Why Winter makes women`s eyes look 5 years older!
Baku, December 22 (AZERTAC). As cold winds sweep across shivering Britain, scientists have a special weather warning for women — winter can be especially cruel for your looks.
It causes an array of problems such as ageing skin, increased weight, a heightened risk of osteoporosis and cancer, and even having children with birth problems.
According to a study this week, winter can make a woman`s eyes look almost five years older.
Experts who studied 5,000 women throughout the seasons say circles and bags under the eyes appear significantly darker in the colder months.
They concluded that this appearance of ageing is caused by a lack of sunlight, which leads to paler skin and emphasises eye bags.
This is made worse by us all feeling more tired and lethargic in winter due to a lower level of vitamin D, which is vital for bone health and is generated by the body when it is exposed to sunlight.
‘Lack of vitamin D has a negative effect on the appearance of dark circles and puffy eyes. It can age a woman by 4.7 years, putting more than 10 per cent on a woman`s age if she is 40,` says Dr Mark Binette, a skincare expert.
The study, carried out in New York, found that 82 per cent of women had dark circles and puffy eyes in winter as opposed to 38 per cent in summer.
A number of factors can make dark circles look worse. Thinning skin and loss of fat and collagen, the skin`s supportive protein, which are common as we age, can make the reddish-blue blood vessels under the eyes more obvious.
Physical and emotional stress — as well as smoking and drinking — also have a significant effect.
It makes winter bad news as far as our looks are concerned, but the truth is that the cold months — and particularly the lack of sunlight — can wreak all sorts of havoc on our bodies.
Not least of these is the way we pile on the pounds, a condition sometimes called `blizzard bloat`.
The winter weight problem stems from the fact that lack of sunlight can make us feel ravenously hungry, because the pituitary gland in our brain is less stimulated.
This sparks off a series of instinctive responses that our ancestors evolved thousands of years ago to survive long, blisteringly cold winters: we feel the urge to build up our bodies` fat stores by eating whatever is available, in case our food stocks run out.
We are also less keen to exercise, as we feel instinctively drawn to stay inside our warm caves.
In physical terms, lack of sunlight also reduces the effectiveness of the hormone leptin — which tells the brain when the stomach is full — and so we overeat.
The results of this have been shown by an Aberdeen University study of 3,100 women living in the wintry north-east of Scotland, where one in five people is overweight.
It found that the clinically obese people in the study had been getting 10 per cent less vitamin D from sunshine than those of a healthy size.
Some experts (and, indeed, the whole of the vitamin supplement industry) claim we can make up for lack of sunlight simply by taking vitamin D pills.
There seem to be specific wavelengths in natural sunshine that our bodies need, says Hector DeLuca, a biochemistry professor at Wisconsin-Madison University. Likewise, vitamin D may not help much towards a range of other diseases where exposure to sunlight is believed to play a preventative role.
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