One of my youtube subscriptions that I love getting notified about their recent uploads is called minuteearth. This channel is so full of great information and they’re all under THREE minutes! This is their latest video about what skin is for and I decided to post it because it has great information!
Anyways, here it is.
Enjoy!
Ever notice that when you’re stressed you tend to break out more? It’s because stress causes your body to produce more cortisol and other hormones that tell those small glands on your skin to produce more oils to your skin. The small glands (sebaceous glands) producing more oils are what cause you to break out. Oily skin is more prone to break outs and other skin issues
Stress can often have negative effects on skin problems you may already have like psoriasis, and eczema, and increases your risk of skin infections. What happens is it impairs the proper function of your skin because it dries it out. That causes the outer layer that protects your skin to break up while skin cells shrink and the lipids to evaporate
Skin problems can also be stressful and the more we touch/pick at that problem the worse it gets and we stress out more! Rubbing, scratching your skin and biting your fingers or lip increases your chance of skin damage. Don’t rub your face with a towel once you’ve finished washing it in order to avoid irritation.
If your skin problem doesn’t heal or it keeps coming back time after time then you probably need to figure out a better way to handle your stress. What’s great is the fact that we know how stress effects us and we can do things to prevent it such as:
1. Getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night- This ties into my last post about how sleep effects your skin. If I oversleep I tend to feel more stressed.
2. Don’t neglect your skin! Especially when your stressed you might skimp on your skin care. Not taking care of your skin can aggravate it.
3. Take time for yourself. Read a book, go for a nice walk around the block, take a bath or just do what I do and sit on the bed staring at the ceiling all morning. *Lazy award goes to me!*
4. Set limits and boundaries. Don’t push too hard and increase your stress
Beauty sleep is real!! If you have ever skipped a night of sleeping or pulled an all nighter I’m sure you’ve seen the effect is has on your face. Your eyes look dark and saggy, your skin looses is brightness and altogether you just don’t look or feel too great. The reason being is the lack of sleep causes your blood vessels to expand and that’s what causes those dark circles to appear. Sleep is the time when the body’s cells have a chance to repair themselves. Your skin renews itself by growing new skin cells and replacing the old ones.
Night time is a perfect time to absorb moisture and nutrients. The temperature of the body is also higher which increases the blood flow to the skin. That’s the reason why we have that rosy glow when we wake up. But how much sleep do we need? Seven to eight hours of beauty sleep should do the trick. The main problem with me is sleeping more than the recommended time. I wake up sometimes around 9:00 am and feel like I can get up and get going! But, if I don’t have anything to do for that day I’ll fall back asleep, wake up around noon and feel awful. My body is sore, and my head hurts. I found out that sleeping in too much can actually increase skin cell break down and it’s just as bad as not getting enough sleep. For me, the more I sleep in the less productive I feel/am. I feel more stressed out for wasting my day which makes me irritated and puts me in a bad mood. Not sleeping is is definitely something I need to work on.
Some things to do to help your beauty sleep are:
1. Get in a sleep habit – Go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day.
2. Put a soft cover on your pillow – The higher the thread count the better
3. Do some stretches and light yoga poses to calm you down and get you ready for sleep
4. Listen to soft music or an ASMR video (Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) – is a neologism for a perceptual phenomenon characterized as a distinct, pleasurable tingling sensation in the head, scalp, back, or peripheral regions of the body in response to visual, auditory, olfactory, and/or cognitive stimuli).
5. Take a warm bath – relax your muscles. The warmth of the water will make you sleepy
6. Do deep breathing exercises
Clear your heads tonight and dream of beautiful skin
So on my daily scroll on Pinterest I happened to come across a lovely little website that has recipes for making your own naturally flavored water! I have been getting some great ideas from other people and then I found this! There’s a couple recipes on this site but they look pretty dang good. I thought I would share since I recently posted about water and touched on how to spice up the taste.
SO HERE YOU GO!!
http://www.theyummylife.com/Flavored_Water
Enjoy!
The main problem about exercising for me is that I don’t do it very often… Whoops! I’ll take a run around the block with my dog but an intense, muscle crunching workout at the gym just doesn’t happen for me. I HAVE to work out though because I love food way too much. However, after finding out that exercising can actually help your skin got me a little more interested in it.
Not only does exercising improve your general health and well being, it increases your circulation which boosts delivery of nutrients and oxygen to skin cells. Even sweating is a good thing! It rids your body of toxins that clog your pores and gives you blemishes. Make sure you shower after your work out or else you’ll have the toxins you just sweat out make you break out. Now, you don’t need to spend hours at the gym (unless you have that kind of time then I envy you), all you need is enough physical activity to leave you slightly out of breath. I personally like yoga. Not the easy, and relaxing yoga though. I go for the p90X yoga that works you HARD. I love it! Just a couple minutes of that every day plus the run around the neighborhood leaves my skin nice and pink. I find that after a lot of the physical activities I am involved in leaves my skin looking more bright and rosy. Your skin produces more of its natural oils that helps the skin look more healthy and elastic. Although that naturally moisturizes the face make sure that you cleanse it after to prevent a break out.
