Why are wrinkles most likely to appear around the eyes?

It can be said that wrinkles are really annoying. It seems that wrinkles will inevitably appear when you reach a certain age, so many people use wrinkles as a basis for intuitively judging age. So why do wrinkles appear? Why are wrinkles more likely to appear around the eyes than other parts of the body? How to deal with wrinkles? Let me tell you today.

01. Classification of skin aging

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The following table is a classification of skin aging by Dr. Richard G. Glogau [1]. We can see that as we age, wrinkles begin to appear, from dynamic wrinkles to static wrinkles until they are all wrinkles.

(Image source [1])

Alternatively, another picture can more intuitively show the changes in skin wrinkles.

I believe many people have also noticed a fact, that is, the area most prone to wrinkles is often around the eyes. In fact, the earliest wrinkles on our face are around the eyes, such as crow's feet.

(Photo source: Internet)

02. Why are wrinkles more likely to appear around the eyes?

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One of the important reasons is: movement of the muscles around the eyes.

The special feature of the eye skin is its strong movement performance. Some facial muscles can move in multiple directions to show expressions, so these muscles are also called expression muscles. Expression muscles allow us to show a variety of expressions on the face, happiness, anger, sorrow and joy are all on the face, which provides great significance for human communication and expression.

Of course, the movement of eye muscles is not just for expression, in fact, the movement of eye muscles itself has an objective physiological function, that is: the nerve reflex function of keeping the cornea or conjunctiva moist, which is necessary for eye protection.

Because of this, even when a person is quiet and does not have any strong need to use their eyes, their eyes are still blinking frequently. A person can blink several to dozens of times in a minute.

However, these high-frequency eye muscle movements are not so beautiful from an aesthetic point of view.

Every time you blink, you're doing a micro-movement, and this repetitive movement causes your muscles to start to wrinkle, just like when you fold a piece of paper.

(Image source: Internet) In general, human muscles have good elasticity and recovery ability. However, they cannot withstand the word "high frequency".

Blinking several to dozens of times per minute means hundreds or thousands of times per hour. If you use your eyes normally for more than ten hours a day, the number of blinks alone can reach tens of thousands per day.

Over the years, the result is that the eye muscles are frequently exercised, which causes the muscles to lose their ability to recover. As a result, the skin around the eyes begins to age and wrinkles appear.

Of course, in academia, this type of wrinkle has another name: dynamic wrinkle. It refers to the wrinkles caused by muscle dynamic changes. The facial muscles are the hardest hit by dynamic wrinkles. Frequent movement of the facial muscles in the eye socket area will produce crow's feet, frequent movement of the corrugator muscles will produce vertical wrinkles between the eyebrows, and the movement of the depressor supercilii muscles will produce horizontal wrinkles at the root of the nose [2].

I believe that after reading this, you will understand why the eyes are the most prone to wrinkles. After all, the eyes are a muscle area that undergoes very high movement, and high-frequency movement results in dynamic wrinkles.

(Photo source: Internet) 03. Eye wrinkles, an inevitable reality—————————————

Of course, someone will say that the body has more than just high-frequency eye muscles. For example, our heart keeps working all the time. Why doesn’t the heart have wrinkles?

Haha, there are actually two main reasons for this. One is that the myocardium is different from the skin around the eyes. The myocardium is naturally able to beat. The other is that the skin around the eyes is somewhat special compared to other skin, that is: the skin around the eyes is thinner.

In addition to movement issues, the skin around the eyes also has its own particularities. However, the eyes are obviously different from other parts of the face. The skin around the eyes is thin, and the skin around the eyelids is the thinnest skin on the human body, with a thickness of only 0.3-0.5mm. It is more "fragile" than the skin on other parts of the face.

Because of this, eye wrinkles are a reality that almost everyone has to deal with, and their number increases with age.

04. How to deal with eye wrinkles? ———————————

So, is there anything we can do to combat eye wrinkles? Well, there are some.

First: Reduce eye strain

As long as you use your eyes, they will keep blinking, which is beyond your control. And modern people stay up too late.

Some people stay up late to work overtime, some stay up late to drink, some stay up late to watch TV series, and some people, I don’t know what the situation is, they just want to stay up late.

However, this directly increases the amount of eye movement.

For example, a normal person blinks 2-10 times per minute[3]. Let’s pick a middle number, 6 times. Then, every hour of staying up late is equivalent to blinking nearly 400 times more. If you stay up late for years, you will blink 130,000 times more in a year. This is a terrifying number.

(The blinking frequency of a person in different states[3]) If one stays up late for several hours every day at this frequency, the area around the eyes will age more than others in a year, and wrinkles will appear early as a result.

Therefore, in order to deal with wrinkles, we should try to reduce the use of eyes, such as staying up late less, reducing the length of time of using eyes, and reducing dynamic lines caused by micro-movement around the eyes:

Of course, targeted supplementation of the eye area is also effective. Targeted supplementation of the eye area can slow down the aging of the eye and reduce the appearance of wrinkles. There are already some strategies, mainly including the following aspects:

Moisturizing and hydrating, reducing dry lines

The skin around the eyes naturally needs hydration, and since there are almost no sebaceous glands, sweat glands and hair follicle openings in the skin around the eyes, it needs hydration even more.

Replenish collagen and reduce fine lines caused by collagen loss

Many girls know this. Collagen is an important component of the skin and has a significant effect on skin wrinkles and elasticity. Therefore, supplementing these can definitely slow down the aging of the eye skin.

Proper massage and lifting to soothe the eye area

Use moderate massage to soothe muscles and promote blood circulation to reduce eye muscle fatigue. Of course, side massage also reduces eye strain.

Choose an eye cream with the right ingredients to activate the repair ability, repair and buffer micro-motion damage. For example, there are skin care products that support and tighten the eye area and increase the thickness of the skin around the eyes to care for the eye skin. Compared with ordinary face creams, eye creams are specifically optimized and supplemented for the eyes, and are naturally more suitable for eye wrinkles.

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In general, the appearance of eye wrinkles is both special and inevitable. As long as time is long enough, wrinkles will appear sooner or later. However, we can reduce the use of eyes and take proper care of them, so that wrinkles can appear as slowly as possible.

ref

1 Yu Lifu. Clinical study on the effect of botulinum toxin type A injection on the rejuvenation of the upper and middle face[D]. Kunming Medical University, 2015.

2 Tamatsu Y, Tsukahara K, Sugawara Y, et al. New finding that might

explain why the skin wrinkles more on various parts of the face[J].

Clin Anat, 2015, 28(6): 745-752

3 Bentivoglio, Anna Rita, et al. "Analysis of blink rate patterns in normal subjects." Movement disorders 12.6 (1997): 1028-1034.