Holistic Beauty from the Inside Out (21 page)

HOW TO CLEANSE YOUR SENSITIVE SKIN

Facial cleansers usually mean a whole lot of trouble for sensitive skin. Harsh detergents, emulsifiers, penetration enhancers,
synthetic fragrances, and preservatives can be found even in products labeled as “dermatologist tested” and “hypoallergenic.” Cleansers for sensitive skin should always be non-perfumed and free from alcohol, colorants, detergents, or unnecessary additives that may sound good and reassuring but just as well may bring even more misery. Ideally, your sensitive skin cleanser should contain ten ingredients or less.

Sensitive skin cleansers should be meek and mild. If you have sensitive skin that is on the drier side, then you can use a cleansing lotion. If your sensitive skin is on the oily side or if you use a lot of makeup, then choose a liquid non-detergent gel that does not produce a lot of foam because foam boosters can be irritating. Do not wash your sensitive skin with antibacterial soaps made with animal tallow or even natural cleansers made with a high amount of alcohol. For a toner, your best bet is magnesium-rich mineral water such as Evian or Volvic, rose water, or witch hazel.

You can make your own natural sensitive skin cleanser using natural ingredients from your kitchen. For example, fine oatmeal blended with water will gently cleanse and exfoliate. Here are a few easy ideas for sensitive skin cleansing:

Baby formula:
Pour some powder in the palm of your hand and add a few drops of water to form a paste, and then massage it into the skin.

Xanthan gum
or
vegetable shortening:
Prepare a gel using a pinch of xanthan gum per 1 cup water or green tea; alternatively, make custard using a vegetable shortening and mineral water or green tea. Use as a regular cleansing lotion—the gel will emulsify any impurities so you can rinse them off.

Vegetable oil:
Use it as a cleansing oil to emulsify and rinse off any makeup if you suffer from sensitive and dry skin.

If you buy a conventional cleanser for your sensitive skin, make
sure to thoroughly test the product before you buy. Take some product from the tester bottle or a tube and apply it to the elbow crease or your neck under your ears where your skin is most sensitive. Leave it on for one day and see if there’s any reaction such as redness, rashes, itch, or any other changes in the skin texture. Feel free to experiment with conventional cleansers even if they are not labeled “hypoallergenic.” Most often, meek and mild cleansers marketed for sensitive skin are made “fragrance free” with a hefty dose of chemicals that mask the natural scent of ingredients. And with sensitive skin, the fewer ingredients you use, the better.

MOISTURIZE WITH CARE

Choosing a moisturizer that will do your sensitive skin more good than bad is harder these days than ever before. Most often, sensitive skin products are loaded with mineral oil, lanolin, petrochemicals, and pore-clogging plant oils and butters such as peanut, macadamia, and cocoa butter. Such popular antiaging ingredients as alpha hydroxy acids, retinol, and vitamin C can also irritate your skin. Chemical sunscreen ingredients are also common allergy triggers.

Some of the best and safest moisturizers for sensitive skin are natural oils applied under mineral foundation or a sun protection cream. Oils are nature’s best moisturizers since they require no preservatives to keep fresh or penetration enhancers to enter the skin—thanks to the oil’s affinity with skin sebum, oils penetrate the skin easily and deliver their strengthening and antiinflammatory properties right where needed. Some of the best oils for sensitive skin include sweet almond, avocado, evening primrose, olive, and jojoba. Skin reactions to peanut oil and beeswax are quite common, since many people have allergies to peanuts or pollen products without even knowing it.

When choosing a moisturizer for your sensitive skin, look for plant-derived squalane, soothing bisabolol, calming calendula,
and cooling cucumber in the ingredient list. Safer preservatives include p-anisic, levulinic acids and to some extent vitamin E, and gluconolactone (a sugar molecule that also moisturizes the skin). All essential oils, alcohol, acids, and petrochemicals should be avoided. All your sensitive skin really needs is a lightweight oil and water.

WATER YOUR SKIN

Water is your skin’s best soother and moisturizer. That’s why, if you have sensitive skin, you should be drinking more than the recommended eight glasses of water. Sometimes your skin is not truly sensitive but dehydrated, with microscopic cracks on its surface that allow irritants to easily penetrate the skin. At the same time, skin sensitivities often signal high toxic load in the body, and to get rid of it, nothing beats pure water. Water not only hydrates and plumps the skin from within; it also carries important nutrients across the body and flushes out toxins.

Not all water is created equal. From a health point of view, water in plastic bottles contains certain amounts of phthalates leaching from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), especially if the bottles were exposed to sun or cold. Instead of paying premium for what is often just bottled tap water, buy a stainless steel flask (make sure it is marked as BPA free or “free from phthalates,” which can leach from epoxy resin lining in drinking bottles) and fill it throughout the day with filtered water.

From the beauty point of view, the best water is rich in
magnesium, which works wonders for your mood and skin clarity. Magnesium-rich waters include Evian, Vichy, and Volvic. Use them for drinking, in your beauty treatments, and as skin tonics.

