The Missing Step In Your Skincare Routine: Exercise

Honestly, what can’t exercise do for us? We already know it’s good for our cardiovascular health, keeps our bones strong, build lean muscle and support our joints, improves mental health, and supports brain health. Let’s add skin health to that list!

I’ve been a lifelong exerciser for many reasons, but I never considered it might help keep my skin healthy as I go through body transitions and get a little older. Then I found a study from 2023 that looked at how aerobic exercise and resistance exercise impact skin health and aging. It looked at 61 middle-aged Japanese women over the course of 16 weeks, with an aerobic exercise group and a resistance training group.

Both exercise groups showed improved skin elasticity and upper dermal structure, and the resistance training group showed an increase in dermal thickness (our skin tends to thin as we age, so this is a good thing). Both types of exercise reduced circulating inflammatory factors and increased expression of collagen fibril genes. Both aerobic exercise and resistance training produced good benefits for skin, but each in their own way.

All of this is good for our skin at any age, but it made me think of pregnancy and overall skin aging. A pregnant belly is going to stretch quite a lot, and most of us want to avoid stretch marks if we can. A lot of this can come down to genetics and the luck of the draw, but perhaps exercising in pregnancy can not only help support our joints with strong muscles but also our stretching skin by promoting greater elasticity? I’m a big proponent of exercise before, during, and after pregnancy, but I’m always into any reason it might help us even more!

And as some of us move past our younger years, we still want to keep our skin looking and feeling good. Clearly what you put on your skin can matter, but I love the idea that physical activity can also reduce the effects of aging on our skin. There are already so many reasons to exercise as we get older, but if improving skin quality/appearance helps nudge people to get more active then great.

So the next time you’re looking to level up your skincare, consider getting some aerobic exercise and trying some type of resistance training. Your whole body, including your skin, will thank you.