A beauty editor for 20 years, she knows every trick and spends almost £8,000 a year on her looks. But, here in a provocative piece, she reveals… The REAL secret to looking this good at 50? I don’t have kids!
- Inge van Lotringen said being considered younger than she was at 50 was great
- She spends roughly half an hour every day looking after her skin in a routine
- She thinks the other reason she looks younger is because she had no children
Being asked for my ID well into my 20s was annoying, but getting to 50 with people routinely thinking I’m younger than I am, well, that’s as wonderful as you’d expect it to be.
The truth is, in my sixth decade, my eyes are getting crepey and my skin is thinning, but I don’t have any significant wrinkles or brown spots, nor has sagging set in. Visible pores or a roughening texture? No sign of those. After all these years, my skin is still my friend.
Some of my apparent ability to defy the years is down to my own hard work. My approach to skincare is so dedicated and methodical, I even wrote a book about how to get it on any budget (called Great Skin, since you asked).
With my routine down to a T, I’d say I spend half an hour a day on it, though it does come at significant cost (about £250 a month, plus treatments).
Genes may also have something to do with it: a recent skin gene analysis by the DNA-personalised skincare company Nomige showed I score ‘above average’ when it comes to slow ageing. Using a DNA sample swabbed from your inner cheek, the service evaluates three genes pertinent to how the skin ages, and it turns out I have ‘no mutations’ in two of them, suggesting that my skin processes are functioning well.
Inge Van Lotringen (pictured) believes the main reason she looks younger than she is is because she never had any children
But I think there’s another reason the years have been kind to my skin. I look younger, I’m convinced, because I have no children.
It’s by choice: I never wished for kids, and neither did my husband. And because every child deserves to be its parents’ hearts’ desire, at the very least, it was clear to me I ought not to have any.
It was a decision that put me in the minority among friends and colleagues, and as I watched them accumulate babies, I couldn’t help but notice how they began to change.
For the most part, their fresh-faced looks were unaffected in their 30s, give or take the first haggard year with each newborn, but in their early 40s, ageing seemed to accelerate. Their wrinkles were more evident, their age spots — those infuriating markers of middle-age — were quicker to develop and that sagging jawline and loosening neck was upon them years before I clocked anything vaguely similar in my own appearance.
I know this sounds cruel, but it wasn’t a case of me snickering at their bad luck behind my ageless hand, they noticed it themselves.
As have a few celebrities who dare to say it out loud. Actress Chloe Sevigny once mused that the reason for her looking so young at 41 was ‘not having had a baby yet…
She said that she noticed a significant change amongst her friends and colleagues when they hit their 40s and had children (stock image)
I think the baby wear and tear and stress on your body is part of the reason why people say, “Why do you still look so young?”’ She added: ‘I really think that that unfortunately ages women.’ Having welcomed her first child earlier this year, she is now putting the theory to the test at a youthful-looking 45.
Cue many a discussion about whether Mother Nature plays a nasty trick on women, dispensing with some of our longevity and youthful bloom every time we have a baby. My own gran, after giving birth to 13 of them, died in her early 60s, and frankly I always assumed her body was simply worn out by producing so many small humans.
Several studies appear to support these suspicions. One 2018 investigation by researchers at Northwestern University in the U.S. found that the rate at which women’s cells age increases by six months to two years after every pregnancy.
And another in the same year discovered that a key marker of ageing — the length of structures called telomeres, which protect DNA from deterioration — is significantly changed by giving birth, with mothers having shorter telomeres than child-free peers.
‘The magnitude of the observed association was greater than that of the impact of smoking or obesity,’ said the researchers from George Mason University in Virginia.
In other words, reproduction costs: the more babies you have, the faster you age — which would include your skin and facial structure, too.
A 2018 investigation by researchers at Northwestern University found that the rate at which women’s cells age increases by six months to two years after every pregnancy (stock image)
The relationship between motherhood and ageing is not a cut and dried affair, however.
Of course, women go through major hormonal and physical changes during pregnancy. Yet it may not be the state of pregnancy itself that is most ageing, but the associated stress that mothers face.
‘Further research is needed to see how much of this cell ageing is due to sleep deprivation and stress in the early years after giving birth; the body might recover after that,’ says hormone and integrative medicine specialist Dr Sohere Roked.
We also need to know if there is a difference among ethnicities. I’ve seen other studies that show pregnancy may in some ways be anti-ageing.’ (One, among Mayan women in Guatemala, found that the more support for mothers there is in the wider community, the less she ages at a cellular level.)
But Dr Roked doesn’t deny that both sleep deprivation and stress, inevitably part and parcel of bringing up children, are monster agers. ‘Plenty of studies have shown that sleep deprivation affects skin quality, collagen production, wound healing and perceived attractiveness. We need sleep for our skin and entire body to repair and replenish.’
Indeed, sleep is increasingly being viewed as a pillar of health — with researchers suggesting that women’s tendency to sleep better than men — the years of hands-on motherhood aside — may play a part in the fact that they tend to live longer.
