Skin tightening is the process of treating your skin’s excessive laxity, giving you smoother, taut, and firm skin. Youthful skin appears tight and firm because of the abundance of collagen, a fibrous protein that supports your skin tissues. Collagen is essentially your skin’s structural framework, holding it upright against gravity to give you a toned, firm, and contoured appearance.
However, as you grow older, your body’s ability to produce collagen fibers decreases, leading to depleting collagen reserves. The loss of collagen and elastin from your skin leads to skin laxity, making your skin tissues sag and droop downwards, incapable of defying gravity. Skin laxity also makes your wrinkles and fine lines appear prominently, giving you an old and tired appearance.
Aging isn’t the only cause of skin laxity. You may have sagging skin tissues because of a sudden loss of weight, either after pregnancy or after a sustained period of significant weight loss. In these cases, even though you lose the additional weight, your skin tissues hang around your body, making you look older and heavier than you are.
As the name suggests, skin tightening procedures aim to tighten your skin tissues, restoring your skin’s youthful firmness. The best non-surgical cosmetic procedures encourage collagen production. The production of collagen gradually restores your former tightness and firmness.