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Q: What are some of the main reasons for an aging face, and what can a person do to help slow it down short of injections or plastic surgery? 

A: Dozens of changes take place as the years add up, some of them obvious and familiar: 

• foreheads expand as hairlines retreat
• ears often get a bit longer because the cartilage in them grows
• tips of noses may droop because connective tissue supporting nasal cartilage weakens.

There are also structural rearrangements going on behind the scenes. When we’re young, fat in the face is evenly distributed, with some pockets here and there that plump up the forehead, temples, cheeks, and areas around the eyes and mouth. 

With age, that fat loses volume, clumps up, and shifts downward, so features that were formerly round may sink, and skin that was smooth and tight gets loose and sags.  

Meanwhile, other parts of the face gain fat, particularly the lower half, so we tend to get baggy around the chin and jowly in the neck. 

And, of course, there are the wrinkles. Those deep ones in the forehead and between the eyebrows are called expression, or animation, lines. They’re the result of facial muscles continually tugging on, and eventually creasing, the skin. 

Other folds may get deeper because of the way fat decreases and moves around. Finer wrinkles are due to sun damage, smoking and natural degeneration of elements of the skin that keep it thick and supple. 

While a gracefully aging face is a beautiful thing, there are changes that occur with age that we might like to slow down. 

One approach is to simply celebrate our age and appearance for what they are. Age-related changes in our facial appearance reflect our joys and challenges in life.  

But not everyone is comfortable with that, and some might like to postpone embracing those changes. 

Protecting your face from the sun is the single best way of keeping it youthful. You need to regularly use sunscreen that protects against both UVA and UVB light, with an SPF of at least 30. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat is also a good idea. 

Moisturizers soothe dry skin and may temporarily make wrinkles less noticeable. Moisturizers for the face contain water to make them less greasy, and many have substances — glycerin, for example — that may help bind water to the skin.  

Exfoliant creams can improve the appearance of older skin by getting rid of dead skin cells that don’t slough off as readily as they did when we were young. 

Creams containing retinoids, compounds related to vitamin A, may help aging skin by inducing collagen production in the dermis and speeding up the process of replacing old skin cells with new ones. 

Howard LeWine, M.D., is an internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. For additional consumer health information, see health.harvard.edu. 

© 2024 Harvard University. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.