I was driving to work the other day when NPR did a fascinating report on what happens to our faces as we get older. You know the signs, bags under the eyes, sagging cheeks, disappearing chins...
Plastic surgeons have been addressing these issues for years. They used to believe the sagginess was a result of the loss of soft tissue, the loss of the baby fat gives the face it's round and cherubic look. But apparently there was an entire new dimension to aging that's been missed for years.
Apparently, plastic surgeons were wrong. David Hunt, a physical anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institute's National History Museum discovered that sagging skin wasn't the only cause of facial aging. He discovered our skulls actually lose bone as we age.
Our eye sockets get larger and we lose bone in our cheekbones and our jaws. This is why the traditional pull the skin tight type of plastic surgery doesn't work on everybody. It's also why a lot of plastic surgeons tend to use cheek and chin implants. Fascinating.
What's really cool is that people who have all of their teeth, lose jaw bone mass slower than people who've lost their teeth. The reason is that when you lose your teeth, the body absorbs the unused sockets, which is why so many toothless old people look slack-jawed.
If you're interested, read the original article by Deborah Franklin, As Our Skin Sags with Age, so do Our Bones.
And when you've finished, be sure to check out my Suite101.com articles.
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