Anti-aging treatment is all about health, anti aging nutrition, facial skin care, youthful skin, cosmetics, plastic surgery and even anti aging supplements including hormones. It’s the new over fifty woman!

Anti-Aging is a big trend and encompasses medicines, hormones, nutrition, cosmetics and plastic surgery. Everyone wants to look and feel young and with all of the so called “superficial” baby boomers coming into middle age, anti aging is big business. Women who aren’t even old enough to be characterized as aging are into anti-aging! Anti Ageing is such a broad term now that it covers every thing from bio-identical hormones, to nutrition, vitamin supplements, anti-aging medicine, cosmetics, plastic surgery and alternative medicine. Everything from water to cream to herbs are touted as anti-aging miracles and sold to all of us willing to buy into the promise of eternal youth.

Anti Aging Cosmetics

Helping us look younger is becoming a major focus for the cosmetics industry. New anti aging skin plumping makeup products are coming at us from virtually all directions. Cosmetics laced with sun block, anti-oxidants, nutrients and a smattering of magic ingredients that supposedly rejuvenate collagen production in the skin are all over the cosmetics marketplace. If a product has anti aging ingredients in it, the price of that product will increase (whether it actually works or not). “Buyer beware”, because some of the beauty products do virtually nothing to anti age you when compared for example to what healthy diet and exercise can really do for you. A microdot of cantaloupe in a beauty lotion may not even benefit your health and beauty as much as eating some cantaloupe will.

One of the biggest anti-aging secrets is simply learning how to wear makeup colors that enhance your youthfulness and disguise the tell-tale signs of aging. Neutral colors that give the skin a smooth allover appearance and makeup that accentuates a woman’s features is the key. In my personal opinion it has more to do with what colors you use and where, than what makeup brand you use and special miracle ingredients that are supposedly in the products. I want to save my money and avoid any products that have a price markup due to promises of youth or anything containing a suspicious miracle or gimmick ingredient.

Anti Aging Skin Care

One the biggest markets in the anti aging trend, is in skin care creams. Cosmetic companies are competing with the Botox and facial cosmetic surgery trend by offering a plethora of topically applied anti aging wrinkle creams. The skin creams use everything from cooling technology to anti-oxidants, vitamins, and human growth factors to purportedly repair skin and promote collagen production. Human growth factors for example, are touted as a miracle family of natural hormones produced by the body. The claim is that when added to skin care creams, they can help the skin cells live longer. I don’t buy into this claim and personally don’t care to even be the guinea pig for new and weird lotion ingredients. I figure that these products aren’t going to do anything significantly enough to my skin to matter and therefore I don’t feel like paying. The most important thing for daily skin care in my opinion is to use a moisturizer cream that agrees with your skin. There are plenty of tried and true inexpensive skin care lotion variants at the drug store to try and choose from. High prices and miracle ingredients are somewhat irrelevant to women on a beauty budget.

I personally believe that expensive wrinkle care creams are over rated. Retin-A is the best known wrinkle cream, and in my opinion most others with expensive ingredients are largely hype and will do little to reverse the clock. One good moisturizer cream that agrees with your skin coupled with a good sun block lotion is my two top cosmetics of choice to fight against skin wrinkles.

Anti Aging Food

I totally and whole heartedly believe in anti aging foods – fruits, vegetables, whole grains. Some of the top 10 favorite anti-aging foods include avocado, tomatoes, berries, cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli), garlic, ginger, nuts soya (like edamame) and whole wheat breads, pasta and rice, watermelon and water. The list goes on and on about healthy foods for the skin. I believe pretty much all of it. I am a true believer in the benefits of a healthy well rounded diet. Foods like green foods, barley, acai berries, alliums (like garlic, onions, and chives), beans and lentils, sprouts, hot peppers, buckwheat, yogurt, nuts and seeds are all supposed to help the skin too.

The claim is these healthy foods give you an anti-oxidant boost which promotes healthy collagen and battles the free radicals in your skin and body. Let me tell you my little theory on why these foods help. And I think this is particularly true about foods like avocadoes which have the good essential fatty acids. Here is my unscientific theory. I used to have horses (before I had my children after which point I could not afford it). One secret all of us women knew was feeding them wheat germ oil. If you regularly gave them a bit of oats and carrots mixed with wheat germ oil something miraculous happened. Their coats became smoother, glossier, shinier and better looking. It also made their digestive system work better and they looked gorgeously sleek. To me, this was proof positive that what you put into a body can affect the outer skin and hair. It’s totally true on humans too. Foods that have essential fatty acids, antioxidants and fiber are going to directly benefit your body and skin and beauty in general.

Anti Aging Exercise

Anti-Aging can definitely take the form of exercise. If you exercise enough I believe you can make your body younger, reverse some illness and prevent age-related disease. Walking is one of the best anti-aging exercises there is as it is easy to do regularly and low impact. I also believe that some light weight resistance exercise like doing the nautilus machines at the gym can greatly improve your physique and strengthen you all over. I like the triple combination of walking, some nautilus and low impact recreational exercise (e.g. whatever you like to do golf, etc). Regular low impact exercise can make you feel rejuvenated and keep your body operating at its youngest. The only time when exercise becomes a bad thing is when you do high impact and high risk sports – those can lead to serious injuries. People have a tendency to overdo things and this is often the case with exercise. Don’t get in over your head with any exercise program or dangerous sport. Always stay within your ability levels. Safe exercise is one of the top ways that you slow aging. Not only does exercise help in prevention of illnesses like heart disease and diabetes through keeping the weight off, it can lead to longer life expectancy in and of itself.

Anti Aging Plastic Surgery

Plastic surgery is the biggest thing there is for drastically altering your age appearance. No it won’t make you younger, but it may make you look quite a big younger. While it involves major surgery, some women find it emotionally rewarding to make their way through a plastic surgeons office once or twice in their life time. There is virtually nothing wrong with it as long as the risks and benefits are weighed out carefully. All surgery involves major risks and with plastic surgery you actually run two risks. One is the dangers associated with an unnecessary surgery such as anesthesia risks. The other risk is that you would have something done and have undesired aesthetic results or complications from it.

Some plastic surgery has only cosmetic purpose while others have actual or percieved health benefits. For example, someone having a breast reduction may experience a relief in back problems associated with uncomfortably large breasts, however the surgery is pretty major and would leave unsightly scars. Trade offs in getting a plastic surgery or foregoing it are highly personal decisions. I definitely believe that plastic surgery is an integral player in the whole anti-aging trend of boomers.

Anti Aging Style

Mature women more so than ever are concerned about their beauty and style. This includes everything from clothes, hair, makeup and accessories. Especially with the baby boomer generation, famous celebrity stars that we grew up with are approaching and passing the 50 year old mark. Celebs from Demi Moore to Madonna to Cindy Crawford to Christie Brinkley are aging. These women aren’t disappearing from the media and women watch closely as to how they maintain their mature style. Everything from how they cover their gray hair, what clothes they wear to speculation about what plastic surgeries they’ve had is dissected in the celebrity gossip magazines.

The trend seems to be about looking younger, as the saying “50 is the new 40” and “forty is the new 30”. Does this mean we will be exclaiming that “60 is the new 50” soon (probably …)? Even slang terms have been assigned to the older set. “Cougar” refers to older women who are older and look fabulous and date much younger men. Personally I don’t relate to this trend as I am way more attracted to my contemporaries. But some women are following suit with the men and choosing to date much younger partners.

Much of this trend is due to the fact that mature women are looking better, staying more in shape and getting more plastic surgery than ever before. They look younger and can understandably attract younger partners. Another more pornographic reference is to that of a “milf”. A “milf” refers to a mother you’d like to … ahem. It’s obviously sexual in nature but the term is also thrown out there with a pretty light connotation too. The lighter connotation of milf is an older women with children who is sexy hot and datable. The implication is that she is still sexually attractive to men. Milf is such a popular term it even appears in Wikipedia the free online encyclopedia. It’s defined as a slang term for a sexually attractive older female. The term milf has been around for a long time but was popularized in younger generation movies such as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and more notably, the 1999 movie American Pie. There is also that song you might recall “Stacy’s mom” wherein model Rachel Hunter was the gorgeous mother of Stacy and the object of Stacy’s boyfriends obsession in the Stacy’s mom music video.

Were it not for mature women looking better than ever before, these milf and cougar terms wouldn’t be there. It’s the younger generation coining up with these milf and cougar “Here’s to you Mrs Robinson … The Graduate” type slang phrases. Pop culture still has a very big fixation on hot moms. With women looking better than ever as they age, the sexy mom phenomenon is par for the course. Though I am not offended, I personally don’t embrace the terms milf or cougar because of the rather direct sexual connotation. A “beautiful older woman” or better yet “beautiful woman” or “mature beauty” or just plain “sexy” works fine for me.

