On Wednesday, I went out to lunch with a close friend and I met a friend of hers who had recently moved here. Both ladies were in their 50s and had beautiful skin.

While talking with my friend’s friend, I kept thinking “something is missing” on her face.

Her skin looked good, her hair was amazing, but it took a while for me to put my finger on it: She didn’t have any eyelashes.

She had a beautiful face, yet her eyes faded into the background rather than being a beautiful asset.

With each passing decade, the eyelashes shrink and thin. Someone in their 20s has long, flirty eyelashes. In our 30s, the lashes maintain fairly well. In our 40s, the lashes start to shrink. In our 50s, our lashes just aren’t what they used to be. In the 60s, lashes are mere stubble.

One client in her 60s asked me last week, “Where did my lashes go?”

The great news is that we have the option to grow them back! There are more than 50 lash growing products on the market. I recommend RevitaLash or ELASTIlash by Obagi for several reasons.

Both will grow the lashes longer, thicker and fuller. They won’t darken the lashes like Latisse, but the cost is a lot less. Latisse is about $360 for a six-month supply versus $120 or $130 for ELASTIlash or RevitaLash, respectively.

RevitaLash was born out of a doctor’s need to offer his wife a solution after chemotherapy treatments left her eyelashes sparse. A portion of the profits goes to fund breast cancer research.

Depending on your age, in 8 to 12 weeks lashes will grow longer, thicker and fuller. Just use the brush applicator only once a day at bedtime to the base of the lashes to boost the beauty of your natural lashes. After your lashes grow long, just use the product three or four times a week to maintain them.

With a little help, you will soon be on your way to long, flirty lashes…just another easy, affordable way to keep you feeling as young on the outside as you feel on the inside.

Just yesterday, an 80-year-old client came in for her second facial in her life.

“Is it too late for me?’

While it is better to prevent than to repair, reversing decades sun damage and natural aging is possible. One of the main causes of aging skin is the lack of collagen so my biggest challenge is to stimulate collagen on a cellular level.

Think of it this way: Young skin has collagen fibers, which are held in place by bonds that form a net. Each decade, we lose collage and that causes the net to sag.

Using products and facial treatments, we can stimulate collage production, repairing the net and plumping the skin from the inside out to reveal smoother, softer and younger looking skin.

An esthetician’s job is to work with the client to rebuild the components of the skin that have been lost over time. A proven approach to rebuild collagen is to do a series of facial peels.

By removing the buildup of dead skin cells on the surface of the skin, signals are sent evoking a wound response that says to the skin cells, “Hey, all that dead skin is gone. Let’s make fresh, healthy skin cells to replace the ones we lost.”

Facial peels will diminish fine lines, lift pigment, stimulate collagen and increase cell turnover.

So, yes, Virginia, there is hope for restoring a new radiance to your skin.

For more information, Call Darcia @ Mountain Radiance, 828-627-2711