Inge said she started noticing changes to the skin of her friends and colleagues who had children years before any changes to her own skin (stock image)
And a 2016 study found that insomnia is associated with shorter telomeres (those structures that protect DNA), suggesting very serious sleep disturbances may increase cellular ageing.
I should know. I was an insomniac for three years and it brought me to my knees, especially mentally.
But I ‘only’ had a stressful job to hold down and I had a supportive boss. I could vegetate outside of work and focus on recuperating. With children, I wouldn’t have had the time to do that.
Estimates vary, but new mothers lose between one and two hours of sleep a night for up to a year, with one study by sleep technology brand Simba claiming a nightly sleep average of less than five hours — well below the average eight most experts recommend for the body and mind to fire on all cylinders.
Inevitably the skin, which is the first organ to be deprived of essential nutrients and other building blocks when the body is mobilising for any kind of stress, will show the signs when little ones routinely demand Peppa Pig (a popular cartoon, I am told) at 5am. And the signs are, more often than not, skin that looks 47 when you’re 40.
And it’s not just sleep deprivation. It’s all the other stressful stuff that comes with being a mother.
It is believed that insomnia, or the inability to sleep more generally, plays a key role in ageing people (stock image)
‘We know stress ages cells as badly as smoking does,’ confirms Dr Roked. Looking after small people, and of course teens too, requires endless patience, mental dexterity and physical stamina, not to mention the constant demand that you put your own needs second.
And as with sleep, having no time or space left to focus on yourself takes its toll.
As a childless person, I can choose to stare at the TV for an entire weekend. I can do yoga and meditation and all those other stress-busting techniques everyone constantly recommends, without inevitable interruption.
I can exercise five times a week for as long as I want — running is what emotionally carried me through the death of my father, so I know first-hand how important exercise and spending meditative time in nature is for stress relief.
Not to mention that it naturally keeps my weight down and my strength up without having to think twice about it: a luxury overtaxed mums lack.
As for pampering, I can set off on restorative holidays and mini-breaks with barely a moment’s notice (or at least I could before the Covid restrictions).
Inge said that exercising and running is what carried her through the death of her father (stock image)
My husband has plenty of time to indulge in his hobby, which happens to be cooking the fresh meals I eat every day — something that’s a lot less fun if you’re the designated cook and perennially lacking the time and head space to shop, muse over and prepare food for a family.
And if I want to spend Sunday night doing a facial massage, so be it. It’s not just that I have the time for it all: importantly, I can do it without feeling any guilt or pressure at all.
As for justifying the expenditure of all this — that’s surely a lot easier for someone like me who doesn’t have to save up for Center Parcs.
There are also the £1,000 a year gym fees I shell out in the name of self-improvement, and on top of my £3,000 annual skincare habit, I love my ‘tweakments’ such as Profhilo skin-hydrating injections and brightening Debbie Thomas DNA laser facials, at £445 and £475 respectively, three times each a year.
Don’t forget my eyebrow tints at £225 a year, and, of course, my regular haircuts and colours — which set me back about £750.
Oh, and about £100 on the occasional bit of make-up.
I don’t know if I could stand the guilt if there were school uniforms and trips to pay for.
Inge’s husband’s hobby is cooking, but she says this activity is far less enjoyable if you are the designated cook (stock image)
All told, I spend £7,835, so almost £8,000 a year on beauty. Basically, I’m fully aware that the freedom to be self-indulgent and vain is what is holding back the years for me.
A less unfortunate way of expressing this would be to say that I am at liberty to ‘prioritise self-care’.
One of the biggest buzz-words of the past decade and particularly of this wretched year, self-care really means allowing yourself chunks of time to do things that give you peace and joy, without pressure to consider anyone else’s needs.
If that sounds selfish (and it would to many mums, I’m sure — indeed, it is the polar opposite of what society says mums should be doing), remember it is ‘as essential for restoring your physical and mental health as sleep is,’ says Dr Roked.
‘If your husband says “go for a long drive and read a book in the park if that’s what you fancy, I’ll look after the baby” then don’t say “I shouldn’t”. Say yes!’
It’s a small example of how loving relationships and supportive social networks are potentially the most stress-relieving, youth-preserving balm of all. I know that a lifetime of unconditional love from parents, friends and a rock-solid husband has taken the sting — and much of the stress — out of my existence, and that all the restorative power of a facial is not a patch on that of a two-hour phone catch-up with my best mate across the pond.
It really does help if you look on the bright side, too: another study has linked pessimism to those shortened telomeres, too.
The point to take away? Hard as it may be if you’re juggling work, life and kids, making a concerted effort to be the centre of your world on a regular basis doesn’t make you a selfish narcissist, but a stronger woman. It might even make you look younger.
And if you can only invest in one thing, make it loved ones: they are the real elixir of youth.
Dr. Sohere Roked’s Biological Age Assessment, £1,995 (drsohereroked.co.uk).
Great Skin: Secrets The Beauty Industry Doesn’t Tell You by Ingeborg van Lotringen (Gibson Square) is out now at £12.99 from www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3308 9193.
Source: Read Full Article
