Rome wasn’t built in a day, and baby steps, and the hare and the tortoise - you know the story! Listen, even your skin needs time - it takes approximately 28 days for a skin cycle to complete, so patient is the best thing that you can be!
At the moment, we have a chance to take good care of ourselves, and our skin. Our philosophy is all about caring for the skin from the inside, on the outside, and on top. So what can we do to make sure that our skin is as healthy as possible? With baby steps in mind, I’m thinking this week about little changes that we can all make to make sure our skin is as healthy as possible - manageable, simple and completely doable from home.
1. Double Cleanse, Morning And Evening
Double-cleansing won’t add too much time to your day, I can promise you that. Double cleansing, both morning and evening is one of the best habits you can get into for your skin, and we have a unique opportunity at the moment to review our habits and make changes for the better.
If you’re prone to a splash-and-dash in the evening but are simply angelic about double cleansing in the evening, or even if you’re generally chirpy and up with the early bird to cleanse religiously in the morning, but evening-time sees you crashing fully made-up in the duvet (please, please, please don’t), then now if your chance to make a change for the better!
Double cleansing morning and evening means that you’re ensuring that your skin is completely free of product applied last night, SPF, makeup, and excess oil, which is good news when it comes to avoiding congestion and breakouts!
Double cleansing also means that your skin is fully prepared for the serums and important ingredients which can truly help to tackle your skincare concerns. This is key when you might be investing good, hard-earned money in skincare products which are specific to your own concerns - I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. You would not, under any circumstances, wax a car without cleaning it first… Do people still wax cars?
Double cleansing will take you about 90 seconds in the morning, and two minutes in the evening, and those are four minutes which will do you the world of good!
2. Wear SPF
It’s possible to be lulled into a false sense of security about SPF, but as much as I hate to burst your bubble, SPF is not optional. It’s very much essential and it’s the core anti-ageing product that you’ll use on the daily.
Even if we aren’t leaving the house as much as we might be otherwise, wearing SPF is still key. Apart from the UV light which is still beaming in from our windows (hiya, spring!), our screens are still giving out blue light in the form of HEVs, which, surprise surprise, is not exactly good news for our skin.
This is why wearing a broad-spectrum SPF is so important. Just because we aren’t out and about on the streets is not an excuse to skimp. UV exposure is one of the greatest causes of premature ageing, and can result in issues like skin cancer if we aren’t diligent about protecting ourselves, year-round.
This truly is the most important thing you can do to keep yourself and your skin healthy.
I am biased, but Skingredients Skin Shield SPF 50 PA+++ is suited to daily use, and is broad-spectrum to protect you from UVA, UVB, HEV and infrared rays. It’s also very lightly peach-tinted (no Caspar-y pallor around here), moisturising, doesn’t provide photo flashback, and is a pollution shield, too. Apply half a teaspoon all over your face, neck, ears, eyelids, and lips every day. It’s suitable for all skin types, even the congestion-prone. Apply it last thing in your routine, and before your makeup.
3. More Essential Fatty Acids
Upping our intake of essential fatty acids is a really good way to look after our skin, and eating hydration-rich foods, too. They are required to maintain the normal function of your body as well as your skin. You might be familiar with omegas, when it comes to keeping your skin in flying form.
We don’t naturally produce linoleic acid or alpha linoleic acid, so we need to get forms of these (omega 3 and 6) into our bodies through our diet! However, omega 3 is more difficult to get through your diet, so it’s important to make sure you’re supplementing this if necessary!
Essential fatty acids (EFAs) are responsible for the regulation of the cell membrane - that is, keeping your skin barrier in really good nick. This helps your skin to keep the good stuff (like hydration) in, and the bad stuff (irritants, etc.) out!
Upping your EFAs is a good idea all round. Even if you have oily skin, despite what you might think, essential fatty acids can still help, as they aid the proliferation process, getting rid of old skin which might otherwise block your pores and lead to further congestion!
A diet richer in essential fatty acid might look like eating: salmon, mackerel, oily fish of any kind, nuts, seeds, green, leafy veg - just make sure you’re getting enough of both omegas 3 AND 6. You could also introduce them into your diet through a daily supplement. You could crack the flax seeds out of the press, or for increasing the water that you’re eating, frozen fruit and veg would do the trick!
Solgar Omega 3-6-9 Supplements are a great supplement to start off with when it comes to trying out omegas - just make sure you check in with your healthcare professional if you have any queries!
4. Incorporate Vitamin A
Vitamin A is the building block of skin health, from whence all skin health comes! No, not really, but it’s super important for skin proliferation (that is the process by which your skin sloughs the dead skin cells off), controlling sebum production, speeding up healing, prompting the production of collagen, normalising cell behaviour… of course, I am a proud member of the (vitamin) A team.
If you don’t use it topically already, introducing it couldn’t be easier. Skingredients Skin Protein contains vitamin A in retinyl palmitate form, which is ideal as an intro to vitamin A.
If you’re a member of the Nerd Network, then you could speak to your Nerd or Nerdette about the Environ Skin EssentiA Vita-Antioxidant AVST range - a step-up system designed to increase your application of vitamin A in manageable doses!
5. Be Free of Free Radicals
Okay, so being free of them isn’t exactly an option - we are the result of chemical reactions, and free radicals are part and parcel of life. These unbonded molecules enter our bodies as a result of pollution and environmental damage from the sun, or smoke, or a lot of other reasons. The way to neutralise them is to apply or consume antioxidants.
Luckily, there is plenty of antioxidant-rich skincare out there, like IMAGE Ormedic Balancing Antioxidant Serum, which is packed with green tea extracts!
Bringing antioxidants into your diet is a great way to go about things too. You could always check out our recent Skin Veg Salad on the Skingredients blog if you’re feeling peckish now …
Five ways to move towards healthier skin and supreme skincare - but do remember that changes for the better are always a good idea, even if they might take a little bit of time to show results. Now is the moment to invest that time and be patient with ourselves and our hard-working skin!
