The lips are one of the first areas to reveal the subtle effects of aging. This is, in part, due to the delicate nature of lip skin. But many of the signs of lip aging come from the underlying tissues that support volume, smoothness, and appearance.
While products like OS-01 LIP SPF are effective in targeting aging on various fronts to prevent the degradation of structural proteins in the skin, there's a lot more that you can do to prevent the visible signs of aging in the tissues underneath your lip skin. With a growing body of evidence supporting the benefits of facial exercises, more people are opting for this natural approach to slow the progression of facial aging, rather than more invasive options like Botox.
How Do The Underlying Tissues Around The Lips Age?
Even if you’re taking steps to promote the health of your lips, it may not address all of your concerns. This is probably because your signs of lip aging may be coming from below the surface. As it turns out, the visible signs of lip aging are due to the complex interplay between muscle, fat, bone, and skin around your lips:
- Skeletal Changes: As you age, bone resorption in the midface, particularly in the jaw area, diminishes foundational support for the lips. This shrinkage causes a loss of volume and contributes to a more caved-in appearance around the mouth, as well as perioral wrinkling.[1]
- Muscle Atrophy: As the connection between your bones and skin, loss of muscular volume in facial muscles is responsible for reduced perioral tightness, resulting in sagging corners and diminished lip definition, particularly in the upper vermillion border.[2,3]
- Fat Redistribution: Subcutaneous fat pads help provide the soft volume associated with lips. This fat begins to shift or diminish with age, resulting in asymmetry, volume loss, and an increased appearance of aging around the lips.[2]
- Microvascular Decline: Reduced capillary density in aging lip tissue compromises oxygen and nutrient delivery, leading to paler, less vibrant lips that lose their natural coloration and healing capacity.[4]
- Skin Aging: The skin around your lips can significantly impact how aged your lips appear. With declines in key structural proteins like collagen and elastin, deeper perioral wrinkles, crepey skin, and a less-defined lip border can all make your lips appear significantly older.[3] Over the course of decades, speaking, eating, and smiling can cause the skin in the mouth area to become even more prone to this type of aging, especially when combined with decreased elasticity.
Some of these aging processes are hard to prevent. However, others, such as muscular atrophy, are potentially reversible using targeted exercises.
What Are Facial Exercises?
Facial exercises work by strengthening the muscles and skin under and around your mouth that support the lips, helping to mitigate the visible signs of aging. There are actually three types of activities that target different attributes of lip aging:
Facial Exercises
The logic behind facial exercises is similar to working out any other muscle group. By repeatedly contracting and resisting with facial muscles, you might grow those muscles. As facial muscles enlarge, they provide more “stuffing” under the skin, counteracting the thinning of fat and skin loosening with age, leading to a fuller, firmer mouth area.[5,6]
For the lip area, exercises often involve puckering, smiling, and resistance movements using the mouth muscles. For example, pressing the lips together and holding, or curling the lips inward and upward.
While more research is needed to fully confirm these effects, some claim that facial exercises increase blood flow to the skin, helping to boost the thickness of the skin on and around the lips.[5] At the same time, it’s worth noting that not all experts agree on the mechanism: some warn that repetitive facial motions (like frequent puckering) are precisely what causes wrinkles over time.[7]
Facial Massages
Unlike facial exercises, facial massages aim to help strengthen and shape the skin around the lips with gentle massaging and stretching of the skin. Whether you're using your hands, a jade roller, or a gua sha, these facial massages have the potential to improve the visible appearance of skin.[8]
In the short term, massages may temporarily improve blood flow and provide lymphatic drainage, resulting in a noticeable and visible improvement. For instance, a small pilot study conducted in 2022 demonstrated that self-massage twice a day resulted in subtle lifting and tightening effects in the mid-face.[9] This may help reduce sagging and soften muscles that contribute to dynamic wrinkles. The long-term benefits of facial massages are less studied, but they may support skin elasticity and encourage fibroblast activity, which is crucial for collagen production.[8]
Facial Yoga
A combination of the 2 other approaches, facial yoga involves using strengthening moves to activate the muscles, followed by soothing massage strokes to improve circulation and relax the skin. For the lips, you might perform an exercise like forcefully pronouncing “O” and “E,” then follow up with massaging the laugh lines to relieve tension. While there is even less research specifically supporting facial yoga, the holistic approach facial yoga embraces promises greater results in the area around your lips than a single approach alone.
What Else Can You Do to Combat The Visible Signs of Lip Aging?
Like with all visible signs of aging, the lifestyle you lead can have a profound effect on how fast your body ages. While no one change will result in slowing or reversing anatomical changes, especially those like bone density loss or muscular atrophy, integrating healthy habits alongside advanced formulations can significantly slow the progression and visibly improve lip structure, texture, and tone.
Here's how you can take action:
- Support Blood Flow: Cardiovascular health has a direct impact on the color and healing capacity of the lips. Engaging in regular aerobic activity, avoiding smoking, and limiting alcohol consumption can preserve capillary density and promote oxygen-rich circulation.
- Counteract Fat and Muscle Loss: Hydration, sun protection, and skincare that supports firmness can help maintain volume as subcutaneous fat redistributes with age. Combine this with a protein-rich diet to slow atrophy. This is especially important for those prone to muscle loss, like menopausal women.[10,11]
- Preserve Bone Integrity: Bone density loss can seem challenging to address with lifestyle changes. As it turns out, however, you can slow bone density loss. Starting with your diet, adequate intake of nutrients vital to bone health, like calcium, vitamin D, potassium, and protein, can help support bone health.[12] For older individuals, regular DEXA scans are recommended.[12] Menopausal women should also consider discussing HRT or other bone-preserving therapies with their physician.[12,13]
- Protect and Rebuild Perioral Skin: In addition to using OS-01 LIP SPF during the day to shield against UV damage, oxidative stress, and cellular aging that degrades collagen and elastin, there’s more you can do to protect the skin around your lips. Start with a powerful moisturizer like OS-01 FACE to help stimulate collagen and hyaluronic acid production. Follow up with a broad-spectrum 30+ SPF facial sunscreen, such as OS-01 FACE SPF, to protect against photodamage—the main culprit behind visible signs of skin aging.[14]
Pro tip: If a lighter moisturizer won't cut it for the skin around your mouth, consider using OS-01 EYE. It has the highest concentration of the OS-01 peptide and is designed to boost elasticity and strength.
Key Takeaways
- Aging lips and loss of volume isn’t just about the skin; underlying issues, such as bone resorption, muscle loss, and fat redistribution, also contribute to it.
- To combat muscle loss around the lips, facial exercises help strengthen the muscles, providing support and potentially reducing sagging.
- By stimulating blood flow and lymphatic drainage, facial massages can provide a natural boost to skin health and elasticity.
- Facial yoga combines muscle strengthening with soothing techniques, offering a holistic approach to lip aging.
- Healthy habits like exercise, hydration, and a nutrient-rich diet help combat lip aging by supporting circulation and muscle tone.
References
- https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/004004.htm
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8438644/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7496161/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6594803/
- https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/2666801
- https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/4/1742
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5888959/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965229918306423
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9907650/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5885810/?report=printable
- http://www.kptjournal.org/journal/view.html?doi=10.18857/jkpt.2021.33.6.297
- https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/osteoporosis/osteoporosis-what-you-need-to-know-as-you-age
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4520366/
- Based on data from clinical studies and/or lab studies conducted on human skin samples, 3D skin models, and skin or hair cells in the OneSkin lab. Explore more at oneskin.co/claims
