A Quality Anti Aging Skincare Regime
What does a good anti-aging skin care regime look like?
Most dermatologists agree that the most important times for looking after your skin are first thing in the morning and just before you go to bed.
The basic idea is that what you do in the morning should protect your skin from the possible damage it will be exposed to during the day with vitamin c or other antioxidants. Then what you do at night allows your skin to rest and recover while you sleep, ready to do it all again the next day.
Here is what you are looking for in the morning. These are for every day.
Most dermatologists agree that the most important times for looking after your skin are first thing in the morning and just before you go to bed.
The basic idea is that what you do in the morning should protect your skin from the possible damage it will be exposed to during the day with vitamin c or other antioxidants. Then what you do at night allows your skin to rest and recover while you sleep, ready to do it all again the next day.
Here is what you are looking for in the morning. These are for every day.
Antioxidants
Look for serums or creams that have a high antioxidant quality. Ingredients such as green tea, resveratrol, vitamins C and E and polyphenols. These will help your skin by decreasing the breakdown of collagen.
If you aren’t aware, collagen forms a structure under your top layers of skin. It is not too different from what you see with suspension bridges. A layer of interlocking wires keeping everything where it should be. If your collagen breaks down, depending on the pattern of breakdown, you end up with wrinkles or “orange peel” looking skin commonly called cellulite.
Once collagen has broken down, there’s not much you can do about it. You can do some repair, but it’s far easier to just slow that process down.
As you go about your daily life, free radicals are created. These are essentially like the garbage that collects in your bin as you make dinner. The bits of plastic wrapping, some left over sauce, bits of fat you’ve cut off the meat. In a similar way, free radicals are the junk left over when the cells in your body use energy to do everything from walking to sitting, to running a marathon.
Your body is reasonably good at clearing away the mess all the time, but you can help the process by keeping your supply of antioxidants high. A topical ascorbic acid cream will work wonders to reduce age spots. That’s why we recommend doing things like drinking green tea, applying the best vitamin C serum to your face, and taking resveratrol supplements. Mario Badescu in NY has some great tips. You can also check out Avalon Organics, Isabis Formulae or the work of Dr Perricone.
If you aren’t aware, collagen forms a structure under your top layers of skin. It is not too different from what you see with suspension bridges. A layer of interlocking wires keeping everything where it should be. If your collagen breaks down, depending on the pattern of breakdown, you end up with wrinkles or “orange peel” looking skin commonly called cellulite.
Once collagen has broken down, there’s not much you can do about it. You can do some repair, but it’s far easier to just slow that process down.
As you go about your daily life, free radicals are created. These are essentially like the garbage that collects in your bin as you make dinner. The bits of plastic wrapping, some left over sauce, bits of fat you’ve cut off the meat. In a similar way, free radicals are the junk left over when the cells in your body use energy to do everything from walking to sitting, to running a marathon.
Your body is reasonably good at clearing away the mess all the time, but you can help the process by keeping your supply of antioxidants high. A topical ascorbic acid cream will work wonders to reduce age spots. That’s why we recommend doing things like drinking green tea, applying the best vitamin C serum to your face, and taking resveratrol supplements. Mario Badescu in NY has some great tips. You can also check out Avalon Organics, Isabis Formulae or the work of Dr Perricone.
Gentle Cleanser
The best vitamin c serum is without fragrance, something gentle enough to be used on all skin types every day. A cleanser will do more than water to clean your skin, but a really good one won’t do any more damage to your skin health than using water.
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SunscreenIf you’re in a bright place like Australia or the south of USA, you really should be wearing sunscreen every day. That doesn’t mean you have to slop on tons of the stuff and feel gross all day; just try to choose makeup which has a SPF (Sun Protection Factor) listed, especially if it has titanium dioxide as the active ingredient.
Many people think sun damage is caused by staying too long in the sun causing sunburn. However, it’s the light you can’t see – Ultra Violet light (also known as UV rays) which causes the most damage to your skin. It doesn’t matter how long you are in the sun for, you’re getting exposed to this high energy, damaging light. Even if you’re indoors all day you can be exposed to it, when it bounces off internal surfaces. |
We’ll talk about other parts of organic skin care, especially dealing with what to do at night, in another article. Hopefully this has given you something to work on to improve how you take care of your skin. Scientists are getting better at understanding how the skin gets damaged and what to do to reverse the trend, but until they’ve developed a way to turn back the clock, we should all take best care of our skin – it’s the only one we’ve got.