You may be missing something very crucial in your anti-aging routine if you’re not paying special attention to your décolletage. It can be easy to use your skin care products from forehead to chin, but if you aren’t going lower, you might be showing your age more than you’d like to.
Your Chest Has Thinner Skin And Gets more Sun Damage
The skin in these areas is thin with less blood supply and fewer sebaceous glands than other areas (Women’s Health Magazine). Along with this, many women and men forget that this area needs the same care as their face, perhaps even more because of the lack of sebum. By forgoing the usual routine, they’re missing, not just the benefits of anti-aging care, but also, generally sunscreen. That can be disastrous. This means that these areas are more dryness and sun damage, which means this skin is likely to age faster than other skin on your body.
And sun damage causes a terrifying 80 to 90 percent of visible skin aging, which means that keeping your skin safe from the sun is absolutely key (Journal of Clinical Dermatology).
You Chest is a “High Stress Area” and Ages Faster
Parts of the body with premature aging tend to wrinkle earlier and be dryer, but that’s not the worst part. They also tend to be a different kind of aged. That leathery look you often see on men and women who’ve spent a lot of time outdoors without proper protection comes from sun damage and is almost exclusively an issue on skin prematurely aged by sun damage (Experimental Dermatology). That’s because hyperkeratosis often occurs and the skin is thicker and wrinklier than other skin.
A study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery cited by CNN found that participants could tell how old a woman over 40 was by looking at another part with little sebum and a lot of sun exposure — her hands.
Another study looked at what researchers deemed “high stress” areas on the body — including places that bend like elbows and knees and places with a lot of UV exposure like décolletage and hands — in relation to age groups (20-30 and 50-60 years of age). They found that these areas had a significantly different amount of collagen, melanin, and hemoglobin distribution, skin roughness, dryness, color, and elasticity between the younger and older groups (Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology). But they found that the older group’s “high stress” areas — namely hands and chest — showed more aging than other parts of their bodies.
What Can You Do about It?
If you don’t yet have sun damage or wrinkles on your chest, it’s time to start taking preventative measures. Start moving your skin care routine down your neck and décolletage, and pay particular attention to sunscreen. Every time you apply sunscreen to your face, be sure you’re also applying it to your neck and chest.
Another option that works for prevention and has also been shown to be a cost-effective way to treat the wrinkles caused by damage (instead of pricey lasers) is the use of a retinol (Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology). Of course, we recommend FutureDerm Microencapsulated Time-Release Retinol, because it’s gentle and effective. The microencapsulation means that it has a sustained released over eight hours.
If the damage has been done and it’s particularly bad, it may take some dermatological intervention with a fractional laser — though they have a longer healing time and potential adverse effects — to help to fix the problems. Researchers have found that if the laser is tailored to the chest, it’s very effective and less likely to have problems (Dermatologic Surgery).
Bottom Line
For many people, your chest ages faster than the rest of your body for a few reasons. The skin is thin and there are fewer sebaceous glands. Worse still, a lot of people forget sunscreen, and the consequences of that are prematurely aged skin. Fortunately, by extending your routine — including anti-aging products like retinol — and looking into lasers for any damage that’s already been done, you make sure your chest doesn’t age the rest of you.