Exercise has been known to help lower your stress and anxiety levels. High levels of anxiety and stress can dampen your mood and drain your vitality which tends to show in your face and body. Wake up and do a little yoga in the morning to start your day off positive and relaxing. I love doing soft yoga in the morning to stretch my sleepy bones and also at night to calm my mind and release all the tension from that day. I encourage you to try it out twice a day for a week and track how you feel during the day and as to go to bed.
Make exercise your new skincare secret for healthier, smoother, younger complexion!
E
WATER: Something we can all do better at/drink more of. I even have a hard time with getting my full intake of water a day. It is the most important and greatest hydration solution ever! But, if you’re like me and can’t stand the taste that doesn’t exist in water you probably don’t get enough. Sometimes I have to force myself to drink even two cups of water in the morning and then as the day gets going it becomes even harder to keep it up. What I try to do is add in a little flavor with a lemon and cucumber. I try to stay away from sweeteners and added flavor packets only because I don’t want any other chemicals made by a lab in my water . I keep it natural without the sugars. That’s just my personal feel. If it helps you drink more water that’s great! Another way I spice it up is to make a very very simple water smoothie. Just add fruits and veggies in a blender, add a lot of water and there you go. It’s no Jamba Juice, but it definitely makes me pee like none other and the nutrients from the fruits and vegetables I add helps my skin too so it’s a win win!!
Here’s something I learned that I would like to pass on: Your skin depends on a healthy liver to process toxins from the environment. Like your skin you should love your liver because it is the second largest organ in your body. Everything nutritional we consume gets passed through the liver so it can be transformed into a different biochemical form. If your liver is dragging from an overload of alcohol, caffeine and/or saturated fats, toxins build up and less bile salts (acts as a laxative) are produced. You won’t have lovely skin if you’re dehydrated. Also, most teas and coffees have added chemicals/ingredients that don’t help our body or our skin at all. Caffeine triggers the kidneys to produce more urine, making us mildly dehydrated.
Water flushes out toxins, prevents headaches and constipation and improves the functioning of your entire body. Drink it. If you use the bathroom and your urine is yellow you need more water. You want it as clear as possible, and you want to be going as much as possible. So drink up. It does so many wonderful benefits for your body and your skin! I’ve seen major improvements on my skin and acne because of my daily water intake. It’s almost like working out but easier… The more you work out the more you realize how great you feel and you want to keep working out so you can feel that way all the time! Same for water! Once you start feeling and noticing the difference you’ll want to keep drinking water.
Water is your new best friend. Keep a water bottle close by at work, school, or home so you don’t have an excuse for being dehydrated! Then when it’s empty refill it! It’s as simple as that.
Love your skin and your liver everyone!
Here’s a graphic on more water facts….
Happy Hydration!
In my previous post I mentioned that our skin gets nutrients from carbs, proteins and fats. Why do carbs and fats scare us so much? It’s because people associate it with bad foods and unhealthy weight gain. Ever hear someone say they’re going to cut out all carbs in their diet to lose weight or to “be healthy?” Not only is a zero carb diet difficult to achieve but it is also not great for your body. So why do you need it? Because it’s an organic blend made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. They are the main source of energy for our body and our recommended energy intake should be between 40-65% from carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates have important roles in our bodies including:
And so on and so on….
Don’t be afraid of carbs! They’re not bad for you. It’s all about the amount and the type of carbohydrates that determines our weight and energy. So there. I’ll attach a list of good carbs and fats.
Let’s move on to the dreaded F word! FAT. Cutting out all fats from your diet in order to trim away some extra weight around your waist will not make you’re skin happy. Your body needs healthy fats and your skin needs essential fatty acids (key word ESSENTIAL). Your body needs these essential fatty acids (EFAs) because our body doesn’t make them on it’s own – it comes from the foods you eat. Obviously I’m talking about healthy fats. Not saturated fats or trans fats. Not having enough EFAs can make your skin dry and prone to white heads and black heads.
A healthy skin cell has a healthy membrane. The healthy membrane is what keeps the good things in such as nutrients or water and allows waste to go out. The fatty acid is what helps that membrane stay healthy meaning an unhealthy membrane equals not enough fatty acid and saggier, aged skin.
The essentials you want are omega-3 and omega-6. These are the two main ingredients of healthy skin. Don’t neglect proper nutrition if you care about having healthy, youthful skin.
The first thing that we have to remember is that our skin is more than just an outer wrapping on our body. It is an organ, with a nervous system that keeps watch of every thing happening on the outside of our body, for example cold, heat, and toxins from the environment. Think of your skin acting as a shield that protects your body from germs. The white blood cells are programed to attack any harmful bacteria that makes it’s way into your body.
Our skin does much much more. It’s our interface with the world. Ponder it for a second: you touch the softness of another persons skin and register that feel via your own skin. It warns you of pain, heat and cold. The goose bumps you get when you’re cold and in hot weather your skin perspires to keep your internal body temperature at a safe level. When you’re embarrassed your skin flushes. Skin is so unique and so fascinating to me.
Our blood supplies nutrients and oxygen to the skin. We get this nutrients from the molecules from food like protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Some of you think OH NO! Not carbs and fats! I’ll post about all that in another section about Food and Exercise.
Now… in order to keep this blog post under 50 pages I will skip the information about the structure of the skin and save that for another post because I want to get to the fun posts! I have many blogs pre-planned and I am so excited to share them!
Beauty Can Be A Beast 