If you’re like most baby boomers, after gray hair, poor eyesight, weight gain, and wrinkles, age spots rank fifth on your list of aging annoyances. But you can find comfort in erasing those age advertisers straight from your own kitchen.

What Causes Age Spots?

To protect your skin from excessive sun exposure, your skin produces cells called melanocytes. Melanocytes create the dark brown pigment called melanin. Melanin makes your skin appear darker or tanned.

But sometimes a typical day in the sun causes an uneven jump in melanocytes. This uncomfortable production creates uneven coloration or pigmentation of the skin.

The resulting solar lentigines, or what most people call liver spots or age spots, can appear brown, black, or gray in color. Age spots appear on the areas of the skin most exposed to the sun, such as the chest, back, face, and hands.

Even young people can get age spots from too much unprotected sun exposure.

How to completely avoid age spots

Preventing age spots is the best way to avoid them completely. This includes:

1. Avoid the hours of intense sunlight from 10 am to. M. At 4 p. M.

2. Wear a hat and long-sleeved shirt in the sun.

3. Apply sunscreen 20 minutes before going outdoors and reapply every two hours.

Precautions

Also, keep in mind that the sun and excess chemicals do not mix. For instance,

more often in middle-aged women, you may mistake irregular areas of reddish-brown pigmentation called poikiloderma for age spots.

Poikiloderma is the result of chronic sun exposure combined with sun-sensitive chemicals in cosmetics or perfumes. Therefore, poikiloderma most often appears on the side of the neck or on the cheeks.

Sunscreen is more powerful than you thought

You may be annoyed at repeated advice to apply sunscreen, but a study published in the October 14, 1993 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine It gives you reason to appreciate your sunscreen as an effective age spot eraser.

In the study, researchers found that among sunscreen users, those who rubbed in the most amount of cream the most regularly had the greatest reduction in actinic keratoses.

Actinic keratoses (AKs) describe rough, red, scaly patches, scabs, or sores that are between a quarter and an inch in diameter. Like most other age spots, you will find actinic keratoses in the areas of the body most exposed to the sun.

How to minimize the appearance of age spots

Eat your age spots

Research studies also reveal the benefits of eating its nutrients to reduce the appearance of age spots. The water-soluble pigment found in most vegetables, fruits, grains, flowers, seeds, leaves, and rinds, called a flavonoid, provides numerous antioxidant properties.

In research studies, flavonoids even prevented cancer formation in animals.

You will also find age spot reducing properties in soy products. Protein extracts from soybeans and soy milk contain several estrogen-like substances called isoflavones. One study showed that soy isoflavones could lighten age spots.

Home remedies

Removing age spots can start right in your own kitchen. In Japan, the rice-based drink, sake, is used to lighten age spots when applied to the skin.

You can also use lemon juice to lighten age spots. Simply dab a cotton ball in freshly squeezed lemon juice and dab the liquid on the age spots twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Warning: Lemon juice makes skin photosensitive, so be sure to protect your skin with sunscreen before enjoying the sun.

Take a green papaya out of the refrigerator and use the meaty side of the skin to reduce age spots. Simply apply the papaya to the spots for 15-20 minutes a day and repeat until you achieve the desired lightness.

Of course, since home remedies offer an inexpensive and gentle way to reduce age spots, they take time to see results, usually six to eight weeks.

What to do right now to stop age spots

Because age spots, poikiloderma, and actinic keratoses can serve as warning signs of skin cancer, the American Academy of Dermatology recommends scheduling a professional skin exam every year.

You can find out how to get a skin exam by visiting [http://www.skincarephysicians.com]. Use this information now before you forget it, because before you know it, the sixth annoyance of aging for baby boomers, memory loss, will take over.