As the face ages, skin loses elasticity and fat pads between the muscle and skin become thinner. The fat pads, which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, give the face much of its shape. As skin becomes saggy, the thinning fat pads atrophy and slide, causing the face to “fall down.”
Smiley Exercises
Study participants, women aged 40 to 65, underwent two sets of face-to-face 90-minute training sessions from a facial exercise instructor. At home, they continued to do these exercises for a total of 20 weeks. For the first eight weeks, they did the exercises daily for 30 minutes. From week nine to week 20, they did the same exercises every other day for 30 minutes a session.Study co-author Gary Sikorski of Happy Face Yoga developed and provided the exercises.
“Facial exercises that may be beneficial include those that entail puckering and squeezing the cheeks,” Alam said. “There are many muscles that collectively allow movement of the cheeks, and our study showed that building these up makes the upper and lower cheeks look fuller.”
Participants learned and performed 32 distinct facial exercises, each one for about a minute. One is The Cheek Lifter: Open the mouth and form an O, position the upper lip over the teeth, smile to lift cheek muscles up, put fingers lightly on the top part of the cheek, release the cheek muscles to lower them, and lift back up. Repeat by lowering and lifting the cheeks.
Another exercise is the Happy Cheeks Sculpting: Smile without showing the teeth, purse lips together, smile forcing the cheek muscles up, place your fingers on corners of the mouth and slide them up to the top of the cheeks, then hold for 20 seconds.
3 Years Younger
Dermatologists assessed before and after photos using a standardized facial aging scale (Merz-Carruthers Facial Aging Photoscales). The dermatologist raters looked separately at 19 features of the face and rated all of those at three different time points: at the beginning, at week eight, and at week 20.They also rated each participant’s age at the beginning, at eight weeks, and at week 20. Lastly, they asked how happy participants were with the results.
The raters found that upper cheek and lower cheek fullness, in particular, was significantly enhanced as a result of the exercises. In addition, the raters estimated average patient age decreased over the course of the study. It started at 50.8 years, dropped to 49.6 years at eight weeks, and then to 48.1 years at 20 weeks.
“That’s almost a three-year decrease in age appearance over a 20-week period,” Alam said.
Participants also reported being highly satisfied with the results and noticed an improvement in nearly all the facial areas that were rated.