Do not neglect neck care

Many spend a great deal of effort and money caring for their faces, yet neglect their necks altogether.

However, wrinkles and lines on necks - which can make one look much older - often start to appear even before eye wrinkles.

That is because neck skin is much thinner than facial skin but is exposed to the same wear and tear every day. Over time, the skin loses collagen and elastin.

Combined with environmental factors such as sun damage and smoking, neck skin typically ages quicker than facial skin.

Dr Sii Sik Liong from S Aesthetics Clinic shares insights on how to prevent neck ageing.

Protection from the sun

The single best thing you can do to maintain a youthful neck is to wear sunscreen with SPF of at least 30, whether you are spending the day indoors or outdoors. Avoid unnecessary prolonged or excessive exposure to the sun.

UV rays from the sun cause major damage to skin and accelerates skin ageing significantly. It increases skin pigmentation, wrinkles and skin DNA damage, while reducing skin elasticity.

Quality skincare

Whatever skincare products you apply on your face can often be applied on your neck.

It is not necessary to use dedicated "neck creams", which are usually as good as your face moisturiser and do not offer additional benefits unless they contain retinoids.

This family of compounds includes retinol, retinyl palmitate and retinoic acid, and can help repair skin damage caused by UV rays.

Adding retinoid to neck skincare helps reduce neck wrinkles, improves skin texture and skin tone. It helps accelerate skin cell turnover, improves collagen production in the skin and reduces skin pigmentation.

Healthy lifestyle

A balanced diet and regular exercise will improve your overall health and also your skin quality, thus delaying skin ageing.

Avoid a high-carbohydrate and fatty diet, smoking and excessive alcohol.

Keep your body well-hydrated throughout the day.

Dump bad habits

We often hold our mobile phone lower than the eye level, thereby bending our neck downwards and creating neck wrinkles.

Over time, these wrinkles may become deep permanent horizontal lines.

Overuse of perfume on the neck can also age your neck skin, as it often contains alcohol and aromatisers that dry your skin quickly. Dry skin is more prone to ageing and wrinkles formation, so avoid daily usage of perfume on your neck and keep your neck skin moisturised at all times.

Embrace medical treatments and technology

Ultrasound lifting and radio frequency tightening can help improve neck skin sagging and wrinkling. These treatments use controlled energy to heat up specific layers of the skin and boost the production of collagen and essential proteins. By doing so, they can produce skin lifting and tightening.

Laser treatments such as skin resurfacing laser and pigmentation laser may be useful in improving the neck skin texture, skin irregularities, fine lines and pigmentation.

If you are comfortable with needles, skin hydration injection treatments such as hyaluronic acid injections can effectively provide intense hydration to the skin to improve skin elasticity and fine lines.