Natural Skin Care Routine for Youthful Looking Skin

Natural Skin Care Routine for Youthful Looking Skin

Natural Skin Care: There’s no doubt that we’re all looking to feel and look youthful, but did you know that most of the ‘anti-aging’ products on the market contribute to the problem? Today we will be exploring how artificial toxic chemicals cause premature aging to the skin and body, and how opting for a more natural skincare routine may be the answer to vibrantly healthy skin as we age.

What Ages The Skin?

The list of things that causes the skin to age prematurely is a long one, but mostly the health of your skin is as good as is your lifestyle. There’s no single factor that causes premature aging, but the little daily habits add up. Your skin is an organ, and the one most exposed to your environment. The sun is often blamed for skin conditions. However, the reality is that your diet, stress, alcohol, smoking, and being dehydrated play a much more significant role in your skin’s health.

Although too much sun exposure can break down collagen and cause skin damage, the more significant issue is the health of the skin going into skin exposure. Avoid the nasties and include a few supporting habits, and you’ll encourage a youthful glow deep into old age.

Natural Skin Care: Things To Avoid for Youthful Skin:

1. A Nutrient Deficient Diet

Your skin is your largest organ and is continuously regenerating and healing itself. The food you eat becomes the building block for new skin, and so eating mindfully ensures you give your body all the micronutrients it needs to build bouncy, beautiful new skin.

Apart from quality (opting for as much organic, local food as possible), reaching for variety is one of the best ways to ensure a nutrient-dense diet. Eat the rainbow when it comes to your vegetables, and opt for the least processed foods as possible. Eating enough high quality (pasture-raised) animal protein and fats will support collagen and the essential fat-soluble vitamins. DHA is another critical nutrient, most abundantly available in wild-caught fatty fish.

Highly processed foods (like sugars, flours, and packaged goods) offer up high caloric intake without the nutrients to back it up. Opting for whole foods instead of processed ones is a foundational part of building healthy, youthful-looking skin.

2. Stress

Although stress is perceived emotionally, it plays a crucial role in generating a hormonal response in the body that is not conducive to health. When the body is in fight or flight (stress response), it puts healing on the back burner. Stress hormones like cortisol contribute to a wide range of harmful impacts on the body when experienced chronically, including poor sleep.

Manage stress first and foremost by removing yourself from situations that bring on constant levels of stress. Learning to set boundaries in relationships (both professional and personal) is key to stress management. Incorporating mindfulness techniques like yoga and meditation is another great way to keep stress under control.

3. Alcohol and Smoking

Unsurprisingly, smoking and alcohol have no place in the routine of anyone in the pursuit of youthful skin. Nicotine impairs blood flow to the skin, which means less oxygen and more premature sagging and wrinkles. Alcohol dehydrates the whole body, which manifests clearly on the skin. Not only does alcohol cause wrinkles, but also, dryness, puffiness, and purple and red pigmentation on the skin.

4. Dehydration

You don’t have to drink alcohol to cause dehydration. Most Americans are walking around daily with some degree of dehydration. Dehydrated skin is a significant source of premature aging, as it weakens its defense and leads to sensitivity and irritation.

Healthy skin is comprised of ten to twenty percent water. Keeping it hydrated requires more than just drinking your eight glasses of water per day. Drinking water is an important start, and this water should be filtered or spring water– since most city tap water is full of harsh chemicals and chlorine.

Other key ways to ensure your body is hydrated include taking terrahydrite humic compounds (like Restore). You can work to reduce your EMF exposure and increasing electrolytes as well as your fiber intake.

5. Toxic Chemicals (Sunscreen, Beauty Products)

The things you consume internally impact your skin from the inside out and the things you put on it have the same impact from the outside in. Our modern lives are so full of harsh toxic chemicals that permeate our pores and cause premature skin aging.

Although sunscreen is considered one of the ways to keep skin looking youthful, most sunscreens on the market do the complete opposite. Sunscreens that use harsh toxic chemicals like Oxybenzone, Cyclopentasiloxane, and Formaldehyde penetrate the skin and bloodstream. These chemicals promote cancer, disrupt the endocrine system, and can lead to reproductive health problems and skin allergies.

