These facial exercises make women look 3 years younger!

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For twenty weeks, doing facial exercises for thirty minutes a day, makes women look almost three years younger.

“Sunday face day”

Ok, so one day a week turns out not to be enough, but I liked the sound of the title. The good news is that there is a natural alternative to treatments like botox and facelifts. The annoying news is that you will have to do something for it. If you are the type that prefers lipo over cardio, then you will not be very excited about this. Doing facial exercises for thirty minutes a day, or every other day, to look younger doesn’t sound so crazy. People do much crazier things to look younger. According to research by Northwestern Medicine, it would result in a younger appearance in a group of middle-aged women after 20 weeks [1]. It would be the first scientific study to test the theory that facial exercises can make you look younger. The findings were published on January 3 in JAMA Dermatology.

Now there is some evidence that facial exercises may improve facial appearance and reduce some visible signs of aging. The exercises enlarge and strengthen the facial muscles, so the face becomes firmer and more toned and shaped like a younger face. Dr. Murad Alam, professor of dermatology Northwestern University

Assuming their findings are confirmed in larger studies, according to the researchers, it could be a cheap and natural way to look younger. It could also work additionally on other anti-aging treatments that people might undergo.

“Face stuffing”

Admittedly, I didn’t come up with that term entirely by myself, and I’m aware that it may evoke ‘other’ associations. Whether people will massively start doing face stuffing is questionable. But essentially, that is the way you rejuvenate your appearance with facial exercises. As you get older, the skin loses elasticity. Fat masses in the face, between the skin and muscles, largely determine the shape of the face. As the skin becomes looser and begins to sag, these fat masses, which once fit together like a puzzle, also decrease. This causes them to sag as well, resulting in a ‘droopy face’. Think of it as a sad old balloon that has shriveled because the balloon itself has become less elastic and lost content. The solution? Ensure more filling. One way to do this is by training and growing the muscles underneath.

But if muscle underneath becomes bigger, the skin has more stuffing underneath it and the firmer muscle appears to make the shape of the face more full. Muscle growth is increasing the facial volume and counteracting the effects of age-related fat thinning and skin loosening. Emily Poon, assistant research professor in dermatology Northwestern University

Design of the study and facial exercises

For the study, women aged 40 to 65 years old received two 90-minute personal instructions from a ‘facial exercise instructor’. They then continued these facial exercises at home for another 20 weeks. The first eight weeks, they did the exercises daily, for 30 minutes. From week nine to twenty, they did the exercises every other day. The facial exercises were developed by one of the co-authors of the study, who is also the founder of Happy Face Yoga. In total, the participants did 32 different exercises. Each exercise was performed for 1 minute. These exercises include, for example, sucking in and puffing out the cheeks. The cheeks contain many muscles that collectively provide movement. The study shows that training these muscles makes the cheeks appear fuller. Another example is the ‘Cheek Lifter’:

Open mouth and form O, position upper lip over teeth, smile to lift cheek muscles up, put fingers lightly on top part of cheek, release cheek muscles to lower them, and lift back up. Repeat by lowering and lifting the cheeks.

When I try this, I look like a combination of a chimpanzee and the Joker from Batman. Another exercise is ‘Happy Cheeks Sculpting’. Here, you smile without showing teeth. You press your lips together and push the cheeks up. At the same time, you push the corners of the mouth up with your fingers. A bit like sitting in the dentist’s waiting room waiting until the mouthguard with fluoride can be taken out of your mouth. The evaluation of the face was carried out by two dermatologists using a standardized ‘facial aging scale’. Independently of each other, they looked at 19 different features and scored them at three different times (at the start, after 8 weeks, and after 20 weeks). At these times, they also estimated the age of the participants. Participants were also asked what they thought of the result. Besides the mentioned influence on the fullness of the cheeks, the average estimated age during the study was reduced from 50.8 years to 48.1 years. This means an average ‘rejuvenation’ of almost three years by doing 20 weeks of facial exercises. The participants themselves reported being very happy with the result and seeing improvement in almost all different facial features. As mentioned, it was not a large study. Of the 27 participants, 16 completed the entire study. Another limitation of the study was that only middle-aged women participated. It is therefore questionable to what extent these results can be repeated in other groups. Reference

• Murad Alam, Anne J. Walter, Amelia Geisler, Wanjarus Roongpisuthipong, Gary Sikorski, Rebecca Tung, Emily Poon. Association of Facial Exercise With the Appearance of Aging. JAMA Dermatology, 2018; DOI: 10.1001/jamadermatol.2017.5142