Something happens to your face when you turn 40. In January, I posed with my giant 4-0 balloons and felt quite jaunty about it, but when I looked in the bathroom mirror the next morning, I suddenly felt as if my entire face had fallen half an inch, like Salvador Dali’s melting clock. Granted, recovery from a prosecco hangover is not what it used to be, and my baby, who turned one a few days after my 40th, had seen to it that eight hours of unbroken beauty sleep was but a distant memory. Still, my face seemed to be broadcasting the announcement that I had moved into the decade that has symbolized middle age for as long as I can remember. Was it all in my head?

“Forty is exactly the time in our lives when most of us realize that our skin needs assistance,” says Lorinda Zimmerman, skin expert to much of Canada’s on-camera community, including one pre-wedding Meghan Markle—Zimmerman treated many of her guests in the lead-up to the royal wedding. “It’s not psychological. It’s very real.” She explains that as early as our 20s, there’s a decline in skin’s volume and elasticity (that firm, bouncy feeling embodied by my son’s pillowy cheeks). We start to produce less and less collagen and elastin and retain less moisture, plus the quality of the skin cells and surrounding tissue degrades over time.

Aging is, of course, a natural process that one wishes to accept and make peace with. However, one can still try one’s damnedest to remain glowy and firm. To that end, I pay Zimmerman a visit at W Skincare in Toronto. She’s a pioneer in Canada of cold laser, a.k.a. low-level laser, which uses light energy to painlessly stimulate the skin’s regenerating process. She recently added a new tool to her belt—a low-level laser from Germany designed to treat larger areas, such as lined foreheads and slackened jawlines (available as a $50 add-on to treatments, which start at $200).

“Over the next week my skin really starts to emit the kind of glow I’m always trying to achieve with highlighter.”

While passing the cool, gel-lubed attachment across my face, Zimmerman remarks that an actor client was asked by her producers to “do something” about her forehead wrinkles, so Zimmerman went to town on them with her new toy. When the client went back to set, her bosses reportedly couldn’t believe their eyes. (To see impress-your-awful-TV-producer results, it’s best to undergo what Zimmerman calls the Hollywood Six—a series of six weekly treatments.) When the hour is up, my skin feels fresh and calm, and over the next week it really starts to emit the kind of glow I’m always trying to achieve with highlighter.

But I’m not done yet. In the interest of research I decide to move on to a more intensive (and daunting) procedure: microneedling, in which tiny metal needles enter the skin and create micro-wounds, spurring the healing process to produce new collagen and elastin. Taking it one step further, I want to try microneedling with radio frequency, wherein the needles emit a blast of electromagnetic energy to maximize the skin’s response.

Clarity MedSpa in Toronto has been offering Intracel Microneedling with RF for two years, to address loss of elasticity, fine lines and enlarged pores. It’s also recommended for hard-to-treat acne scarring—owner Linda Murphy says the results rival more invasive and expensive resurfacing procedures such as Fraxel laser. “There has never been a better time to fight aging, especially for those who prefer to explore non-surgical treatments,” she says reassuringly.

Nurse and laser expert Chantal Ward removes my makeup and takes up-close “before” photos in which no hint of a smize is allowed (I hope I never see them). After applying numbing cream, she moves a wand covered with rows of needles across my skin; a punching motion dips them in and out with varying depth and radio frequency levels. Despite the numbing, it’s uncomfortable around the nose and upper lip.

When I walk out, my face is as red as a vine-grown tomato and marked by grids of tiny dots, but within three hours it looks almost normal. It feels warm and tight, so I leave a soothing mask on overnight; the next day I wear makeup to work and no one is any the wiser. A few days after that, though, my skin looks more taut, seeming to stand to attention. Over the following weeks, I catch my reflection in various surfaces and notice my skin beaming. (One overly complimentary office-mate tells me I look 22.) Uneven areas of scarring from old breakouts appear smoother.

I plan to do the recommended four treatments (priced at Clarity at $695 per treatment or $500 each for a series of four) spaced a month apart to allow the skin to heal. Given that the full results of collagen-stimulating treatments can take up to six months to appear, I have high hopes for my 40th year being my skin’s best yet.

Photography by Luis Mora. Hair and makeup by Brittany Sinclair/P1M.  Earrings, $15, winners.ca. Smythe Top, $325, shopsmythe.ca.

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