What are wrinkles and how do they form?

Wrinkles are a natural part of the aging process. With age, our skin gets thinner, drier and we lose elastin. The ability of our skin to protect itself is reduced as we age. Eventually, wrinkles, creases, and lines form on our skin.

Continuous muscle contraction is also another major contributor to facial wrinkles. Continuous muscle movement causes ‘dynamic wrinkles’ which only appear when the muscle is used, however, over time, if untreated, these wrinkles can become ‘static wrinkles’ which means they become permanently etched in our skin.

Measuring the Important Things

A body composition analysis can be especially helpful for those wanting to get in better shape since exercise’s most direct result is not weight loss, but fat loss. The healthier body composition that results from exercises means an increased percentage of muscle as opposed to fat in the body. Honestly, we don’t care too much about the actual amount of pounds lost, so we don’t set goals based on weight. What we do care about is how much of your body weight is fat, and how much is muscle.

This brings us to one of the most common and most misused metrics of all: Body Mass Index. BMI is a measure of a person’s weight relative to his or her height. It multiplies the person’s weight in pounds (or kilograms) times 703 and divides this number by their height in inches (or meters).

Are you in the normal range?

Determining lean body mass is another form of body composition analysis. Lean body mass is simply the portion of your body’s weight that is not fat. This includes any non-fat tissue, muscle, and bone.

Healthy women should generally have a lean body mass of between 79 and 86 percent of their body weight. Healthy women between the ages of 30 and 50 should have a lean body mass between 77 and 85 percent of their total body mass, while healthy women over the age of 50 should have a lean body mass between 75 and 84 percent of their total body mass.