About every five hours, different clock genes take center stage in your skin’s stem cells, with genes that promote UV protection peaking during daylight hours and the cell’s most vulnerable phase, DNA replication, taking place in the evening and at night. That’s great, unless your schedule doesn’t happen to line up with your skin’s schedule. “Disrupting the ability of the cells to know when is best to perform a specific function results in striking premature aging of the skin,” says study author Salvador Aznar Benitah, PhD, a research professor at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona. For instance, skin cells that aren’t properly protecting themselves from UV radiation are more likely to suffer from DNA mutations or have trouble carrying out cell tasks because the expected amount of energy isn’t available. Researchers are still trying to pin down factors that disrupt the cell cycle, and they’re looking at hours of light exposure, sleeping habits, and eating habits as possible players. “We could certainly hypothesize that maintaining a good sleeping and feeding behavior might maintain the robustness of the clock,” Dr. Benitah says. Until they come out with a time-released cream that balances your erratic lifestyle habits, your best anti-aging strategy is probably just to eat well, sleep well, and get plenty of exercise. But you didn’t need science to tell you that. More from Prevention: 4 Juices For Great Skin
