All posts in beauty tip of the month

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If you feel that dry skin is your most serious problem, start an aggressive exfoliation and collagen stimulation program, even though it is counterintuitive, and see how your skin responds.

Be sure to use the right lipids, the skin-identical kind. You can know you are using the right lipids on your skin if the serum or cream penetrates and disappears into your skin within a few minutes. If it lingers on the skin surface as a shiny residue for hours, it is not absorbing into your skin properly. It is the wrong product for you, so get rid of it. It is merely sitting on top, sealing from the outside, possibly even clogging pores. The right moisturizer supports the skin lipid barrier from the inside of the stratum corneum (the upper layer of the epidermus), so it is not visible as a shiny layer on the outside. It disappears into the skin within a few minutes and provides internal support.

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The five goals of skin beauty

Every morning, as soon as I get up, I look in the mirror to inspect my face. Are my cheeks dry? Is my skin looking dull? Are there circles under my eyes? At the same time, I also assess how I can make myself look better.

It helps to have a clear idea of what sort of skin you want to have rather than haphazardly going about your skincare. Oddly enough, many people are not certain just what healthy, beautiful skin is. In answer to this problem, I created important criteria for defining beautiful skin, based on the experience I gained back in my days working in the cosmetic industry. I call these the five goals of skin beauty: moisture, smoothness, firmness, elasticity, and clear complexion. The ideal skin is one that possesses all of these qualities.

With this five-point evaluation, all you have to do is identify the areas where your skin needs work, and move toward balancing out the five qualities. This is where caring for both your epidermis and dermis comes into play. Smoothness and firmness are primarily achieved through epidermal care, while dermal care is the key to moisture, elasticity, and complexion.

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Beautiful skin is a reflection of health that encompasses a person’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The foundation – the base of the pyramid – is the absence of disease. When illness or injury does occur, prompt, state-of-the-art treatment is imperative, for without a solid healthy foundation, everything else is weakened.

A sense of well-being, the next level of the pyramid, is a balance between the many aspects of your emotional life and a healthy, self-caring lifestyle. It includes having passion and caring in your life, reducing isolation with strong connections to other people, intimate relationships, a loving attitude that’s free of hostility and anger, and a feeling of satisfaction that you’re using your talents well. Self-caring means that you treat your body with respect: you exercise, get enough sleep, and take time to relax.

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Skin with a good complexion makes a woman look healthy and young, as well as enhancing the effect of makeup. While physical wellness is of course one factor affecting the condition of your skin, many other hazards can ruin its clarity and complexion, such as dead cells clinging to the surface and thickening the skin, darkening and dryness caused by UV rays, mental stress, lack of sleep, and an unbalanced diet.

Things to work toward in your lifestyle should include avoiding stress and consciously consuming vitamin C in your diet. In terms of skincare, it’s crucial to protect your skin from UV rays and air conditioning by wearing day cream, to exfoliate once or twice weekly, and to invigorate your dermis with serum.

Nowadays you can also find skincare products with aromatherapeutic effects. Incorporating products with relaxing aromas in your evening skincare regimen may be a good idea, too.

Smoking and excessive drinking can result in a sallow complexion, so try to remember that moderation, at least, is vital for your beauty and health.

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Toners are another way to add hydrating ingredients to the skin along with water. A spray of a toner that contains humectant ingredients followed quickly while the skin is still damp with a hydrating moisturizer or treatment product can flood the upper layers of the skin with water and ingredients to keep it there.

Exfoliation is also helpful for moisturizing and some moisturizers contain alpha hydroxy acids (AHA) to improve the health and function of the stratum corneum.

Hydrating ingredients are not limited to moisturizers. Even cleansers, which are washed away after a minute or two, can be enriched with water-holding and water-attracting ingredients that leave a moisturizing film behind. In order to gently remove the dirt and debris on your skin, some mild detergent ingredients are needed, but you don’t want too much or you can take away the natural moisturizing lipids that your own skin has created. Not only do you want to avoid disturbing the skin’s barrier function, you want to leave it even more hydrated than it was when you started.

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Learn from a linen handkerchief

Have you ever wondered why babies have such smooth skin? It’s because their skin hasn’t been exposed to UV rays or dryness – much like the condition of a brand-new white handkerchief. Unused white handkerchiefs are crisply starched and spotless, without a single thread out of place. This is like the perfection of fresh, resilient baby skin.

After being repeatedly washed and dried, though, the once-white handkerchief will grow faded and worn. It will also become spotted and wrinkly with use.

How the handkerchief will fare is really up to its owner. An owner determined to make it last will gently hand wash it when it’s dirty, bleach it when yellowed, and iron it out when it gets wrinkled. A linen handkerchief can remain clean and usable for a long time if you take good care of it. On the other hand, if you give up on it and let it sit for a long time all crumpled because it’s stained anyway, the handkerchief will never regain its former beauty.

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