Natural Ways to Firm Sagging Skin

By any reasonable standards, sagging and loose skin presents a gaudy sight. It undermines the progress you have made in your weight loss journey. And it adds years to your true age by the explicitly unhealthy sight it makes of your skin.

What can you do to reinvigorate the elasticity in your skin and make it appear firm and youthful?

Drink Water

For more emphasis, I repeat: Drink plenty of water! Water helps skin become firmer, elastic and radiant. The more you hydrate, the better. Water helps the skin regain its elasticity fast, and you’ll see the sagging skin virtually shrinking as you increase your water take. Aim to consume between 6 to 12 glasses of water a day.

Increase your Vitamin C intake

Vitamin C is popular for many things. Even for those, which purportedly it wasn’t meant for it. Vitamin C plays an important role in production of collagen and maintenance of skin elasticity. Collagen is what holds the body together. Found within bones, connective tissues, and in the skin, collagen gives the skin its strength and structure and helps the body replace dead skin cells with newer cells. The excessive stress on the skin due to weight gain stretches it to its elastic limit. Having done so, the endogenously  produced collagen gets strained to a point where it becomes difficult for it to ‘hold’ the skin together. When you shed those pounds, this becomes the reason for skin not returning to its primitive state. When you consume vitamin c, it helps restore the depleted collagen that brings the skin back in place. Aim to consume between 2000 – 5000 mg of vitamin c for the first few weeks. This constitutes a mega dose, but still within the safe limits. Vitamin C is water soluble, so your body will only use the amount it needs while the rest will passed out in urine.

Add Vitamin A, E, D and B to your diet

Vitamin E is another skin friendly vitamin that removes oxidative stress and restores elastin and collagen within your body, so does vitamin A (as beta-carotene), with an added function of producing necessary oils to moisturize the skin. Vitamin D (cholecalciferol) helps regenerate skin cells, optimizes hormonal levels, rectifies the endocrine system and diminishes the likelihood of depression. B-Vitamins have been extensively studied for a whole range of essential bodily functions, among them the repair of cells within the body. You can get all these in a good quality multi-vitamin from any supplement store. Follow the recommended dosage and do not exceed it.

Visit Saunas Frequently

The steam helps remove dead skin cells from the body and accelerates removal of toxins via skin. This process acts a catalyst to hasten the production of new skin cells that help firm the skin and make it more elastic and younger looking. Some experts suggest that it is a layer of subcutaneous fat beneath the skin that causes it to sag, and steam baths or saunas help the body get rid of that fat. Either way, saunas have been known to make skin appear youthful and firmer.

Invest in Sea Salt Scrubs

Sea salt scrubs remove dead skin cells and the exfoliation process increases blood flow to the surface of the skin, thereby hastening the production of skin cells and helping skin get tighter over time. The market is flooded with these scrubs, so your efforts in searching for one won’t end in vain. I have even witnessed them on shelves in gas stations across the country!

With all things in life, remember that you’re running a marathon, not a sprint. So if you don’t notice immediate results, do not worry. Time heals all wounds, and it is highly likely that your saggy – grotesque as it may seem – skin will fall in its rightful place as time passes. Yet still if you feel like you’re not doing enough, invest in a good moisturizer and massage your way to a tighter skin.