Facial exercises may reduce some of the signs of aging,
according to an interesting new study of the effects of repeating specific,
expressive movements on people’s appearance.
The study, published in ‘JAMA Dermatology’, found that
middle-aged women looked about three years younger after a few months of
exercising, perhaps providing a reasonable, new rationale for making faces
behind our spouses’ backs.
In recent years, a number of facial exercise programmes have
become popular enough that they drew the attention of a group of dermatologists
at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“We became aware that there were all of these commercial
programmes — DVDs, instructional videos, even personal trainers — that
purported to be able to help people exercise their faces in ways that would
make them be happier, healthier, and maybe look younger,” says Dr Murad Alam,
the vice chairman of dermatology at Northwestern University, who led the new
study.
“But we were not aware of any scientific proof that these
programmes could be effective,” he adds.
So he and his colleagues decided to test the usefulness of
facial exercises. They began by getting in touch with Gary Sikorski of
Providence, Rhode Island, who had developed Happy Face Yoga, one of the
longest-established facial exercise programmes.
The basic premise of facial exercising, Sikorski says, is
that it provides a kind of resistance training for the facial muscles.
The Northwestern scientists recruited 27 women between the
ages of 40 and 65 who wanted to try facial exercising. The women all were
photographed and then met with Sikorski for two 90-minute, in-person sessions,
during which he taught them the 32 exercises. The full session took 30 minutes.
REVERSE AGING
The women were asked to practice every day for eight weeks.
Then they were photographed again and told to continue with the full routine every
other day for another 12 weeks. The women were enthusiastic, finding
improvements in almost all of their facial features.
Dermatologists noted improvements in the
fullness of cheeks after 20 weeks but little noticeable change elsewhere. But
they estimated the women to be younger after the program. They ranked the women
as, on average, about 51 years old in the photographs at the start of the
study, but closer to 48 years old after 20 weeks of facial workouts.