Anti Aging Alternative Medicine

Anti Aging wellness centers and alternative medicine are also part of the anti-aging trend. I personally am not a believer in Alternative Medicine. For example, I believe that if you have an infection going, you are going to need real medicine like antibiotics. I don’t believe things like acupuncture and massage and herbal remedies alone can cure your problems. I take it even further than that and don’t even believe that chiropractic medicine is legit. That’s just my opinion however. Many of the cultural rather than scientific medicines are popular – meditation, yoga, biofeedback, hypnosis, homeopathy and acupuncture are among them. In western culture, alternative medicine is anything that does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine, and anything that has not been shown by scientific evidence to be effective. Whether alternative medicines really work, or indirectly work perhaps via reducing people’s stress and giving them hope, is debatable.

Anti Aging Vitamin Supplements

Vitamins and Nutritional Supplements are big business. Vitamins are expensive! I personally do not believe in vitamins. I think the pills are very hard to swallow on a daily life long basis, and therefore people tend to get into vitamins as a trendy thing, then give up taking them. It’s the type of thing where your friend gets cancer and you suddenly run out and buy a stash of vitamins. Month’s later, you are too lazy to swallow them and they sit on your shelf growing dust. Other mechanisms for getting the vitamins into you are attractive to pill swallowing haters, like vitamin powders that go into your drinks, waters and vitamin filled powders that you sprinkle on top of food. Again, while there may be some benefits to adding vitamins, it is hard to sustain the vitamin taking pattern. I personally think it’s best to get your vitamin from food.

I do have to say that I believe certain vitamins are crucial to your health. What makes me a believer is one simple example. Pregnant women should be getting enough folic acid. And if they don’t get enough folic acid, they run a higher risk of having a baby with chromosomal abnormality. It’s a simple example but deep proof in my mind that getting the appropriate vitamins into your body really and truly matters. It matters. It’s just that taking vitamins can be cumbersome (even it it’s just a one a day, swallowing a pill for ever if you don’t have to is a chore) and therefore I believe it is best to try and get the vitamins in by eating a wide variety of healthy food. Nonetheless, people swear by their vitamins, powders and drops. I have facebook friends that tout the benefits of things like echinacea and Emergen-C (a powder vitamin c drink) for fending off colds.

Common vitamin and herbal supplements that are marketed as angi-agers include CoEnzyme Q-10, Acais, Anti-Oxidents such as vitamin C, E and selenium, Fish Oils, Wheat Grass pills, Green Tea Pills. Then there’s the vitamins that are touted to help certain things, like calcium for bone protection, E and B for heart protection, C for immune strength, niacin and B-12 for memory, lutein for eyesight, and so on. There may be a certain truth to ensuring that if you aren’t getting all the nutrients you need from food, some vitamin supplementation can help. However a healthy diet, exercise and limiting your intake of fatty and sugary foods while getting adequate amounts of water daily are probably more fundamental to your health then any expensive vitamin pill you might take.

Anti Aging Mindset

There is a whole anti-aging mindset that is … setting into our minds! You may have heard the term “lengevity” and “wellness” being pounded into your head lately. A youthful mindset and outlook on life are promoted as true anti-agers. Older people are trying to find ways to reduce the stress in their life. I also see a trend to spend less on luxuries and more on creature comforts. For example, you see so many seniors choosing to pocket their money and snuggle into cozy retirement communities rather than traveling the world on expensive cruises like they used to. People even pay money to “life coaches” to try and figure out how to find health, contentment and happiness in their older years. I’ve read that married people, people content with their lives, people who love their work, and people with a large group of close friends and tight friendships, are the happiest and live the longest. My mother happens to fit into the “happily married, tight knit group of friends” category and she certainly is a mover and shaker still at eighty years old. I can personally say that knowing what I know from her, being surrounded by friends doesn’t just magically happen to people. My mother put a life time of effort into maintaining and developing her lifelong friend ships. She has her foot in everything from reading groups to bridge club to temple to tennis to theater. She does it all. Judging from her state of health, there really is no better medicine than having an abundance of friends, love and happiness in one’s life.