Healthy, vibrant skin comes from inner beauty. In addition to a natural skin care routine, it’s essential to live a healthy lifestyle that includes eating a balanced diet, plenty of rest and regular exercise. Here’s how to treat your skin right and get the glowing, natural look you desire.
Healthy Skin Hit List
Follow these six must-have steps for the beautiful, glowing skin:
1) Eat your fruits and veggies; their antioxidants are vital to preventing free radical damage.
2) Don’t smoke. It produces free radicals that age and dry the skin out.
3) Exercise boosts circulation that brings oxygen to your cells and gives your skin a healthy glow.
4) Avoid extreme temperatures. Hot and cold extremes can rupture small capillaries under the skin.
5) Exfoliate to remove dead, dull skin.
6) Get your beauty sleep. Toxins are released when we slumber and tissue is renewed.
Nature’s Sun Protectors
Protecting sensitive skin from burning is always a challenge – especially if you love being outdoors and want to get some of the sun’s vitamin D benefits. Start your layers of protection from the inside by eating protecting foods. Carotenoids protect plants and animals from excess sunshine and help molecules reflect UV rays. Eating them can decrease your risk of a burn. Carotenoids are found in foods like eggs, salmon, trout, dark green leafy vegetables, and yellow and orange fruit and veggies like carrots and peppers.
Do-it-yourself Sunscreen: Combining Shea butter, avocado, jojoba, SAM-e and castor oil, marigold, St. John’s worth and walnut husk can make an all-natural sunscreen.
Don’t Forget your Body
The skin on your body needs just as much TLC as your face. If you don’t take care, your skin will become an instant ager – especially on your neck and chest. Moisturize often with a nourishing and hydrating lotion.
Finding Balance with the Sun
We yearn for our skin to have a sun-kissed glow, but are warned that the sun is harmful, ages us and can even cause cancer. While we need to exercise caution, there are so many health benefits – mentally and physically – that the sun provides us.
Vitamin D supports the immune system and bone health. The sun also kills bad bacteria, helps fight depression and can give your overall health a boost. To get the benefits while reducing the negative side effects of the sun follow these simple rules:
- Protect your skin with a broad-spectrum, natural sunscreen made without the harsh toxic chemicals such as oxybenzone, which can penetrate into the skin.
- Limit sun exposure during peek hours (10am to 4pm) and aim to keep overall, direct sun exposure to no more an hour a day.
- Darker complexions can handle more time in the sun since they have more melatonin in their skin, which is our body’s natural sun block.
TRY: Aubrey Organics Natural Sun Green Tea Sunscreen SPF 30+ is made with the powerful antioxidant organic matcha green tea to help prevent free radical damage and aging of the skin. It also has moisturizing oils of jojoba and sunflower. Active ingredients include zinc oxide and titanium dioxide to protect skin against both UVB and UVA rays.
Text by: Nancy Jambazian
Photography by: Kimberly Metz
Makeup and Hair by: Nancy Jambazian
