In The Youth Corridor, Dr. Gerald Imber shows women and men how to keep the signs of aging at bay with a prescriptive, common sense plan of skin care, exercise, vitamins & diet, stalling & often eliminating the need for surgery. By following the earliest & most basic treatment for skin care & maintenance, you can maintain a youthful appearance for a lifetime. You can return your skin to the exuberance of the youth corridor -- the years between 30 & 55 during which the most drastic physical changes occur. Imber's easy-to-follow regimes & helpful illustrations make timeless beauty a reality. This book also catalogs beauty products that give women the best results & describes successful procedures in plastic surgery.

Here is an excerpt from the book called A Skin Care Regimen That Works.

What can a good skin-care routine do? If you asked that question fifteen years ago, the answer would have been "very little." Although sunscreens had been available since the 1960s, they weren't efficient or popular until the 1990s. Moisturizers did little more than temporarily rehydrate skin, and there were no effective products to combat free radicals in the skin, encourage collagen growth, reverse sun damage, exfoliate dead cells, encourage cell turnover, or fight wrinkles, blemishes and brown spots.

Today, your skin-care routine can neutralize destructive environmental and metabolic free radicals; encourage healthy collagen growth; reduce and eliminate fine wrinkles; reverse sun damage; prevent further sun damage; encourage cell turnover; and make skin healthier, clearer, more evenly pigmented and generally more youthful and better looking. That's a lot of progress. It is all possible, and you should not settle for less. Good products are available at most price points, although some of the more complex compounds are a bit pricier. Virtually everyone can afford to help themselves with these products, and the routine takes only minutes morning and evening. This is something positive you can do for yourself with little more than a few simple instructions.

Here is what you will need:

1. Soap and water or a good skin cleanser.

2. Two moisturizers, one with sunscreen and one without.

3. Sunscreen.

4. A preparation with alpha hydroxy acid.

5. A vitamin C serum or, preferably, a vitamin C, E and melatonin antioxidant serum.

6. A botanical skin brightener or a bleaching cream containing hydroquinone to equalize pigmentation and reduce blemishes.

7. Enriched eye-area moisture cream containing peptides, antioxidants or AHA.

Not everyone will need all these products. Obviously one does not need a bleaching cream or brightener if skin doesn't have dark patches or under-eye pigment. And routines vary with one's stage in life.

Copyright © 2013 Gerald Imber, M.D., author of The Youth Corridor: Your Guide to Timeless Beauty from which this piece was excerpted.

Download The Youth Corridor at iTunes.