We live in a world that puts an unreasonable amount of pressure on people to stay young and beautiful forever. Surgical interventions have become more accessible and affordable than ever before but they come with a sacrifice that we might not understand until it's too late. While it is a personal choice and everyone’s priorities are different, everyone should know that there are easier and more holistic ways to preserve our youthful appearances, with our wallets and skin untouched. In this article, we discuss healthy and natural ways to prevent forehead wrinkles or soften the ones that have already started forming. But first, let's take a quick look at the main reasons forehead wrinkles form in the first place.

What Causes Forehead Wrinkles?

Repetitive facial movements

If your forehead wrinkles have started bothering you early on, it might be that you are a very expressive person who uses their face as a tool to express your feelings and emotions while speaking, thinking, and reacting to things.

Insufficient hydration

Just like your whole body needs proper hydration, your skin needs it too, come summer or winter. Even if you seem to drink your daily dose of water, lack of hydration may occur when the water you consume doesn't have enough minerals and electrolytes. This is especially important for people who exercise regularly or have an active lifestyle.

Poor diet

Poor diet can significantly influence the rate and extent of wrinkles forming on your face. Processed foods, sugar, red meat, and lack of fresh produce in your diet can all contribute to forehead wrinkles and fine lines.

Insufficient skincare routine

Do you treat your skin type — normal, dry, oily, combination, or sensitive — according to its needs? Are you using the right products? Do you treat your face with an occasional mask or exfoliation? Improper skincare routines, along with a lack of hydration and exfoliation, can greatly decrease your skin's resistance to premature aging.

Sun exposure

Chronic sun exposure is probably the most damaging external factor to the health of human skin. Spending too much time in the sun and not wearing sunscreen can be a major contributor to premature aging and the formation of wrinkles.

Stress

Small amounts of stress can be beneficial for our personal development and physical health, such as the stress your body experiences while exercising. However, too much stress is detrimental to our minds and bodies, mainly due to a high level of cortisol, the stress hormone. High cortisol levels can break down collagen and elastin in the skin, causing inflammation that is damaging to the whole body, including your skin. It is also a major contributor to dehydration.

Smoking

Smoking is one of the most damaging things you can do to your body, including your skin. Nicotine, together with many other harmful substances in tobacco, negatively impacts collagen and elastin levels, prevents sufficient oxygen flow to the skin, causes inflammation, narrows blood vessels, and reduces nutrient flow and absorption.

Alcohol intake

Alcohol is a diuretic, consumption of which leaves your body and skin dehydrated. It also weakens your immune system, making your body prone to infections and inflammation. It disrupts your sleep each and every time you drink, preventing your skin from repairing and recovering during deep sleep.

Sleeping habits

Good night's sleep is crucial for your overall health. During sleep, your body is detoxing and cleansing itself from unnecessary and unhealthy cells. Sleep strengthens your immune system, encourages your body to produce growth hormones, and reduces stress hormones. This is all very beneficial to your skin's health, so whatever is preventing you from sufficient and uninterrupted sleep is also stopping you from achieving healthy-looking skin. Your sleep position can directly impact the formation of facial wrinkles, often called compression wrinkles. The quality of your pillow and pillowcase can also contribute to how hydrated your face stays throughout the night and fluid retention overall.

Age and genetics

Even if you're doing everything you can for your skin to stay healthy, there is a chance that your fine lines and wrinkles are forming due to your genetics and natural processes that come with aging. Whether we want it or not, skin eventually produces less sebum and loses its elasticity, collagen and elastin.

8 Ways to Get Rid Of Forehead Wrinkles Naturally at Home

1) Quit smoking

We can't start this list on how to get rid of forehead wrinkles naturally without first pointing to the most damaging factors such as tobacco smoking. There are a lot of things you can do to promote your overall health, but the results will be diminished and counterbalanced if you continue smoking cigarettes. Consult your doctor and build a social support system to ease the process of quitting.

2) Healthy balanced diet

Just like with smoking, add new healthy ingredients to your daily diet and make sure you get rid of the bad ones. Start with limiting your intake of added sugars and processed foods. Add more healthy plant-based foods to your diet, like leafy greens, fruit, beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Then, focus on enriching your meals with natural antioxidants (berries), healthy fats (avocados), and omega-3 fatty acids (nuts and seeds).

3) Hydration

Make sure you drink enough water that has been cleansed from impurities and enriched with minerals and electrolytes. Determine how much water you need according to your body mass and activity levels. Take into account how much caffeine and alcohol you consume. Both are diuretics that require extra water intake to counterbalance their dehydrating effects.

