Does Dehydration Cause Wrinkled Skin?

About 60 percent of your body is water, so hydration is always important for any part of your body, including the skin. In fact, water is the primary component of your skin, which is also an intrinsic component of your collagen, one study suggests. In essence, lack of water in the body (dehydration) is bad for your skin health. Does it also cause wrinkled skin?

First off, what causes wrinkled skin?

A number of factors have a role to make wrinkled skin more likely. The most common one is probably ultraviolet radiation. UV rays can speed your natural aging process, increasing the risk of early wrinkling. They can hurt the essential connective tissue of your skin (including collagen & elastin fibers).

Another common culprit is age. The risk of aging skin increases with age, we all agree on this. With age, you’re likely to have decreased production of collagen, elastin, and natural oils of your skin. As a result, your skin would appear more wrinkled.

Other factors may include:

1. Changes of hormones associated with menopause. It’s thought that decreased production of certain hormones, especially estrogen, may factor into skin aging.
2. Free radicals! UV radiation is not the only one to blame; premature skin aging could also be a consequence of excessive exposure to free radicals. Free radicals may hurt your skin collagen by triggering the activation of the metalloproteinases.
3. Repeated muscle use in habitual facial expressions. As your skin ages, it’s likely to lose its ability to spring back when you make facial expressions (e.g. smiling, yawning, and squinting).
4. Gravity. While the gravity is a nature gift, it would also cause the skin to sag a little further down. This dreaded pull of gravity might contribute to the dropping eyelids in your older age.
5. Tabaco smoke contains countless bad, harmful chemicals which some may impair the blood supply to the skin cells and interrupt with the normal process of your aging skin.
6. Genetics (hereditary), some people are relatively easier to wrinkle more.
7. Your skin type may matter, too. For instance, fine lines and wrinkles are likely to be more noticeable in light-colored skin. The risk may also increase in people who have naturally dry skin.

Does dehydration cause wrinkled skin?

It seems dehydration is not one of common risk factors for wrinkled skin. But this doesn’t mean that it has no effect at all. Lack of water would cause a big impact on your skin health, especially if you have a habit of drinking less water or something else that causes dehydration frequently.

Being hydrated has a role to your skin health in long term. It does help support your glowing appearance. But the hydration of your overall body is not necessarily associated with the significant improvement of your wrinkles, because your skin hydration is a complex process [reference].

When you’re dehydrated, your skin is less likely to get the adequate amount of water. This will drive the skin to become dry and flaky. When the skin loses its balance of moisture, it has less resilience and you’re more prone to wrinkling.

With other factors, dehydration would take a serious toll on your skin health. For instance, when you have had several nights of partying with heavy alcohol drinking and little sleep – these things are going to result in that dull, poor appearance of the skin. In such case, plenty of water and an early night along with a balanced-healthy diet are what you need to naturally restore your healthy glow.

So, hydrated skin is one of important pillars to have glowing and plumper skin. It is also crucial to help deal with signs of aging skin, including wrinkles.

Anyone can suffer with dehydrated skin and likely to develop flat skin from time to time. But with appropriate strategies, this is preventable. And keeping hydrated by drinking plenty of water is a must!

Your body is probably hydrated if you have light-yellow urine and rarely feel thirsty. To reduce the risk of dehydration, the following ideas may help:

1. Drink enough water before and after exercise. Sometimes you may also need to drink water during exercise, depending on your situations.
2. Drink a glass of water with each meal. Some experts also suggest this between each meal.

It’s clear that dehydration is a nightmare for your overall health. But although proper hydration is a fundamental thing for your skin health, this doesn’t necessarily mean that drinking extra water is a big thing to reduce wrinkles in healthy people.

Again, hydration is required to keep the skin elastic and firm. Despite this correlation, there is no conclusive evidence that extra water you drink has an effect on skin hydration, so does on your skin appearance!

So drinking more water than needed is likely to have no effect on your wrinkles. Instead, try the following steps to boost and maintain your hydrated skin: