I have a confession to make. For many years I used an anti aging skin care treatment recommended by a very famous movie star (I won't mention her name) in an article in Life magazine. This skin care treatment went something like this: don't towel off after a shower or bath, but combine the water on your body with petroleum jelly and rub in until completely absorbed.

Following an anti aging skin care guide by a movie star, who has professional make up people and studio lights to make her look beautiful, should have been my first hint that her advice probably wasn't a good thing. But I'll talk more about this a little later.

Anti aging skin care treatment continues to be in high demand by women who want to keep a youthful appearance. And like with anything else in life, using a little common sense and some simple, but important information can help create an effective anti aging skin care guide - a guide that anyone can use and one which works with the skin's own natural ability to sustain its youthful longevity.

1. Moderate your exposure to the sun. Sunlight, in small doses, is good for you. It's a wonderful source of Vitamin D which is important for maintaining your calcium balance and boosting your immunity. But in large doses, sunlight has the potential to do great damage to the skin by decreasing the skin's natural ability to produce the tissue-repairing substance, hyaluronan. We also know that excessive exposure to sunlight can cause skin cancer.

So to protect your skin's hyaluronan, avoid going out during peak sunlight exposure hours (10 am - 2 pm). If you have to be outdoors during this time, wear a hat to keep the sun off your face.

Why am I not recommending sunscreen? I believe that hats are preferable to sunscreen simply because the synthetic chemicals present in these products can be potentially harmful.

2. Maintain a healthy intake of water. Any effective anti aging skin care treatment includes a health intake of water. Because your body is made up of 70% water, it's essentially a machine powered by water. All bodily systems, including your skin, need to be kept well hydrated in order to function the way nature intended.

You can increase the benefits of drinking water by making sure its pure, filtered water. 8 glasses of purified water, drunk throughout the day, is a wonderful way to enhance over-all anti aging skin care.

3. Include plenty of green, leafy vegetables in your diet. I know you've heard this advice before. But the reason its a part of this anti aging skin care guide is because these foods play a major role in keeping your skin looking young and healthy.

The antioxidant properties of vegetables like spinach and broccoli fight the production of highly destructive free radicals. Aging of the skin is the result of the damage that these tiny molecules are capable of inflicting. Keeping the production of free radicals at a minimum by eating dark green leafy vegetables is a simple AND delicious anti aging skin care treatment.

4. Use only high quality, nature-based, skin care products. There is an over-abundant supply of anti aging skin care creams on the market. Many of them are able to produce a temporary positive appearance with their synthetic, wrinkle and line-filling ingredients. Unfortunately, there is no long term, healthy improvement of the skin.

Which brings me back to the reason that the movie star's advice to use petroleum jelly was so bad... it's because this substance comes from petroleum...the same substance that is used to manufacture gasoline. While my skin may have felt soft, I was clogging my pores and causing long-term damage to my skin cells.

The most truly effective skin care products are the ones containing high concentrations of natural ingredients that work to stimulate your body's own production of collagen and elastins. Don't be fooled by a skin cream that is promoted as being collagen-based. These products are useless because the collagen molecules in these creams are too large to penetrate the cells of the skin.

You can help stimulate your skin's own collagen and elastin production by looking for products that contain ingredients such as phytessence wakame and nanobelle CoenzymeQ10.

Now that you have this simple anti aging skin care guide, I hope you will do your own exploration of the best anti aging skin care treatments. You will find, as I did, that there are high quality products available that will help you achieve the results you're looking for.