4) Supplements

Consider complimenting your balanced diet with supplements for healthy and youthful skin. Supplements with vitamins A, C, E, and D, omega-3 fatty acids, collagen, spirulina, olive leaf extract, and others are extremely beneficial in promoting healthy skin with fewer wrinkles and fine lines.

5) Stress management

Controlling the cortisol levels in your body might be much more important than you thought. Too much cortisol, often referred to as the stress hormone, promotes destructive processes in your body, such as inflammation, unintentional weight gain, high blood pressure, dehydration, and disrupted sleep. To keep your cortisol levels at bay, deal with your stress head-on. Practice mindfulness, take yoga classes, prioritize sleep, spend time with people who make you feel good, bring more awareness to your breath, and spend enough time in nature. While it’s easier said than done, try to minimize the factors in your life that cause chronic stress.

6) Skincare routine

After taking care of your skin from the inside, we can move on to external skincare practices. Identify your skin type and create a skincare routine according to the specific needs of your skin. Never go to sleep with your makeup on. Wash your face morning and night and provide it with proper hydration using products enriched with vitamin C and hyaluronic acid in the daytime and retinols at night. Wear your SPF every day to prevent your skin from UV damage. Consider natural homemade face masks for extra hydration, using nutritious ingredients such as coconut oil, natural yogurt, and oatmeal. Exfoliate your skin according to your skin type.

7) Sleeping habits

Aside from sleep quality, duration, and regularity, there are more aspects to look at in your sleep hygiene. Consider switching up your sleeping positions, as this can directly impact the formation of your facial wrinkles. Also, think about investing in a silk or satin pillowcase. Cotton is a highly absorbent material with rough texture. If you sleep on a cotton pillowcase, you scratch your face and leave all the skincare products on your pillow, stripping your skin of its natural and added hydration. Silk and satin, on the other hand, are great materials to sleep on for both your skin and hair. They're much less absorbent, keep your skin hydrated, and are much smoother in texture, preventing your skin from developing premature wrinkles and fine lines.

8) Facial massage

Make facial exercise and face massage your daily ritual. Try different techniques or instruments such as Gua Sha, jade, or rose quartz roller. You might also enjoy the toning and rejuvenating effects of ice cubes or even green tea ice cubes- be sure to wrap them in a wash cloth and never apply directly to skin. Here at Luvly, we promote a healthy habit of face yoga to help with youthful looking skin. There are some really useful face yoga exercises that have shown to have amazing effects in forehead wrinkle prevention and reduction.

Face Yoga Exercises For Forehead Wrinkles

Horizontal wrinkles

Open your forehead muscle by placing the fingertips of your one hand at the bottom of your forehead, just above your eyebrow, and the fingertips of your other hand at the top of your forehead, just below your hairline. Press your fingertips into the skin and pull your bottom fingers down and the top fingertips up. Let your fingertips meet at the middle of your forehead, and gently stretch them away from each other. Work your way across your whole forehead 1-3 times.

Horizontal wrinkles, part 2

Identify your forehead wrinkles by raising your eyebrows. Grab and roll one wrinkle at a time as if you're trying to roll it inside out. Gently work your way through your forehead 1-3 times.

Wrinkles between your eyebrows

Pinch and hold your skin right between your eyebrows as you move outwards, or hold and wiggle the skin gently for 15-20 seconds. Let the skin plump up between the fingers with each soft pinch. This exercise helps to relax the muscle between your eyebrows and to boost collagen and elastin production.

Overall appearance of your forehead

Relax your scalp by massaging it with the tips of your fingers, starting from your hairline and working your way across the whole head. Imagine that you are shampooing your hair. This exercise is amazing for relaxing the scalp and connecting tissues, all the way down to the forehead. Also read: Face yoga exercises for a tight and smooth forehead

Sleep On It

_"Forehead wrinkles and scalp tension can impact our overall sense of wellbeing. Releasing the scalp, especially before bed, can do wonders for relaxation and stress relief. By gently massaging the scalp and forehead, we can improve blood circulation, reduce tension, and promote a sense of calm. This not only helps minimize the appearance of forehead wrinkles, it also prepares our minds and bodies for a more restful sleep. Incorporating this simple yet effective routine into our nightly regimen can lead to better sleep quality and an enhanced sense of wellbeing which shows on your face in the morning."_ Jillian Osborne, a face yoga teacher and a Luvly app face yoga expert.