Face facts, if you chose to exercise your way to an amazing body during lockdown, you may need some expert help.
When we reach a certain age, we know that we have to work harder at exercising to get the figure we want. But by our mid 30s there comes a tipping point when excessive working out may be melt fat away from your thighs, but it will also disappear from where you don’t want to loose plumpness – your face. Here, Medical Director Dr Preema Vig gives us her advice to help to conquer a ‘gym face’…
Q: What causes ‘gym face’?
Dr Preema Vig: Exercise is crucial for a healthy body and skin, but too much can leave you with a hollow saggy cheek area. This effect is known as the ‘gym-face’ look, and can be caused by excessive cardiovascular exercise, like running, cycling and endurance training which raise the heart rate and can cause dramatic weight loss.
Q: How does this happen?
Dr Preema Vig: When you start to exercise your face goes red as blood vessels widen to get oxygen flowing around the body. But after about 15 minutes, when muscles need more oxygen, blood starts to be diverted from the face, which causes fat pads in the cheeks to be deprived of oxygen and to slowly diminish. This causes facial-volume loss, particularly in the cheek area, which then makes your face look prematurely aged.
Q: Which exercises help avoid this?
Dr Preema Vig: The ‘gym-face’ phenomenon has led to many women varying their workouts and to have a more facial friendly fitness regime. This means not doing back-to-back cardiovascular exercise, but doing different types of exercise like weight-training, Pilates and high-intensity training.
Q: Is there an aesthetic solution?
Dr Preema Vig: Women don’t have to choose between having an amazing body, or a plumped face they can have both. I advise patients who want a non-surgical solution to the ageing effects of excessive exercising to consider have dermal filler applied to the cheek area, to increase facial volume. In fact the new generation fillers can often increase your own production of hyaluronic acid, leading to less frequent treatments.
Q: What skincare solutions are there?
Dr Preema Vig: A regime of effective daily skincare such as iS Clinical Cleansing Complex, Youth Eye and Active Serum encourage skin cell turnover and increases the penetration of actives such as Sodium Hyaluronate to deliver skin plumping actives into skin, which helps to deliver a youthful appearance.
With kind thanks to Dr Preema Vig
For more information drpreema.com