I have recently become painfully aware that… *deep breath*… I am getting wrinkles.

*collective gasp!* I don’t know how this snuck up on me. I am only 32! Whaa whaaa whaaa!

After consulting the sages of the interwebs, I have come to learn that the first signs of facial wrinkles that women tend to get are what as known as “smile lines”, which generally take shape around the mouth and eyes. And sure enough, that’s where my lines are coming in.

I keep reminding myself of the very real fact that developing smile lines is something I can consider myself lucky over… It’s a visible sign that I’ve been blessed with a life full of smiles!

Any time you make a facial expression – a smile, a grimace, a scowl, a funny face at your toddler – it causes movement in underlying facial muscles, which forms a groove perpendicular to the movement. In the case of smiles, two grooves known as the nasolabial folds form (these are the two skin folds that run down from your nose to the corners of your mouth). When you’re young, your skin’s elasticity helps it bounce back so that the folds disappear when you stop smiling.

But as you get older and your skin begins to change – due to less elasticity, less fat, muscle atrophy or environmental factors – the folds no longer fade away, but start to linger on your face at rest. According to dermatologists, if you don’t yet have facial wrinkles you can actually predict where they’re going to turn up just by making a few expressions in the mirror.. your unique pattern of expression lines predict your pattern of future persistent wrinkles!

Are Wrinkles Bad For You? Should We STOP Smiling to Prevent Wrinkles?

There’s nothing inherently unhealthy about wrinkles. Ultimately, however, wrinkles are more of a cosmetic problem, albeit one that could cause you some psychological stress.

While some people view wrinkles as distinguished, more than half of those surveyed by the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery said they are bothered by wrinkles on their face.

Since so many of us dread wrinkles, and we KNOW that smiling causes wrinkles, this begs the questions…. Should we just straight up AVOID smiling?! You may have heard celebrities state that they try not to smile too often because smiling causes wrinkles. But suppressing a smile also means suppressing positive emotions that enhance your well-being.

It turns out that thinking positive thoughts and then smiling as a result can make you happier!

When you smile at others, they’re also more likely to smile back in return, creating an ongoing feedback loop that may lead to more positivity in your life and the lives of others.

In order for this to work for wrinkle prevention, you’d have to suppress not only smiles but virtually EVERY facial expression. Which, aside from being relatively unattainable, it would leave you looking like an emotionless robot, or a zombie-like void or.. well,  I dunno.. just freaky!

Additionally, being unable to smile due to injuries or intentional facial treatments like Botox has been proven to affect your ability to feel emotions! Botox injections paralyze the underlying muscles that cause facial wrinkles and in so doing limit your ability to make facial expressions. Research involving people who received Botox injections revealed they had less emotional response to video clips and did not feel their emotions as deeply as people who had received a different cosmetic procedure (one that does not paralyze muscles).

One of the study’s researchers noted: “For at least some emotions, if you take away some part of the facial expression, you take away some of the emotional experience.” CREEPY!! And not exactly emotionally healthy to boot.

So bottom line is, avoiding smiling is just straight up cooky-dooks. If you are worried about wrinkles (like I have recently become!) then the trick is to focus on diet, topical remedies, and environmental prevention strategies to keep your skin as young as possible for as long as possible.

Since I am ALL into skin care now, I’ll be blogging on this particular topic MUCH MORE in the near future.. but in the meantime, I’ll be SMILING, SMILING, SMILING… and I hope you will be too! <3