Dr. Neal Schultz: Hello I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and welcome to DermTV.
Can facial exercise tighten the facial skin? There was a time a few years ago where proponents said that they were the best way to tighten and tone your skin. Sadly, facial exercise actually make you lose tone and will encourage lines and wrinkles. So let's talk about it.
Normally, when you exercise muscles, they become toned and they tighten. And there are places on your body that where increasing muscle tone will in fact tighten the skin some what, but not in the face.
Because in your face, when you do facial exercises, you are moving those muscles, and when you move those muscles, you are then moving the overlying skin. Usually, when you move it, you are stretching it and at a certain times you are creasing it and folding it. When you stretch skin you are stretch the elastic fibers. All elastic fibers, whether they are in your skin, whether they are in your clothing, have a finite number of stretches in their life and after which they stop contracting again.
More people through out their underwear because the elastic stretches out then because they have holes in it and if you unnecessarily stretch your facial skin, it will cause premature failure of the elastic fibers and it will then sag and stretch out sooner. Also, if you unnecessarily crease and fold your skin, when you fold the collagen and when you fold the collagen, you break the collagen. It is just like bending a paperclip back and forth time and time again: enough folds and it breaks.
So, breaking the skin causes lines and wrinkles, over stretching it causes it to sag and the elastic fibers to fail prematurely.
Facial exercise is a total no, no for helping your facial skin and texture.
Please join me again at drmtv.com. If you have a question please send me by visiting dermtv.com/question. I'm Dr. Neal Schultz and thank you for watching today.
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