Ever wondered how some girls have healthy, radiant glowing skin all year round, while you struggle with blemishes, breakouts and bad skin days?
It’s all down to nourishing your skin from the inside out, following strict skin care routines and a few key products.
Follow these essential steps, and rest assured, you are guaranteed to see an improvement and get the skin you desire in no time at all.
1. Choose Skincare over makeup
Make up only covers blemishes and is not a permanent solution to great looking skin. If you focus on good skin care, you will have great skin that you don’t need to spend a fortune to cover up! Instead of splurging on makeup, try investing a little into high quality skin care products that will get results and guarantee healthy skin.
Read up on what you put on your face: Always educate yourself on ingredients in skin care versus following what you read or see from empty advertising promises. You’ll achieve great results with sound ingredients—not just a pretty jar.
Don’t pop pimples (even though its tempting), because it can lead to more swelling, redness, and even scarring. Feel a spot coming? Just clean the area with rose water, and place a chilled green tea bag on it for 10 minutes.
Also, if you wear glasses or sunglasses, make sure you clean them frequently to keep oil from clogging the pores around your eyes and nose.
2. Food for your skin
The saying ‘You are what you eat’ is a really good mantra. Old skins cells are shed every day and replaced by new ones, but for healthy skin cells to receive the nutrients and minerals they need, you need to eat a balanced and nutritious diet. Sugar, dairy and alcohol cause breakouts and inflammation, so eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables will ensure you having glowing skin from the inside out.
"Don’t eat spicy and fermented foods, salt, citrus fruits, fried food. Instead favour blander foods such as rice, oatmeal and applesauce”, advises American author and Ayurvedic physician, Vasant Lad, in The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies.
Try this at home: This super skin glow juice is packed with vitamins, minerals and powerful antioxidants! Oranges, ginger, carrots, cucumbers and apples, will make your skin look healthy, glowing and beautiful in just 5 minutes!
Serves: 3-4 glasses
Ingredients
1 apple
1 orange, halved and peeled
4 carrots
½ cucumber, peeled
a thumb-size piece of ginger
½ lemon, peeled
water, to dilute if needed
Instructions
Juice them all! Add water if you think the juice is too think to drink.
3. Always remove make up before bed
Never go to bed without taking your make up off. Skin needs to breathe overnight. Ideally, this should be rule number one as sleeping in makeup can create so much more skin problems than acne. So, no matter how late it is, or how tired you are, always wipe away all traces of make up before you go to sleep.
Don’t possess a makeup remover? Just put some olive oil on a cotton pad and gently massage the oil onto your face to get rid of the daily makeup and dirt.
4. Exfoliating is Key
Either using face scrubs or masks, exfoliating is the key to removing dead, dull skin. Skipping this step means your skin care products, which you invested in at step 1, are just feeding the dead skin cells. To achieve better results, ensure your products are absorbed better, and make your skincare goes further, it is important to exfoliate religiously.
Use organic scrubs to nourish the skin, and help it breathe better. Luckily for you, everything you need is already in your kitchen. 2 tbsp chickpea flour, ½ tsp turmeric powder, a pinch of camphor and sandalwood with some rose water/milk/water is your perfect skincare pack.
Gentle Body Scrub - Mix a 2 to 1 ratio of olive oil and sea salt to make a quick and effective body scrub. This helps get rid of dead skin cells creating softer, more glowing skin. And this natural beauty tip is much cheaper than purchased body scrubs.
5. Sunscreen is essential
Protecting your skin, even on a rainy or cold day (no excuses) is crucial to good skin. Complications from rough patches, to wrinkles, age spots, and even skin cancer are all results of over exposure to the sun. Apply sun screen of at least factor 15 and ensure it protects against UVA and UVB rays.
Avoid blocked pores - Make sure the label reads ‘noncomedogenic’ or ‘nonacnegenic’ so that the product does not tend to block your pores.
6. Regular use of face masks, serums and eye creams
These are packed with vitamins and nutrients that penetrate deep into your skin to deliver effective results. Quality eye cream can protect the delicate skin around the eye area, and masks rich in Vitamin C will keep your skin glowing throughout the year.
Eye cream is your BFF: The under eye area works hard (we blink a thousand times a day!), and our under eyes are fragile; the skin here is like tissue paper, absorbing all the products and gunk we place on our faces, and therefore requires extra care with effective, quality products.
Simple Honey Face Mask - Raw honey is naturally anti-bacterial and a super quick way to get soft, beautiful skin. Once a week use a tablespoon or so of raw honey (not the processed stuff pretending to be honey) and gently warm it by rubbing your fingertips together. Spread on your face. Leave on for 5 – 10 minutes and then use warm water to gently rinse it off and pat dry. Then bask in the glow of your honey-awesomeness.
7. Dry Brushing for Better Skin
Dry brushing is a simple detoxification process for your body. It stimulates a number of organs through a gentle massage. It also helps the lymphatic system, eliminates dead skin, strengthen the immune system, can eliminate cellulite, stimulates the hormones, and can help tighten skin through better circulation. That’s a lot of good reasons to incorporate this into your daily routine.
Best of all, it’s cheap and easy, dry body brushing is the least expensive DIY spa treatment there is. Use a body brush and move in sweeping upward motions, and always brush towards your heart. Once you have brushed your entire body (be careful on sensitive areas like breasts) jump in the shower.
8. Water to The Rescue Hydrate yourself. Drink lots of water daily, at least 8 glasses if not more. Also, eats fruits and vegetables that have a high-water content such as watermelon, cucumber, orange, strawberry, grapefruit and cantaloupe.
Try rose water. It helps prevent and reduce eye puffiness in the morning, maintains pH balance and naturally hydrates your skin if you spritz it on during the day.
Not a fan of water? Make it as appealing as possible. Add some cucumber, a squeeze of lemon, or throw in a few mint leaves to make it feel like a treat. Not only will it taste better, but it’s great for your metabolism and includes some of your much-needed nutrients, vitamins and minerals.
9. Healthy Habits Take out time for yourself, and try to avoid stress as much as possible. Have you ever noticed that when you are stressed, you tend to break out more? This is because stress causes your body to produce cortisol and other hormones, making the skin produce more oil.
Practice stress management techniques like breathing exercises, yoga and meditation. The more you meditate, the more you radiate …
Don’t forget to pamper yourself. A gentle facial massage with oils could work wonders. Depending on your skin type, choose oils from mustard, coconut, or almond as they are excellent nourishing agents which help to get glowing skin. Better still – switch on some relaxing music. After 20 minutes, what do you have? Beautiful skin and a relaxed you.
10. Smile
While we spend so much time and energy on honing our bodies and looks, we forget to express our inner joy and happiness.
“Keeping a smile on your face will help maintain the tone of your facial muscles and skin. People may say you look 10 years younger than you are!”, adds the Ayurvedic physician, Vasant Lad.
So, Keep Smiling to get that radiance in your day, and people will be dying to know your secret to looking 10 years younger.
The best foundation you can wear is glowing, healthy skin.
Sharon Cole
Shop for award winning organic skin care click here
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