Skin Care Myth Demystified: "Facial exercises prevent wrinkles and keep skin toned"

Wrinkles the Dog. Someone looks tired from doing one too many facial exercises!

Image source: Flickr jremsikjr

Can you truly prevent wrinkles and keep your skin taut and young by doing facial exercises?

The answer to this is: No, quite the opposite!

While weight lifting can tone your body by increasing muscle mass, the same is not true for "exercising" your facial muscles.  In fact, excessive muscle contractions of the facial muscles can actually contribute to wrinkling. That grumpy person you knew in childhood; forehead full of wrinkles now. Coincidence, we think not! By contracting the same muscles in your face repeatedly, you are in essence creating creases where the facial skin is being retracted around those muscles. Eventually these creases may develop into wrinkles. Now, we are not proposing to limit the full facial expressions of your personality just to save yourself a few wrinkles later in life. In fact, a face with plenty of wrinkles from the muscles in charge of smiling is a sign of a life well lived! What we are saying is that facial exercise will not add anything and in fact may be counter-productive.

In addition, facial exercises do not add volume to sunk-in areas of your face either. Volume loss in your face as you age is caused by a decrease in collagen, elastin and subcutaneous fat and none of these components may be replaced by facial exercises.

Find out another skin care myth that we debunk here:  "Your skin gets used to skin care products after repeated use."