Skin Therapy | Saving Face
Friday, February 19th, 2010
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Gone are the days where skin treatments (facials) were luxury. These days it’s a requirement to maintain the Sexy. Depending on the depth of your pocket, there are quality treatments and products that are available to address your skin’s individual concern.
The following tips can be used by both men and women, although, in all honesty, women are normally more concerned about aging, possibly because society sees wrinkles on a woman as ‘old’ = Not-so-Sexyand wrinkles on a man as ‘experienced’ = Super Smoking Hot.
Double standard? Sure but whatevs. It is what it is, so let’s deal with it accordingly.
1. Schedule Face Time
Gone are the days where skin treatments are a luxury, we live in a world with too much stress, environmental pollution and chemically altered food for that kind of irrational thinking.
We tend to our hair and nails at least once a month, we change our clothing with the seasons or trends, we (should) maintain our teeth regularly, so what’s up with neglecting our skin? How many faces do we have again?
Monthly skin treatments are required not only to target our individual skin challenges (acne, darkening or hyper-pigmentation, environmentally sensitized skin, aging or prematurely aging skin etc.) but they can also help us maintain well-hydrated, smooth, supple skin, you know… that thing ‘they’ refer to as maintenance.
Talk with your skin therapist about setting up a skin therapy schedule that complements your at home regimen. Don’t have have an at home regimen? No time like the present to start – the sooner the better.
2. Use the right ingredients
Anti-aging products are all the rage, but as we’ve already discussed, not all products are created equal, largely because not all ingredients are created equal.
There is no regulation as to what a product needs to contain in order to be labelled ‘anti-aging’, as a matter of fact in some cases it only takes a hydrating ingredient, synthetically made at that, for a manufacturer to refer to a product as ‘anti-aging’. After all, all it takes is an hydrating ingredient to, (albeit temporarily), ‘smoothen out fine lines and wrinkles’.
Dry, wrinkly, sorry looking hands? Wet them. They instantly look a lot healthier, but that doesn’t mean that anything has been altered does it? And so what happens when the water dries? Dry, wrinkly, sorry looking hands again.
In reality, an ‘anti-aging’ product should assist in speeding the cell turnover (shedding) of your skin, in order that new skin be revealed. It is this ‘new’ skin that is partly responsible for having a youthful glow, as the presence of dead skin cells can give a dulling effect to the skin.
Typically, skin cell turnover occurs every 28 days, but starts to slow down after the age of 25. That’s pretty young isn’t it? So after 25, the skin doesn’t refresh itself as often and therefore assisting the skin with this task is recommended.
One way of doing this is to mechanically remove dead skin cells by the use of scrubs (mechanical exfoliation), but this can often be a harsh process and as a result is not recommended for use more than 2-3 times a week. Further, this is not recommended if your skin suffers from excess oil production or is acne prone, as it this rubbing action can stimulate already overactive sebaceous (oily) glands. So what do you do?
This is where ‘anti-aging’ ingredients come in.
Products that contain ingredients such as ‘Lactic Acid’, ‘Glycolic Acid’ or “Retinol’ help speed the skin cell turnover process by chemically nibbling away at these pesky, lingering, dead skin cells (chemical exfoliation) to reveal a fresh layer of skin, thereby reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, and brightening darkened areas.
‘Salicylic Acid’ not only serves as a chemical exfoliation agent, but it also works well at drying up acne flares and blemishes, as well as keeps over productive sebaceous glands at bay, so it’s a good ingredient to look for if your skin concerns falls into this category.
These types of ingredients are especially beneficial, as skin gets exfoliated without the harsh rubbing action on the skin by scrubs (mechanical exfoliation). There are many products these days that contain these ingredients, some like cleansers, serums and moisturizers for example, contain a sufficient enough of these ingredients to facilitate exfoliation, but in a dose low enough so that they can be used every day – very effective for maintaing, smooth, healthy, glowing skin daily.
Always consult with your skin therapist before you start an at-home chemical exfoliation regimen, to protect both your health and the health of your skin.
3. Deal with blemishes effectively
Proper management of blemishes and breakouts is key to maintaining good skin, especially with skin that is prone to pigmentation, like darker or Asian skins.
In these cases, prolonged inflammation and/ or infection in the skin leads to darkening which can take months to disappear if at all. Urrrrgggh.
Keep a salicylic acid containing, acne-fighting spot gel for example, on hand always to immediately deal with blemishes that may pop up, and use a clay-based (kaolin and bentonite clays are the best) masque, for 5-10 minutes, to effectively assist in drawing out impurities from clogged pores.
If you are into guerrilla warfare, using a cotton tip, dab a bit of hydrogen peroxide** on the blemish to immediately kill any infection and follow up with same said clay-based masque as mentioned above.
**Hydrogen peroxide is highly drying to skin and can seriously alter the skin’s balance (pH levels), so using this over an extended area or prolonged period is NOT recommended. Instead follow alternate instructions above. But, for an emergency on a hot date night every now and then? Sure.
4. Use sunscreen
Over exposing the skin to the sun’s harmful UVA and UVB rays is the number one way to damage (read age) your skin, and sometimes irreparably so.
Be Smart. Incorporate a full spectrum sunscreen (one that protects against both UVA and UVB rays) into your daily skin care regimen – one that is either used alone or doubles as your daytime moisturizer. This simple activity can go a long way in preserving your youthfulness.
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