If I was in my 50s… which tweakments would I be having?

In your 50s, the big thing that’s going to be affecting your body, your brain and your face, too, is the menopause. If you’re in your 50s, I’m sure you know already, because most of us tumble into full menopause in our early 50s and if you hadn’t noticed the increasing effects on your skin of having less oestrogen in your system before, this is when the jowling, the drier, thinner skin, and sagging cheeks really tend to make themselves known. Great, eh? It hits our bodies, too, piling up fat around the middle, and drying out mucous membranes in our mouths, our vaginas, our eyes… Oh yes, and then there’s hair loss – not necessarily great balding patches of it, but the way our partings start to look a bit wider, and our hairline a bit less sturdy.

Before all else, hormone replacement

I know HRT isn’t a tweakment, it’s a medical intervention, but why it’s so helpful is that menopause symptoms are the result of hormonal havoc, principally oestrogen deficiency. Get that oestrogen – preferably along with a bit of progesterone and testosterone – back into your system and as well as chasing away brain fog, hot flushes and joint aches, it will enable your skin to produce collagen like it used to, cue a firmer, smoother, less sensitive face, and holds moisture better, you don’t suffer from hormone-rollercoaster breakouts and you don’t have to put up with the ‘meno-belly’ or the vaginal dryness… You can read more about hormone replacement in menopause here. Most women are able to take some form of hormone replacement, even after cancer, so it is worth investigating the options in detail. Do I take replacement hormones? Yes, and I wouldn’t want to stop taking them. They’ve made the past 12 years manageable.

Choose your main concern(s)

What you want to do is find a practitioner with whom you can discuss your concerns and work up a treatment-and-skincare plan that’s specific to you. Treat the issues that are cropping up thanks to your age, not ‘the menopause’. I know a lot of you throw up your hands at this and say, ‘But it’s everything!’

NB, 50+ skin needs great skincare

Get specific and start with effective skincare to get your skin in great health before embarking on procedures. Vitamin C serums in the morning, along with moisturiser and sunscreen, and a retinoid at night, maybe alternated with a peptide serum. You don’t need products labelled ‘for menopause’.  If menopause is making your skin dry, address that, with hydrating serums and moisturisers with ceramides. You don’t need a special ‘menopause moisturiser’ to do that.

Are there tweakments for ‘menopause face’?

Loads of you ask me about the best tweakments for ‘menopause face’ and I know you hate it when I say this but… there’s no simple answer. That’s because it depends on what is going on with your particular face at this point in your life, and what is really bothering you  – so it’s no good me saying, ‘Treatment X is fabulous!’ if X isn’t relevant to you.

The best tweakments for a 50+ face

These are the tweakments that I’d be choosing among. As for what to have and where to start, I’d advise making that decision jointly with a practitioner.

Tweakments for dry 50+ skin

Any of the hyaluronic-acid based skin-conditioning injectable moisture treatments like Belotero Revive, Restylane Skinboosters, Profhilo etc or injectable polynucleotides, all of which will help the skin to become stronger, healthier and better hydrated.

Why I like these: these give skin back the glow that age is stripping away.

Tweakments for slack skin and sagging faces

Collagen-boosters that firm and tighten the skin, including microneedling, radiofrequency microneedling, plasma treatment, laser and ultrasound. Any treatment that stimulates collagen will give you better skin, and that skin should be tighter as well as firmer

Why I like these: all of these help nudge along collagen production, which otherwise would be dropping drastically as oestrogen leaves the party. Where you have a choice, I’d generally advise lower-intensity treatments rather than one, heavy-duty big-bang number, but having said that, I had great results from Profound RF, which is a very intense form of RF needling (pictures here).

Best tweakments for jowls and double chins

Fat-dissolving injections, or fat-freezing, or AirSculpt – which is permanent fat removal, so much more than a tweakment, but it gives definitive improvements.

Why I like these: actually I can’t answer that as I haven’t tried any of these myself, but I’ve seen the results on other people.

Best tweakments for pigmentation

Lasers or intense pulsed light, to break up the pigmentation and give a smoother, more even-toned complexion.

Why I like these: these always work really well.

Best tweakments for frown lines

Wrinkle-relaxing injections, ie toxins such as Botox.

Why I like these: I love a spot of toxin. It’s reliable for softening stringiness in my neck and reducing the force of my night-time teeth-clenching, and stopping under-arm sweating, as well as softening frown lines.

Best tweakments for a hollow face

Fillers. In the right hands, they work a treat.

Why I like these: even though I’ve clearly got a lot of filler in my face that has lasted much longer than I’d expected (from the MRI scan I had done in Nov 2021, if you haven’t read that story it’s here), I still find benefit in having small amounts of filler to improve the contours of my face.

I know I mentioned briefly how the menopause impacts our bodies and hair at the start of the article – I’ll come back and post about body and hair tweakments in your 50s another time.