September is Skin Care Awareness month. Everyone with skin should be concerned about keeping it healthy. Why? Your skin is your body’s largest organ. On average, an adult has about 22 square feet of skin on their body–which is enough to fill a typical doorway. Another perspective is that your skin weighs approximately 8 pounds, or about the same as a gallon of milk.
Skin is an amazing organ, which is constantly evolving and changing throughout your lifetime. Your skin renews itself about once every 35 days, by shedding about 40,000 skin cells per minute! By the time you’re 20, you’ve already cycled through your skin about 200 times.
Your skin is essential to keeping your body temperature even, preventing you from over heating or getting to cold. It protects you from harmful microbes which can cause infections. Your skin contains thousand of nerve endings that let you interact with the world. Vitamin D, which is essential for strong bones, is produced in your skin.
Healthy Skin
You can probably figure out that healthy skin is an important part of your overall health. So how can you improve or maintain healthy skin? Try these seven tips.
Stay Hydrated
Using a moisturizer on your skin is important, but it can’t make up for your skin not being hydrated from the inside. The old general rule is 8×8, eight cups of eight ounces of fluids daily. This works out to 64 oz, or approximately 2lt or a half gallon. Some experts are now recommending drinking at least half an ounce of water for every pound that you weigh. So if you are an average American woman weighing 170lb, you should drink at least 85oz. If that seems intimidating it is good to know that, while water is best, most fluids count–juice, milk, de-caf tea or coffee. If you have poor hydration habits this is a good place to start.
Healthy Diet
Here is another tip that is totally in your control, even though it can be hard. A healthy skin diet it is not about limiting calories, it’s about getting nutrients. Skin boosting vitamins and nutrients include vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, selenium, and zinc.
Rest
In our busy world, getting enough rest can seem like a pipe dream, but it is essential. Most adults need 8 hours of sleep each night. Sleep is key to healthy skin because that is when your skin rebuilds its reserves of all the vitamins and antioxidants it has used up during the day.
Manage Stress
Ok, I know 2020 has made this exceptionally difficult for many of us. Fortunately, getting enough rest, staying hydrated, and a healthy diet can all help to manage stress. Remember to take care of yourself.
Protect your skin from the elements
The air is full of yucky stuff. If you wear glasses then you know how much is on your lenses at the end of the day, and all of that gunk is also on your face. Wearing a liquid or powder foundation provides a physical barrier between your skin and the world. It helps to ensure that more of the pollution you come into on a daily basis gets washed down the skin at night instead of absorbed by your skin.
Check your sun exposure
Sun exposure is an element worth mentioning all by itself. Acording to the Skin Cancer Foundation, using a UVA/UVB broad spectrum sun screen with an SPF of 15 daily can lower your risk of melanoma by 50%. The anti-aging benefits of protecting your skin from the sun are just a bonus side effect of and think about the anti-cancer benefits of protecting your skin from the sun.
Proper Hygiene
Proper skin hygiene is washing your face twice a day and washing your body regularly (once ever 1-2 days depending on activity and skin type). The best part is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. Just cleanse and moisturize. That’s it.
Getting more form your skin care.
If you want to take you skin care from basics to deluxe skin nutrition you can add serums and masks and all sorts of ultimate pampering products. Its starts with the right regimen.
When deciding on a regimen you need to consider your personal skin type. Does your face tend to be dry or oily? Maybe it is a combination of dry and oily or it is neither dry nor oily (“normal”). Do you have special skin concerns like acne or sensitive skin? Are you looking for something that will slow or reverse signs of aging?
For many special concerns, such as aging or especially acne, you skin may benefit from additional steps in your regimen, but even just starting with the right cleanser and moisturizer is a good step. Check out my Skin Care Essentials series for more information of designing a regimen tailored to you specific needs.
I hope you find this guide helpful, but for best results speak with someone trained to help you find the right products and get the most from them. Your local Independent Beauty Consultant has an abundance of products to specialize your skin care and makeup to meet your specific needs. Don’t have an Independent Beauty Consultant? Ask your questions here!
Joy On Pink Wings 