Natural Skin Care: Habits to Promote Youthful Skin:

1. Vitamin C Serum

Vitamin C plays a crucial role in collagen synthesis, the molecule that is responsible for the youthful bounce in your skin. Although Vitamin C is found in both the dermis and epidermis of the skin, these levels decline with age.

Using Vitamin C topically is a great way to provide the skin with the nutrients needed to continue producing collagen as we age. Vitamin C used topically has also been linked to prevention and treatment of ultraviolet light damage (from too much sun exposure)

2. Natural Skin Care: Gua Sha

Gua sha is a natural therapy that involves gently scraping the top of the skin using a specific tool, to improve circulation. Also known as the ‘Japanese facelift,’ gua sha is being used around the world to promote blood flow and collagen production.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, gua sha is performed on various areas of the body, including the back, legs, arms, and neck– however, at the at-home practice generally revolves around the face and neck. By rubbing the skin gently in sweeping motions towards lymphatic points, gua sha helps reduce inflammation and promotes healing of the skin.

3. Natural Skin Care: Bone Broth (Collagen)

Collagen is the protein that makes up connective tissues in the body. Found in bones, skin, muscles, and tendons– collagen mostly keeps the body held together. In our skin, collagen is what gives it that youthful bounce, a characteristic that diminishes with time. Drinking collagen-rich bone broth can help provide the body the building blocks to continue building collagen as we age.

Bone broth can be made at home or purchased from a reputable company, made using only pasture-raised organic and grass-fed bones. The quality is vital, for a broth is only as nutrient-dense as the quality of life that the animal led. In a pinch, there are also great grass-fed collagen powder supplements that can be added into drinks, soups, or smoothies.

Natural Skin Care: Summary

Although there are many anti-aging products on the market, most contain harmful skin-aging chemicals that are toxic to the body. Supporting naturally youthful-looking skin can be done by eating a nutrient-dense diet, avoiding alcohol, smoking, managing stress, and staying hydrated. Three key habits to promote youthful-looking skin are using a vitamin C serum, gua sha, and consuming regular bone broth (or a collagen supplement).

My Favorite Skin Care Line!

Founder and CEO of Primal Life Organics Trina Felber was a surgical nurse for years before she started formulating all-natural anti-aging skincare. It was in the operating room that she saw the extreme lengths that women go through to turn back the clock on aging. Surgeries, injections, long recovery times, and thousands of dollars later, most women still aren’t getting to the root cause of deep wrinkles and sagging skin.

>> That’s why Trina decided to create the 2-minute, non-surgical facelift kit.

This cutting-edge routine is based on new research that helps you stimulate the “hidden facelift muscles” that surgeons target in actual surgeries. Blending ultra-safe face cleansers and serums with the “facelift” power of Quiver technology, this 2-minute technique lifts and tones your skin completely naturally. No needles required.

>> Look younger and more awake with the 2-minute non-surgical facelift kit today.

References:

Arck, Petra C., et al. “Neuroimmunology of Stress: Skin Takes Center Stage.” Journal of Investigative Dermatology, vol. 126, no. 8, 2006, pp. 1697–1704., doi:10.1038/sj.jid.5700104.

Emerit, Ingrid. “Free Radicals and Aging of the Skin.” Free Radicals and Aging, 1992, pp. 328–341., doi:10.1007/978-3-0348-7460-1_33.

Ewg. “EWG’s 2019 Guide to Safer Sunscreens.” EWG, https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/report/the-trouble-with-sunscreen-chemicals/.

Mead, M. Nathaniel. “Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health.” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 116, no. 4, 2008, doi:10.1289/ehp.116-a160.

Mercola, Joseph. “Hydration Is About More Than Just Drinking Water – How to Hydrate at the Cellular Level to Improve Health and Longevity.” Organic Consumers Association, 6 May 2018, https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/hydration-about-more-just-drinking-water-—-how-hydrate-cellular-level-improve-health-and.

Nielsen, Arya. Gua Sha: a Traditional Technique for Modern Practice. Elsevier Health Sciences UK, 2014.

Telang, Pumorisaokar. “Vitamin C in Dermatology.” Indian Dermatology Online Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 2013, p. 143., doi:10.4103/2229-5178.110593.