Great Skin at Any Age

Slather on anti-aging creams at night, when cellular repair speeds up.

Make exfoliation a daily habit.
In addition to cleansing your face, you need to exfoliate to help supercharge your skin's cellular turnover. (Physical scrubs contain crushed particles of ingredients like corn meal and nuts while chemical products use mild exfoliants like glucosamine and glycolic acid to get rid of dead skin cells.)

Diminish fine lines with powerful skin (and eye) creams. Cellular repair speeds up when your body is sleeping -- why it's best to load the skin (particularly the area around the eyes, where skin is thinner) at bedtime with nutrient-rich anti-aging creams. Look for creams with retinol (found in over-the-counter vitamin-A products) and kinetin (an anti-aging compound found in the leaves of green plants).

Visit your dermatologist, when necessary, for more powerful treatments.
Compounds like Botox or Myobloc can be injected into fine wrinkles and expression lines (like those on the forehead) to temporarily paralyze the muscles that cause skin-wrinkling expressions. (One possible side effect: Temporarily droopy eyelids if injected too close to the eyes.) And a newer light-based treatment called IPL (Intense Pulse Light), photo rejuvenation or the Photo Facial bypasses the skin's surface to target the deeper layers, helping smooth out uneven skin tone and repair broken vessels on the face, according to Neil Sadick, M.D., professor of dermatology at the Weill College of Medicine at Cornell University Medical Center in New York. Slight redness after treatment is the only reported side effect. (For more details, go to aad.org.)