30 Tips on How to Have a Younger Looking Skin ? (Part 1)
To look young and beautiful is everyone’s dream, especially women. Nowadays, men are not exceptional too. Dermatologists can easily run a test to point out the differences between our "real" skin age and "chronological" skin age.
Dr. Michael Roizen, author of the number one bestseller, ”RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be? “, has said it well, “If you think your skin looks old, it probably does. “
What causes skin to age? The number one cause is believed to be oxidation damage from sun and the environment. This damage affects the collagen and elastin, resulting in the formation of lines and wrinkles, dark spots and discolorations, dryness and other aging signs.
There are plenty of beauty tricks that can take the years off you, making you look young and start feeling young too. Following are the 30 tips that can help to make your skin healthy, look young and beautiful as you age.
1. Use natural and organic makeup
Organic and natural cosmetics are kinder to skin when compare to the traditional mineral makeup since it doesn’t contain fragrances, dyes, binders, and preservatives. Blushes and powder foundations contain harmful finely ground minerals such as titanium dioxide, zinc oxide and mica. Non-organic skin care products contain many ingredients that are toxic to our body such as petrochemicals, synthetic chemicals, toxins and preservatives. Anything of these toxics that is put on the skin will make its way into the body, and in the long run, as the toxic builds up, it may affect our health.
Organic makeup products are rich in nutrients, containing organic herbs, vitamins and essential oils. These chemical-free products not only beautify our skin, but also nourish and protect our skin and health.
2. Apply on sunscreen with SPF15 or higher
The harmful ultraviolet ray from the sun is the worst enemy for the skin. To protect your smooth and healthy skin from damage, choose the broad-spectrum sunscreen with SPF15 or higher and apply daily before your makeup to protect your skin against both the UV-A and UV-B rays. If you go for a swim, reapply sunscreen often. If you have acne breakouts or will be sweating or swimming, consider purchasing waterproof sunscreen lotion. Remember to check the expiry date before purchasing or after keeping it at home for a long time, as sunscreen ingredients degrade over time.
3. Take Multivitamins and Minerals to fight free radical damage
Free radicals attack cell membranes, inhibit the cell’s ability to reproduce or protect themselves. The effects of too many free radicals include signs of aging such as wrinkles, age spots and poor skin quality. Anti-aging researchers have found the answer to combat these excess free radicals, by feeding the body with antioxidants. Multivitamins and minerals supplement such as Lifepak has been clinically proven antioxidant products that can protect your skin and body against damage caused by free radicals. Lifepak comes in a few products to suit different age needs.
a) Magnesium maintains youthfulness
Lifepak also contains the mineral Magnesium, which is important mineral to maintain youthfulness. Magnesium is a great anti-aging facilitator...... Magnesium is also best known for promoting the absorption and use of other minerals including calcium.
b) Anti-aging selenium
Selenium is one of the most important minerals for maintaining good health, cancer prevention, longevity and anti aging. Not only it keeps you look younger; it is also one of the most powerful antioxidants that your body can use to provide strong protection for bones, joints and cartilage tissues. Sadly, selenium levels in the body tends to drop sharply as we age.
For disease prevention, it is recommended that one should take 100 micrograms of selenium every day, either from diet or by supplementation.
Dermatologists often mention that beautiful skin starts on the inside with the nutrients you consume, so consider investing on these supplements for younger looking skin.
4. Drink Juice Daily
When you are stressed from work or life, your body produce the turbo-charging stress hormone to prepare your body to deal with crisis. This stress hormone brought about damage in your body by producing free radicals. To overcome this problem, buy a juicer and make fruit and vegetable juice to drink daily. Fruit and vegetable juice contains abundance of antioxidant substances that can act as scavenger of free radicals that can prevent and repair damage caused by free radicals. Your skin responds to antioxidant-rich nutrients that you eat, drink and digest and apply upon it. Colourful fruits and vegetables are high in antioxidant, for examples, cranberries, purple grapes, oranges, papaya, strawberries, cantaloupes, pomegranates, apricots, peaches, carrots, beetroots, tomato, and green vegetables. If you are a busy executive or manager, and do not have time to squeeze juice to drink, taking Lifepak will be an easy and convenient solution to your problem.
