On my fabulous facebook fanpage (say that five times fast), my good friend B.J. asked me a question about wrinkles on her forehead. This got me thinking about wrinkles, which means I needed to share some information with everyone.

Dry skin doesn’t wrinkle any more or less than oily skin – and all the moisturizers in the world won’t stop wrinkling. Oily skin may look less wrinkled, but that is only because oily skin has its own built-in moisturizer, namely the oil produced by the skin’s oil glands. Wrinkles, sagging, and skin discolorations are caused by a combination of events, and the primary culprits are sun exposure, genetic inheritance, sagging muscles (not from lack of exercise, but from the stretching and laxity that occur with use), loss of subcutaneous fat, thinning of skin due to cell senescense, menopause (estrogen depletion), and normal aging. But dry skin does not cause wrinkles.

That’s not to say moisturizers (in their varying forms) can’t do amazing things for skin, because they can, and more and more research is showing this to be the case. Moisturizers with significant amounts of skin-identical ingredients, water-binding agents, state-of-the-art antioxidants, and anti-irritants can temporarily make skin look smoother, help skin function better, reduce the effects of sun damage, help improve texture, and much, much more. However, the notion that even reliable use of a good moisturizer will somehow substitute for the work of a plastic surgeon or be enough to defend the skin from further signs of aging is sheer fantasy.

So basically, what causes wrinkles to appear is not related to how dry or oily the skin may be. Wrinkles are caused by a number of factors, chiefly years of unprotected sun exposure and a person’s own genetics.