Most people have a skincare routine of applying various products, often in the morning and at night.
That may be "okay" as far as it goes, but there's a lot more to skin - and to keeping skin both healthy and beautiful - than is obvious.
After all, your skin "turns over" every twenty-eight days. That's quite fast. It means that if you begin one technique for improving your skin, it should work in under a month.
It's not always that easy, unfortunately. Everyday lifestyle habits may be working against your skin's health.
What is the Second Biggest Skin Health Hazard?
As you probably know, the Number One Skin Health Hazard is ultraviolet light in sunlight.
Number Two is stress.
The mechanism is simple. Like all the organs and cells of your body, your skin and its cells thrive only when they receive plenty of nutrition and oxygen. What carries that nutrition and oxygen to them?
Blood.
One major key to maximizing your skin's health and appearance is increasing blood flow.
Stress activates the "flight or fight," sympathetic nervous system. This response causes vasoconstriction - narrow blood vessels - through much of your body. That's because the purpose of "flight or fight" is to increase your ability to escape danger. When you're running from a saber-toothed tiger, you don't worry about blood flow to your skin. You just want speed.
Ideally, we'd be in flight or fight mode only when faced with actual, physical danger. Most of us in the modern, developed world don't have to run from tigers very often.
But we also tend to react to nonphysical danger just as though it's a threat: a performance appraisal from your supervisor, heavy rush hour traffic, asking someone out on a date and so.
Too many of us remain chronically stressed out, and that constricts your blood.
It also increases the hormone cortisol, which breaks down collagen and elastin in your skin.
Therefore, although it's rarely mentioned, taking time to relax and unwind is not only good for your emotional well-being, but helps your skin remain youthful and unblemished as well.
So, whether you meditate, listen to music, breathe slowly (coherence breathing), or simply lay down and relax - do it every day.
Other Vasoconstrictors
1. Caffeine
This does constrict your blood. However, medical science finds that, when consuming ordinary quantities of caffeinated beverages, the effect is minor.
That is, if you simply drink a few cups of coffee or tea or sodas or energy drinks, that's not enough to cause a problem.
However, we all know people who take in enormous quantities of caffeine, and this is likely problematic for many reasons.
Also, in my experience, many of those people also combine caffeine with a certain major vasoconstrictor.
2. Nicotine
It does constrict your blood enough to adversely affect your skin cells.
This includes not only cigarettes but the gum, patches, and vaping. Nicotine is nicotine.
If you're using the gum or patches to stop smoking, however, do what you have to.
3. Alcohol
The problem with alcohol is it's a diuretic. That is, it makes you urinate more often.
This water-to-be-eliminated must be pulled from somewhere in your body - and your skin is an easy place for that.
Therefore, alcohol consumption draws water from your skin. That's a big reason many people have bags under their eyes after a night of drinking.
Remember: you're applying all those moisturizers to your skin to RETAIN water in your skin. Alcohol takes water from your skin.
When your skin becomes drier because of chronic alcohol consumption, your skin tries to compensate by producing more sebum. That's a sort of oil wax. It can cause blackheads and other problems of congested skin.
Watch Out for Skincare Product Ingredients
They too can build up in your skin. That's why you want noncomedogenic ingredients.
When a pore becomes clogged with debris, such as excess sebum (oil), hairs or dead skin cells, it can become a pimple or blemish known as comedones.
Therefore, any skincare ingredient that can clog pores, can cause comedones. But we don't want these unsightly blemishes. You want to apply ingredients to your skin that do NOT clog your pores.
Those are NONcomedogenic.
A Supplement for Healthier Skin?
Some say polypodium leucotomos is an internal sun "blocker."
That is, although it's a supplement you swallow, not something you put on or over your skin, it helps guard your skin from the dangerous effects of ultraviolet radiation in sunlight.
Polypodium leucotomos is a fern that grows in South and Central America. There's no consensus yet on its efficacy for skin health, but it does contain powerful antioxidants. Some scientists say those help guard your skin from the worst effects of UV radiation in sunlight by reducing the formation of sunburned cells.
Also, it may help with dark spots - dyspigmentation.
In 2015, the Journal of Clinical Aesthetic Dermatology published the results of a trial on polypodium. They used healthy adults aged 18-65, both men and women, with Fitzpatrick skin types from I to IV. They gave half the participants a 240 mg extract of polypodium twice a day for sixty days.
Both groups were exposed to a small but significant level of sunlight.
The researchers found the participants who took the polypodium extract had far fewer cases of sunburn than the control group.
Additionally, they determined that taking polypodium was safe.
Polypodium is not a substitute for using sunscreen or for minimizing your sun exposure, but it is one additional form of protection.
Therefore, polypodium may be beneficial if you're often in sunlight under circumstances that make applying sunscreen impractical.
That could include swimming and diving, surfing, training for a marathon, or whatever.
Conclusion
Taking care of your skin so you look as beautiful as possible for as long as possible takes more than the usual skincare routine.
Make it a part of your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgUjIRtote8
https://www.cerave.com.au/blog/everyday-skin-care/what-does-non-comedogenic-mean
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-1152/polypodium-leucotomos
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345929/