Anti-aging experts talk about strategies for maintaining young and healthy skin

• Cosmetic surgery might be the quickest way to reclaim a young, healthy look, but it's not the only way.
• If you focus on correcting the behaviors that add years and harm your health, you can turn back the clock.
• Here, the 10 unhealthy behaviors mentioned most often by anti-aging experts -- and how to reform yourself.
• Feeling overwhelmed by stress Since caveperson times, we've known excess stress lowers our immunity, boosts the risk of heart disease and generally makes us feel crummy.
• But now Elissa S. Epel, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, has cell-level proof that too much stress triggers premature aging of the immune system.
• Mothers of chronically ill children who felt most stressed, she found, had the most extreme early aging of these cells.
• "The first step is realizing you are stressed and noticing the signs -- you might feel your heart racing, or feel sweaty," Dr. Epel says.
• "The short-term way to reduce stress is to do deep breathing, what we call diaphragmatic breathing."
• The longer-term fix: "Make time in your life to do things that reduce stress."