Wrin­kles on a woman's face may be able to pre­dict how like­ly she is to suf­fer from bone frac­tures, ac­cord­ing to a US study re­leased Mon­day. That's be­cause the lev­el of pro­teins in the skin and bones are linked, so if a woman's face and neck are se­vere­ly wrin­kled, she faces a high­er risk of bone break­age due to bone den­si­ty loss, said Yale Uni­ver­si­ty re­searchers. Re­searchers ex­am­ined 114 ear­ly post-menopausal women, whose last men­stru­al pe­ri­od was with­in three years, as part of an on­go­ing clin­i­cal tri­al at nu­mer­ous sites in the Unit­ed States. They mea­sured the women's skin at 11 lo­ca­tions on the face and neck, both vi­su­al­ly and us­ing a de­vice known as a durom­e­ter to as­sess how rigid the skin was on the fore­head and cheek. Bone mass and den­si­ty were mea­sured with a portable ul­tra­sound and X-ray.

"We found that deep­en­ing and wors­en­ing skin wrin­kles are re­lat­ed to low­er bone den­si­ty among the study par­tic­i­pants," said Lub­na Pal, as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of Ob­stet­rics, Gy­nae­col­o­gy and Re­pro­duc­tive Sci­ence at Yale School of Med­i­cine. "The worse the wrin­kles, the less­er the bone den­si­ty, and this re­la­tion­ship was in­de­pen­dent of age or of fac­tors known to in­flu­ence bone mass." More re­silient skin was linked to bet­ter bone den­si­ty, said the study re­leased at the En­docrine So­ci­ety meet­ing in the north-east­ern city of Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts. "Our find­ings that the ap­pear­ance and phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of the skin can re­flect the qual­i­ty of the skele­ton are note­wor­thy be­cause this may al­low clin­i­cians to iden­ti­fy frac­ture risk in post-menopausal women 'at a glance' with­out de­pend­ing on cost­ly tests," said Pal.

Easy fix­es for fa­cial flaws

Prob­lem: Un­even shave

Home Rem­e­dy: A good scrub

An ex­fo­li­at­ing face wash is great for your skin, and you can use it to prep your beard for a clos­er shave.

"Move your fin­gers in a cir­cu­lar, up­ward mo­tion to make your beard stand up," says groom­ing ex­pert Pirooz Sar­shar. Do that for three min­utes, then rinse and shave.

Prob­lem: Chapped lips

Home Rem­e­dy: Wa­ter + vi­t­a­mins

Scaly smack­ers may sig­nal de­hy­dra­tion-or worse, a vi­t­a­min de­fi­cien­cy, says Men's Health med­ical colum­nist Travis Stork, MD. Eat healthy, vi­t­a­min-rich foods and drink plen­ty of flu­ids over the next few days, and avoid lick­ing your lips, he sug­gests.

Prob­lem: Prob­lem ac­ne

Home Rem­e­dy: Less sug­ar

When you eat sweets and carbs with high glycemic loads, your skin pro­duces more se­bum (the stuff that cre­ates black­heads), says der­ma­tol­o­gist Ariel Os­tad, MD. This can make dead skin cells stick to­geth­er, clog­ging your pores and caus­ing ac­ne.

Prob­lem: Shiny skin

Home Rem­e­dy: Re­duced stress

Ever no­tice that your face feels fried af­ter your boss chews you out? Well, stress can trig­ger oil pro­duc­tion.

"This is a pro­tec­tive ac­tion by the skin to in­crease its func­tion as a bar­ri­er against pathogens," says nu­tri­tion­al bio­chemist Shawn M Tal­bott, PhD.

Prob­lem: Yel­low teeth

Home Rem­e­dy: Crunchy fruits and veg­eta­bles

"Chew­ing ap­ples, cel­ery, raw car­rots, broc­coli, and oth­er crunchy pro­duce cre­ates a nat­ur­al scrub­bing ac­tion," says Jen­nifer Jablow, DDS, a den­tist in New York City. Ap­ples al­so con­tain mal­ic acid, which re­moves the film that forms on teeth.

Prob­lem: Deep wrin­kles

Home Rem­e­dy: Eight hours of sleep

Miss­ing as lit­tle as an hour or two of shut­eye a night will lead to an in­creased pro­duc­tion of the hor­mone cor­ti­sol, says Tal­bott. "In turn, that will lead to a break­down of col­la­gen, the pri­ma­ry struc­tur­al pro­tein in skin," he says. Trans­la­tion: wrin­kles.