5. Use Baby Oil to Seal in Moisture
Moisturizing your skin will keep it looking young and fresh at all age. Some moisturizers act as a sealant, trapping the water in your skin. Others actually release water or moisture into the skin. Natural moisturizer free of dyes, harsh additives and perfumes are gentler to the skin. An example of such inexpensive moisturizer is the baby oil. Rub small amounts of baby oil onto your skin after a warm shower before drying up your body with a towel. If you find that too wet, gently pat your skin till partially dry and immediately apply baby oil to keep it moisture.
6. Take a Sauna or Steam Bath
A dry heat sauna or a steam bath create glowing skin since it eliminates toxins and excess sodium, relax tensed and sore muscles. You can create a mini steam bath for your face. Pour soiling water into a ceramic bowl. Drape a tower over your head to form a tent and then lower your face towards the bowl. Allow the steam to warm the skin of face for 10 to 15 minutes. For better relaxation, you can create aromatherapy by adding a few drops of your favourite essential oil or fresh herbs into the hot water in the bow to infuse the water. Alternatively, you can build your own sauna or steam bath using the readily available sauna kits. Remember to drink plenty of water to replenish the water you have lost from the heat.
7. Regular Facial Treatment
Estheticians in the dermatologist centre and spas are trained to perform facial treatment to rejuvenate the tired skin, erase some of the fine lines and hyper pigmented areas resulted from sun damage. A good esthetician will be able to perform a detailed skin evaluation using magnifying lamps and specialized equipment to evaluate the skin’s condition and appearance, and thereafter recommend a skin care regimen that is suitable for different individual. From performing professional skin care, cleansing, exfoliating and massaging facial skin, apply chemical peels, microdermabrasion, or laser treatment, estheticians can clean and revitalize your skin, reduce fine lines and age spots. She can also demonstrate how to clean and care for skin properly, and recommend skin-care regimens and products that will improve your skin quality and appearance.
8. Apply Petroleum Jelly and Wear Cotton Cloves to Bed
If you have to sleep in a dry room especially in winter where heater is turned on, using petroleum jelly and cotton gloves will help to soften and soothe dry, cracked or chapped hands. Petroleum jelly keeps the skin's moisture from evaporating. Before bed, after washing and rinsing your hand, pat dry but not completely. Then, apply a small amount of petroleum jelly to your hands and slip on a pair of cotton gloves. When you wake up in the morning and remove the gloves, you will find softness on the skins of your hands. This also works well for the feet. Remember to use clean socks after applying the petroleum jelly. It also softens calluses.
Do take precaution that petroleum jelly should not be used on fresh burns or infected skin as it trap infectious agents under the skin.
9. Get an aromatherapy massage
A good massage relieves you from tension, stress or pain. Aromatherapy massage uses a combination of fragrant essential oil such as peppermint, rose, sage, chamomile, sandalwood as part of the massage treatment to induce deep relaxation. When this warm oil is massaged into flaky, dry skin, the immediate result is softer and smoother skin. An effective massage can reduce your respirations and heart rate and lower your blood pressure. Regular massage will not only make you feel good, but make your skin look younger.
10. Collagen Renewal
As a person ages, the collagen level in the skin decreases with time due to constant exposure to environmental pollutants. Collagen collapse cause fine wrinkles, deeper creases along the forehead, saggy areas around the mouth and neck. This will also lead to a reduction of skin's moisture holding capacity and result in the loss of skin's suppleness, firmness and elasticity. Many new technologies have emerged over the years to stimulate new collagen growth that will help replenish and even out the shrunken dermis layer resulting in tone and texture improvement, fine lines and wrinkles fade. If you are willing to pay a hefty price for this treatment, please consult your doctor about your choices.
