Weaker Bones
Once you begin to age prematurely, you will notice that you feel pain in your joints as well as in your bones. Although you might just be around 25, you still get these usual pains in your bones, joints, and the like. It is a sign of premature aging.
Wrinkles
As soon as you start to age, one sure sign is that you begin to notice fine lines on your skin and face. These are a few of the very first signs that will let you know that something is wrong with your skin.
Dry And Rough Skin
When you age prematurely, one telltale sign is when you start to notice dryness and itchiness in your skin. Your skin then feels very rough to the touch. It mostly happens as a result of a lack of moisture, about which we will talk in more detail.
Frail Body
Generally, your body becomes weak and frail. It becomes a norm when you always feel tired after doing basic chores that you used to do previously with no qualms. That should tell you that, you are aging prematurely.
Skin Sagging
Another sign is, that your skin begins to lose its collagen and elasticity, causing it to lose it’s natural appearance. In the end, it begins to sag.
Appearance Of Liver Spots
Liver spots are said to be the tiny black or brown spots that develop on the skin as a result of aging. These things together make you look older than your actual age.
8 Lifestyle Habits That Make You Age Faster
Intake Of Too Much Alcohol
The concept of alcohol and aging is quite a shocking revelation. Alcohol has a lot of negative effects on the body as a whole. Aside from weakening your liver or possibly killing it outright, drinking too much alcohol can be said to impact the health of your skin, greatly making you look older than you should actually be. Even worse, they begin to develop age-related diseases as well.
Drinking alcohol in a more normal fashion poses no real risk to your body; however, when you do so in excess, the cell growth in your body is affected, as in they either slow down or can stop functioning. When that happens, your bone mass density decreases, leaving you more likely to develop osteoporosis, a bone condition that causes your bones to become weak and more prone to fractures.
It also actually makes you look older. It impedes the production of collagen and elastin in the body. These two things are said to be the proteins in your body that make your skin look more healthy. So as it is impeding the growth of these two key proteins in your body, it also rids your body of its moisture, leading you to appear dull. When combined with the weakened bone, it makes you look even more pathetic.
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Not Having Enough Sleep
Another lifestyle habit that can make you older is not getting enough sleep. Sleep is one of the very few ways the body is able to revitalize itself and look healthier every day. However, once you fail to give the body the required amount of rest it deserves, you end up causing a lot of harm to your body.
And one such is when it causes you to age faster. It is said that once you deny your body the right amount of sleep it deserves (which is the 8-hour benchmark), it causes your cells to age quicker, which in turn leads you to appear older.
In addition to that, you are also exposed to other age-related diseases like cancer, high blood pressure, and the like. But most important of all, when you do not prioritize your beauty sleep, you look older than you are supposed to be.
Unhealthy Eating Habits
When you fail to see the importance of enjoying a healthy diet all the time, your body will start to display signs of aging due to how much the unhealthy substances in these foods affect the body. Most of these foods consist of foods containing excess oils, sodium, additives, and several other ingredients that serve as preservatives.
Once you begin to enjoy foods of that sort, they begin to impact your body and most importantly, your skin in many ways.
These foods, when not avoided, can lead to faster aging as well as other age-related diseases. How do unhealthy habits cause aging? Well, it is complicated, but I can make it simple for you. It all has to do with what a food scientist would call free radicals and antioxidants.
Antioxidants can be said to be your body’s military system, while radicals are the terrorists. It can happen that, as you grow naturally, these mini-soldiers also weaken in terms of effectiveness, especially when you fail to eat healthy foods.
The radicals, however, grow in strength and number when you enjoy unhealthy foods. When that happens, these radicals cause damage to your DNA, which in turn causes you to age more.
Not Working Out Enough
Yes, I said it. When you fail to workout, you miss out on a lot of health benefits, one of which is battling premature aging. People age, and there is no doubt about that; however, you need to understand that, once you begin to workout, you practically reduce the degree to which you grow old prematurely. Earlier in this article, we talked about bone mass density.
Naturally, your body is tasked with the duty of making sure to replace the old stuff with the new ones, and in doing so, your bones are not left unattended to. Your body makes sure to break down the old bone tissues and replace them with new ones. In the end, it protects you from a condition called osteoporosis.
But once you fail to work out, especially when you are young and fit, your body is not able to tamper with these parts of your body to make them more accustomed to pressure, tear, and wear. You need to know that once you naturally grow older, this process of replacing new bones with new ones will cease, and the only way to avoid this premature aging is to make sure your body benefits from workouts.
Excessive Smoking
There are many reasons to quit smoking, and for all of those reasons, premature aging might not get the best ranking in terms of danger level. But when you consider the fact that it can make you look older and less attractive, it makes it more than enough to do so. Smoking has its own way of causing premature aging.
Since premature aging is mostly recognized by appearance, let us focus on it at this point. As stated previously, collagen is a protein that helps to keep the skin looking its best. But once you begin to smoke excessively over an extended period, the body then produces an enzyme known as metalloproteinase.
This enzyme is said to break down collagen in the body, which makes your skin lose its elasticity, making you look older than you actually are. Also, it hinders your body’s ability to heal wounds.
Not Drinking Enough Water
Water, they say, is life. and that is one truth you can never dispute. Once a person takes in water, it helps to revitalize the cells and keep them more active as they go about their activities. Once you fail to take in the required amount of water on a daily basis, you stand a chance of getting dehydrated, leading you to age faster than normal.
How does that happen? Your body needs this water to undertake its numerous processes. Once you take in the required amount of water, your skin also benefits from this. Aside from that, your overall body seems to function more efficiently due to the fact that it serves as a lubricant. As much as you will constantly urinate at first, it will become normal as time goes on.
Taking In Too Much Caffeine
Coffee’s are diuretic. They cause your kidneys to produce a lot of urine, leading you to become dehydrated in a much shorter time. Due to previous knowledge provided in this article, once your body is dehydrated, your skin becomes dull and easily irritated.
Taking in coffee in itself is not a bad thing; however, it becomes a problem once you take it too often. It causes the tiny blood vessels on your skin to shrink, thereby reducing the transfer of antioxidants to your skin and causing you to age more quickly.
Stress
Stress is another cause of premature aging. When a person is stressed, due to how tense the brain and body become in such instances, as a way for the brain to protect itself as well as the body, it resorts to releasing a hormone called cortisol, also known as the stress hormone.
It is said that this cortisol has several functions, but one in particular is to help the body manage stress. And in doing so, it ends up impeding certain substances whose job it is to keep your body looking its natural age.
These substances are collagen and hyaluronan synthase. Ultimately, the activities of this cortisol end up making you look way older than your actual age, as evident by the reason why people who think a lot tend to appear older than they actually should be.
Ways To Avoid Premature Aging
The following are some of the ways one can avoid premature aging;
- Start enjoying a healthy diet.
- Avoid direct sunlight as much as possible if you can.
- Quit smoking.
- Start exercising.
- Start a skin routine.
- Also, make sure to enjoy more sleep, as far as you can.
- Try to avoid stressful situations as much as possible.
Final Words
As much as we cannot control our natural aging pace, we can control the things that can lead us to grow much faster than we are supposed to. Therefore, if you are on the quest to know how to go about this, I hope this article has helped you.
