7 Best Anti-Aging Skincare Products (and Routine) 2025

In the words of inimitable Richard Simmons, “Number one, like yourself. Number two, you have to eat healthy. And number three, you’ve got to squeeze your buns.”

Research indicates that squeezing those buns—or any exercise—is one of the best approaches to natural anti-aging, by allowing your body to make changes at the cellular level and to increase collagen production.

According to US Dermatology Partners: “Regular exercise can help to prevent and reverse these changes to skin health by changing mitochondrial DNA. Essentially, regular exercise tells the skin to behave as if it’s younger by producing more collagen, retaining moisture better, and increasing skin cell turnover rates.”

Loathe strapping on your running shoes but love a good sweat?

Sweating via sauna or steam room may also help as the skin ages, with numerous studies looking at how it provides health benefits both skin deep and beyond. One study indicates that deep sweating promotes cellular turnover, which in turn slows the aging process. It can help you to remove old, dead skin to reduce dark spots and balance an uneven skin tone. After your sauna, give your skin a good sloughing and you’ll see what we mean.

Regular dry saunas provide additional health benefits like an uptick of collagen production by 40%, leading to healthy improvement of the skin’s appearance, although more research is needed.

After the sauna, you run over to the cold plunge, another fad for all-natural anti-aging skin care that really works.

Cold plunges have a growing body of scientific evidence to support it as a valid anti-aging hack. Whether you take a plunge into an ice bath, cold pool, or try cryotherapy—spending a few minutes in a below freezing chamber—cold exposure provides benefits that can slow down the clock.

By submerging your entire body and head in an ice-cold bath, production of neurotransmitters such as epinephrine and dopamine surge, which provide an instantaneous rejuvenating and energizing effect. Over the mid to long term, evidence suggests cold therapy can reduce systemic inflammation, which drives many chronic diseases, and is even being investigated as a means of slowing dementia.

In many cultures, like Scandinavia, contrast therapy (where hot therapy is alternated with cold therapy) has been used for centuries, especially after intense physical exertion to lessen muscle fatigue, decrease pain, reduce swelling, prevent lactic acid buildup, tone and lift your body and face, and tighten muscle and skin tissue for a more smooth and youthful appearance.