Does AGE cause your skin to wrinkle? Here’s an interesting “wrinkle” on the subject you will want to know about.
A lot of things will contribute to wrinkles. Much of it is weather related. Too much sunburn. Too much windburn. Too many extremes of temperature. Lack of moisture in the skin. We call that — dry skin. And did you know that smoking is recognized as one of the main causes of wrinkled skin.
Do you exercise? Movement affects circulation. Circulation affects skin tone. Hmm.
Could your wrinkles be caused by too much sugar? It seems excess sugar in our diets is a major cause of wrinkled skin. Yes, it’s true, and it really is AGE related. In this case though, AGE stands for Advanced Glycation End products and that refers to Glycation, a process where sugar attaches to and damages the collagen (a protein) in your skin resulting in guess what? Wrinkled skin.
And according to recent studies, Glycation also makes the effects of smoking, alcohol and sun damage much worse.
Some studies have shown that High Fructose Corn Syrup is one of the biggest causes of the breakdown of collagen. High Fructose Corn Syrup is a major ingredient in many of our packaged foods today, so think wrinkles when you eat foods loaded with that ingredient (it’s on the label).
How do you reduce, or even reverse wrinkled skin? Apparently cutting back on sugar is one of the best methods. Animal studies have demonstrated positive results in cutting back on sugars on the repair of, and indeed reversing damaged skin through the reduction of AGE. There are also some studies showing the same effect in humans, but I couldn’t find a specific reference other than to some work done by Dr. Nicholas Perricone (The Perricone Prescription).
So while you can’t get rid of wrinkles by reversing your chronological AGE, you may reverse the effect of AGE (Glycation), by reducing the amount of sugar you eat. And that’s a lot less costly than cosmetic surgery.
Thank you for reading.