How to Get Rid of Crow’s Feet

Nothing puts a damper on the beauty of smiling eyes more than the appearance of those tell-tale lines of aging known as “crows feet”.

Creatively called “laugh lines”, “smile lines” and “character lines”, these little v-shaped lines that appear in the corners of the eyes are actually a natural part of aging. If you’ve ever laughed, smiled, frowned or squinted, the skin on your face, which loses its natural elasticity as you age, ultimately develops crows feet. As our skin ages, the existing amount of collagen which allows it to stretch and return to its original shape continues to lessen. Exposure to the ultra-violet rays of the sun, as well as smoking, are two major collagen-destroying activities.

Limit Sun, Avoid Smoking

So limit your exposure to direct sunlight without sunscreen and if you smoke now, please stop. But unless you plan to stop laughing, smiling, frowning and squinting, you can’t stop crows feet from appearing, but you can retard their progress and minimize their appearance.

Make it a daily habit to use a good eye cream containing glycolic acid around the delicate skin of the eyes. This helps your skin shed old aging cells and replace them with more elastic new ones.

Chemical Procedures to Get Rid of Crows Feet

There are several more costly chemical procedures that can help to eliminate or reduce the appearance of crows feet. Collagen injections is one of these, replacing the collagen the body naturally loses during the aging process. Unfortunately, results are only temporary using this procedure.

The injection of Botox (botulinum toxin) to temporarily paralyze the muscles surrounding the eyes and preventing crows feet lines from forming, has been successful at treating this problem. But, like collagen injections, this procedure too is only a temporary stopgap and needs to be repeated at least once every few months.

Chemical peels are a third option for getting rid of crows feet, but should only be attempted in the hands of a skilled practitioner. A chemical solution (usually containing Trichloracetic acid, Phenol or Alphahydroxy acid) is applied to the face to burn away the top layer of skin. This encourages new skin growth on which crows feet have not been able to form.

Dermabrasion is a fourth procedure, also best left to the professionals, in which old facial cells are scraped away to promote skin regeneration.

So you don’t have to make friends with your crows feet – using skin creams, avoiding sun, stopping smoking and assorted chemical procedures will help you tell these feet to fly away!