Smile Lines: How To Make Them Go Away
Spending precious minutes in front of the mirror obsessing over the tiny creases and folds that cup your mouth in gentle parentheses is a poor use of time and energy. It’s time to embrace the lines you earned through years of laughter and happiness.
If you’re having trouble finding the beauty in that embrace, we can help. Aging beautifully is possible, and it starts with understanding how aging skin happens and what we can do to slow the process and protect our skin. Learning how to care for and enhance your look (instead of trying in vain to cover up those lines) will help you feel confident and radiant.
At RMS Beauty, we think every person should feel confident in their own, real skin. True skin is important to us, and we think you’ll agree; once you master your skin care and makeup, you’ll feel gorgeous, lines and all.
What Are Smile Lines?
Smile lines are exactly what they sound like: little lines that form around the edges of your mouth as the result of repeated smiles and laughs. They’re natural, normal, and unavoidable. The technical terms or smile lines are nasolabial creases and nasolabial folds.
- Nasolabial creases. The first indication of a line or wrinkle is the gentle crease that forms where the skin bends and stretches to accommodate your facial movements. You might begin to notice thin lines that look similar to parentheses on either side of your mouth, extending from the bottom of your nose to the bottom lip.
- Nasolabial folds. Folds happen after the crease. Over time, aging skin will develop deeper creases. When the skin crease deepens, the skin immediately above the crease will naturally fold over and inward on the crease, creating a flap of seemingly loose skin when you smile.
Cosmetic surgeons have created all sorts of ways to “handle” these creases and folds, including invasive injections and procedures that pull and lift the skin that are borderline barbaric. Eventually, the lines still return, and you still have to either accept them, fill them, or pull them back with another expensive procedure.
What Causes Skin To Age?
Smile lines and laugh lines are caused by aging skin. While some skin aging is natural, there are other elements and lifestyle factors that can age skin faster than it would normally age.
Natural Aging
The natural aging process of your skin involves three important factors.
- Loss of collagen. Collagen is the protein that makes up many tissues in our bodies, and is especially important to your skin. Collagen is the “plumping” protein that keeps your skin looking youthful and full. As we age, collagen production declines, leaving your skin looking hollow and thinner with time.
- Loss of elastin. Like collagen, elastin is another protein that is vital to your skin’s health. Elastin gives skin its ability to stretch and return to its original position. When we get older, elastin production also declines. This results in skin that is crepey, saggy, or wrinkly.
- Decreased skin cell turnover. Our skin cells are continually dying off and making new cells in a process called cell turnover. The faster your cells turnover, the more youthful your skin will appear. A baby’s skin, for instance, renews nearly every seven days. In older adults, the process can take between 45-60 days. The longer it takes your skin cells to turnover, the longer dead skin cells remain on the surface of your skin.
Aging isn’t the only culprit in our skin’s aging. Normal aging is normal, but there are other factors that can speed up the process.
UV Damage
You’ve heard it for years; wear sunscreen in the sun. Protecting your skin from UV damage is crucial in keeping it looking youthful.
UV rays are a source of free radicals. Free radicals damage your skin cells, and inhibits the way collagen and elastin are made. If you spent a lot of time in the sun (unprotected) as a child, you may be dealing with tough, leathery skin as an adult.
Smoking
Smoking isn’t good for any part of your body, but it’s especially damaging to your skin. Studies show that smoking can age your skin by as much as five years.
Smoking harms your skin in four different ways.
- Nicotine narrows your blood vessels, which restricts oxygen and nutrients to your skin. The skin of a smoker is usually dry and malnourished.
- Chemicals in cigarettes interfere with the way your skin repairs itself, in some cases making it impossible for the skin to heal completely. Additionally, cigarette damage can even impact your skin cells’ DNA.
- The repetitive motion for inhaling and exhaling a cigarette won’t necessarily cause smile lines, but it will definitely cause small, tiny lines around the entirety of your upper and lower lips.
- The heat and smoke from cigarettes can dry out the skin around the mouth, and your skin as a whole. Dry skin is more likely to look older, and wrinkles will be more pronounced.
If you smoke, quitting is a good decision for your body, and for your skin.
How To Make Smile Lines Go Away
You can’t make smile lines go away. Let’s just make that idea go away.
It’s natural and ordinary to have smile lines, but you can take better care of your skin to regain your confidence and make them a secondary feature.
Prevention
While there’s no way to actually prevent smile lines, you can take care of your skin and health so they don’t show up until later in life. Stopping smoking, protecting yourself from the sun, and staying hydrated are easy ways to ensure your skin is healthy and protected from external stressors that could result in premature aging.
Use Better Products
Traditional beauty products contain ingredients that can be harsh and irritating to your skin, resulting in redness and dryness. At RMS Beauty, we look to nature for the cleanest, most effective ingredients for skin health.
One of our favorite ingredients with serious anti-aging properties is shea butter. Shea butter is a natural antioxidant that helps protect your skin against free radicals from the sun and other stressors.
Shea butter also contains triterpene, a plant compound that helps support healthy skin cell turnover. The compounds found in shea butter help it hydrate, repair, and support your skin cells as they age, allowing your skin to feel healthy and look radiant.
Draw Attention Up, Up, and Away
Accepting your smile lines doesn’t mean you have to paint them neon pink. It’s completely possible to use products that draw attention up and away from your laugh lines and celebrate the beauty of your natural skin.
What Not To Do
Avoid attempting to “fill” your laugh lines with powder or foundation. No matter what kind of product you use, this will only draw attention to your lines. Foundations and powders will find their home deep in the creases, producing a cake-like finish that will also appear darker than the rest of your foundation.
We suggest skipping concealer and foundation in this area. If you need color correction, keep it light, and prep your skin with a primer to ensure the makeup stays on the surface of your skin.
Creating Lift
You don’t need threads, fillers, pulls, or peels to get lifted-looking skin. The right products on healthy, hydrated skin give you a natural lift that looks completely believable.
- Create elegant cheekbones. RMS Beauty’s Lip2Cheek is the perfect product to create the illusion of high cheekbones, which will naturally draw attention away from your nasolabial folds and creases. Dab product on the upper middle of your cheeks and extend outward. Avoid pulling the color too close to your nose, as this can cause your cheeks to look saggy.
- Illuminate your skin. RMS Beauty’s Luminizer creates definition and dewy, radiant skin in a single touch. Created with castor seed oil and coconut oil, this hydrating hybrid product (it’s both a highlighter and illuminator) is perfect for dotting on the upper cheekbones, center of the eyelids, and bridge of the nose. This effect helps keep skin looking healthy, radiant, and youthful, and minimizes the appearance of laugh lines.
Aging skin is inevitable. Love your skin by celebrating your smiles and caring for your skin with hydrating, non-toxic skin care ingredients.
Love Your Smile Lines, and Your Skin
Those smile lines? You remember many of the laughs and smiles that made them. They’re a beautiful part of your face, and you can appreciate them and love your true skin by taking care of your skin, and protecting it from damage.
Trust the professionals at RMS Beauty to supply you with the cleanest, greenest products in the industry to uncover the most radiant, natural skin you can have.
Sources:
SEER Training: Layers of the Skin
Ultraviolet (UV) Radiation|Cancer.org
Facial changes caused by smoking: a comparison between smoking and nonsmoking identical twins|PubMed
