Laugh lines sound appealing, but they can age the appearance of your face. Facial toning exercises, massage exercises and exercise machines can help prevent and reduce the appearance of these wrinkles.
Benefits
Facial exercises can tone the 57 muscles of the face and neck and tighten sagging muscles. They will increase blood circulation as well as release tension. Facial exercises are cheap and accessible to everyone. As little as 15 minutes a day of exercising can give your face a youthful appearance by smoothing the laugh lines that show age.
Types
There are many different facial exercise programs and exercises for laugh lines, eyes, lips, forehead and the neck. Some example exercises for laugh lines are the trumpet player exercise where you take a deep breath in through your mouth and close your lips. Let your cheeks fill up with air like a trumpet player or a hamster. Breathe out through your nose. Do five reps. You can also smile and then purse your lips outwards. You'll look like a fish if you're doing it right.
Another exercise you can do for your whole face, including the laugh lines, is to squeeze all the muscles of your face. Take a deep breath in through your nose and then squeeze your hands into fists, squeeze your eyes shut and squeeze all the muscles of your face together.
Exercise Machine
Just as there are exercise machines to tone your biceps, you can use machines to tone your facial muscles. The Facial-Flex is one such device. You simply place the device over your mouth and it will flex the facial muscles for you with the help of elastic resistance bands. The Facial-Flex can tone the areas around the mouth where sagging muscles can contribute to laugh lines.
Massage Benefits
Dr. Frederick Rossiter suggests doing facial massage after facial exercises to increase the effectiveness of the muscle contractions. He says that massage will improve blood circulation to the skin and promote structural changes in the skin's fat deposits. Dr. Rossiter prescribes a program called Carolyn's Facial Fitness, which includes facial toning and massage exercises. The program will help prevent, smooth and reduce the appearance of laugh lines, but only if done regularly. He suggests daily exercise.
Warning
Not everyone agrees that facial exercises are beneficial for wrinkles. Paula Begoun, of the Cosmetics Cops website, says that facial exercises cause more wrinkles. She points out that laugh lines and other lines on the face and neck are caused by four things: loss of collagen and elastin, loss of the skin's fat layer, weak facial ligaments and movement of the facial muscles. Facial exercises will not restore fat, collagen or elastin. Doing exercises for the face will just exasperate the lines caused by facial movement, according to Begoun.
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