Facial exercises may significantly reduce some of the signs of aging, according to an interesting new study of the effects of repeating specific, expressive movements on people’s appearance.

The study, published in JAMA Dermatology, found that middle-aged women looked about three years younger after a few months of exercising, perhaps providing a reasonable, new rationale for making faces behind our spouses’ backs.

As all of us regrettably know, the human face changes with age. It begins to accumulate the grooves and wrinkles that connote either lengthening years or deepening character, depending on your viewpoint, and also starts, almost invariably, to sag.

This sagging occurs in large part because the fat pads that underlie the skin on our faces thin with age. When we are young, these pads snuggle together like Lego pieces, providing much of the structure of the contours of our faces. But as the pads change with age, their connections loosen and gravity draws them downward, leaving cheeks hollowed and visages generally droopier.