Regularly practicing facial "yoga," or exercises for your facial muscles, may actually make you look younger, early research suggests.
In a small, new study, researchers taught 27 middle-age women (ages 40 to 65) how to perform 32 facial exercises, which included simple actions such as smiling and sucking in the cheeks. After this training, the participants performed these exercises at home for 30 minutes a day, every day for eight weeks.
On the ninth week of the study, the participants reduced the frequency of their 30-minute exercise routine to every other day (three to four days a week), and continued this regimen for 20 weeks.
The participants also had their photos taken at the beginning and end of the study, and several doctors rated these photos using a standard method for assessing the appearance of face. The raters, who didn't know which photos were taken before and which photos were taken after the exercises, also estimated the age of the person in the photo.
After 20 weeks, the participants had better ratings for the fullness of their cheeks, on average, compared with their ratings at the start of the study. In other words, their cheeks looked fuller after their 20-week facial exercise regimen.
This change in cheek fullness also made the participants look younger: Raters estimated that the participants looked nearly three years younger after the exercises, compared with before.
