When it comes to anti ageing skin care, women and increasingly men are looking for an instance fix to take the years from their faces. This is why the skin care industry is a multi-million pound industry as people try the non surgical facelift route to a younger looking skin. The problem is that when you decide to do something about it, you have left it too long and you are always trying to remedy the damage. To have younger looking skin you need to start young so tell your daughters and sons to start now.

The sun, although beneficial to health, is one of the biggest causes of skin ageing. People tend to be quite good at putting on high factor sun screen when they are on the beach but this is not the full story. When the sky is blue, you are mainly protecting yourself from the UV-A rays but it is when the sky is cloudy that the damage is done because the clouds filter out the UV-A rays but cannot filter the UV-B rays which are the real villains and are a major cause for skin ageing. You will realise that these are affecting you every time you go out doors every day of the year.

UV-B is hitting you as you walk from your house to the station, from the station to work and back again. It is there when you go for your lunch. This means that your first weapon to anti aging is sun blocker, all the time. Use it on your face hands and neck at all times possibly as a substitute for moisturiser cream.

You will have seen countless advertisements for anti ageing skin care products on the television and in magazines, many featuring actors in white coats pretending to work in a hi-tech laboratory setting to give the impression that your cream is the latest in scientific discovery. It also will be trying to convey a sense that these preparations have been thoroughly tested, are safe to use and are extremely effective.

Many of the active ingredients being touted as ‘new’ or ‘breakthrough’ are really chemicals that have been known and used for years for other different conditions, usually in pharmacological circumstances. Because they have this history of use without nasty side effects, cosmetic manufacturers explore some of the other possibilities to the chemicals. As long as they can determine some minor improvement in a few guinea pig people, it is rushed out as the latest thing to combat ageing skin.

One of these ingredients goes by the name of Retinol which is another name for vitamin A. It has been used by doctors to treat skin disorders but is only effective in relatively high doses which is why it is only available by prescription. The amount that is allowed to be used in the cosmetic industry is very small so that its effect as a non surgical facelift may reflect the amount that is used. This may not mean that you won’t see any improvement in your skin, you probably will. It just means that you may be better off getting your vitamin A from a selection of foods that are high in that vitamin.

Time is the enemy of any anti ageing skin preparation and it is difficult to know the age of the jar you are buying as, unlike food, there is no date printed on the packaging. As soon as these preparations are manufactures, they start to degrade. Air and moisture will attack them, making them less effective and this process becomes accelerated, once you have opened it, so always follow the instructions on how to store them.

As most of the anti ageing skin creams are quite expensive, especially when you look at the amount that is in the jar or tube, you may wish to consider making your own. It is not that difficult, you do not need to be a scientist but you do need to make sure everything you use is very clean. You start with the base, which can be an inexpensive moisturiser to which you add the active ingredients. Only make small batches at a time so that you always have the freshest and most active cream to work on the skin. You can find any number of different recipes for face creams and sourcing the materials shouldn’t be a problem. It is then a question of experimenting until you find the right combination that is the best for your skin type. Then you will have a non surgical facelift cream to be proud of, knowing that it is your own creation. Who knows, you could end up with your own cosmetics empire.