11. Taking Bird Nest or White Fungus Regularly for Collagen Renewal
For generations, Chinese believes in taking bird’s nest for collagen renewal. You can buy the dried bird nest and cook it yourself. Just soaked the bird nest overnight to soften it, then cook it in slow cooker or simmer it with rock or normal sugar for a few hours until the bird nest is very soft. Consume it with empty stomach for best results.
Bird nest is expensive, and only the rich and wealthy can consume it daily. For alternative, white fungus, also known as snow fungus or Bai Mu Erh in Chinese is an equally good substitute for collagen renewal. In fact, white fungus bears other benefits than betterment of skin tone. The Chinese and Japanese herbal medicine practitioners use snow fungus widely for over 2000 years now to heal various ailments. It is commonly used to enhance body liquids, to cure dry cough and heart palpitations.
12. Exfoliate Skin with Sea Salt
Regular skin exfoliation produces healthier-looking skin and aids in new collagen development. Exfoliation removes dead skin cells that dull your complexion. There are many exfoliation techniques such as chemical peels, retinoids, microdermabrasion, and using a mildly abrasive scrubber. For natural abrasive agent, use ground grape, olive or apricot seeds. Skin peel done by esthetician should be scheduled once in six weeks or later, as that is the time it takes for the skin to renew itself. Regular skin peels will help you to turn back the clock several years. Alternatively, you can make your own exfoliating scrub using sea salt. Start with one part of oil such as sweet almond oil and two parts of sea salt, which creates a somewhat thick mixture. Add more oil to thin it if you like a more liquid scrub. You can also add other ingredients such as fragrant essential oil or honey as softening agent.
13. Anti-aging Skin Care Products
Anti-aging skin care products are flooding the market in recent years. Walk into a pharmacy, and you will be surprised with how many anti-aging products displaying on the shelf. However, not all products are as effective as others. Sometimes, the most expensive ones are the less effective. The better rating and more effective anti-aging products are normally those that contain the right ingredients such as Aloe Vera, vitamin A, vitamin E, collagen, elastin, keratin, retinol and jojoba. Retinol, derivative of Vitamin A, works great in keeping the skin looking young and fresh. It enhances the skin to produce collagen. Collagen, elastin, and keratin are proteins that keep the skin strong and flexible and prevent the formation of wrinkles and other signs of aging. Effective skin care products should contain these ingredients as well as sunscreen substance SPF 15 that protect the skin from sun damage. Having said all these, when choosing the skin care product, the suitability and effectiveness depend also largely on their compatibility with the skin type of the person.
Products that contain ingredients that are known to be quite harsh to the skin should be avoided. For instance, an anti-aging cream or lotion that contains traces of alcohol should be avoided since alcohol content is known to naturally dry up the skin which can accelerate the aging process instead of slowing it down.
14. Drink Adequate Amount of Water Daily
Dehydration in the skin results in dryness, tightness, flakiness. Dry skin is less resilience and is more prone to wrinkling. Hence, water is essential to maintain skin moisture and is the important vehicle for delivering essential nutrients to the skin cells. As water is lost in large quantities every day, we need to replace it. So, your goal should be eight glass of water each day. If you find it hard to keep track of the number of cups of water drank daily, an easy rule of thumb is: if your urine is yellowish, increase your water intake as it is a sign that you may not be getting enough water.
Another tip for preventing puffy swollen eyes is to go to bed with a glass of water by the bed, to stay properly hydrated.
Other "How To" Topics :
15. Essential fatty acid supplements
Essential fatty acid, EFAs such as Flax Seed Oil, Super EPA/DHA Fish Oil and Evening Primrose Oil plays an important role for various vital functions in the body, but they are particularly important at the cellular level because they are a fundamental component of the membranes of all cells. Since skin cells turn over rapidly, an adequate supply of EFAs in the diet is essential for healthy-looking skin. Eat the good fats like olive oil, avocados, fish and nuts, flaxseeds, , keeping them to 25% of your total daily calories.
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