In periods of low humidity, your skin can feel drier and as a result, more sensitive to irritants. Humidifiers can help, but they must be properly cleaned. To inhibit mold and mineral deposits, the US Environmental Protection Agency recommends filling humidifiers with distilled water, not tap.

STRESS RELIEF FOR SENSITIVE SKIN

Sensitive skin can be a symptom of a stress overload. You can notice that your skin is more prone to redness, dryness, or acne blemishes during turbulent periods in your life. Try the stress relieving techniques described in
Chapter One
, including yoga, meditation, and self-massage. You can also try inhaling calming essential oils such as frankincense, chamomile, lavender, melissa, rose, pine, bergamot, sandalwood, petitgrain, ylang ylang, or vetiver. You can also prepare a blend of your own. Buying individual oils can be expensive, but in the long run you will save a lot of money by mixing and matching the oils to your needs. Here is a simple facial massage technique that helps ease tension in your facial muscles and scalp.

1. Find a quiet, calm place where you can lie down and relax. Take five deep breaths to start the relaxation process. If possible, place a few drops of an essential oil of your choice on a tissue and inhale deeply. For the facial massage, you should be using pure plant oil without any added essential oils to it to avoid irritation. You can also use this massage technique to apply a gentle mask or a scrub such as warm oatmeal or honey, if your skin tolerates it well.
   
2. Relieve the negative tension around your temples by massaging your temples with your index fingers in clockwise motions.
   
3. Relieve the tension in your forehead: using three fingers, massage your forehead in firm circular motion starting at the center and moving toward the temples. Using upward motions, work your fingers upward to the hairline.
   
4. Relieve the tension around your eyes: gently tap around your eye socket several times focusing at the outer corner of each eye.
   
5. Use upward, circular motions to gently lift and relax the cheeks. Avoid pulling the skin. Feel the cheekbones and the jawline and make little circles around them. Use upward swipes aiming at the temples.
   
6. Don’t forget your neck: Starting from the clavicles, stroke the neck using tapping motion. Run your fingers along the expanse of the neck, from the sides to the back and upward to the chin, and stop at the bottom of the lower lip. This gentle tapping activates the feel-good points in the skin so that it feels invigorated, yet calm.
   

CALMING DIET FOR YOUR SKIN

A detoxifying diet is the best remedy for sensitive, allergy-prone skin. Cleansing diets can bring a lot of relief to the liver and the colon, where most skin sensitivities really begin. For the more adventurous, short-term fasts or juice fasts can bring significant relief from skin allergies. Even drinking water with some lemon juice in the morning can help your liver a lot, while taking more fiber and unloading your diet from artificial junk, refined wheat, sugar, and excessive protein can make incredible difference to the health of your colon.

For sensitive skin, immune-boosting vitamin C has an ideal antiinflammatory effect. The best form of vitamin C supplement is time-released ester-C (L-ascorbic acid), possibly combined with rosehip and citrus extract. A bioflavonoid called quercetin also works to reduce allergy symptoms and low-grade inflammation in sensitive, easily irritated skin. There are many quercetin supplements available. Vitamins of the B group also work to quench inflammation and rebalance the skin. Vitamin A (the daily intake should not exceed 20,000 IU ) and zinc (50–100 mg daily) help prevent allergic reactions by normalizing the body’s response to allergens and irritants.

To maintain healthy skin cell membranes, gamma-linoleic acid (GLA ) from evening primrose, black currant seed, or borage oils is simply indispensable. It has a strong antiinflammatory action and also helps improve sebum production to alleviate skin dryness. The effective dose of GLA -rich oils is 200–400 mg a day, ideally split in two doses and taken at breakfast and at bedtime.

A balanced diet is the best skin soother. Eat lots of oily fish, green vegetables, and nuts as well as carrots and whole-grain cereals. I encourage you to follow a healthy diet following the tips in Chapter Four for one month to see the amazing difference it makes to your sensitive skin. To take good care of the skin, we must take care of the whole body.

Chapter Eight Quick Tips

1. Sweet almond, avocado, evening primrose, olive, and jojoba
   oils make the best cleaners
   for sensitive skin.
   
2. When your skin is prone to allergies and irritants,
   choose products with short ingredient lists
   . Few ingredients mean few chances for irritation.
   
3. Water is the best moisturizer, inside and out
   . Choose mineral waters with high magnesium content to soothe your skin and add skin-strengthening minerals to keep skin balanced.
   
4. Use a simple facial massage technique
   with unscented plant oils to firm and soothe sensitive skin.
   
5. A balanced diet will strengthen the skin’s defenses
   against common allergens and irritants; gamma-linoleic acid and vitamin C help alleviate inflammation.
   

NINE

Beautifully Ageless Skin

W
ouldn’t it be lovely if your face could remain as glowing and supple as it was when you were a child? Vibrant, firm, and full of energy, without wrinkles or spots? unfortunately, science yet has to discover a magic cure that would painlessly, safely, and sustainably reverse the aging process, but we can use many natural ingredients, nutrients, vitamins, and even exercise to help hold back the years.

Most of us consider the natural aging process a depressing, inevitable fact of life over which we have little or no control. The message that getting older equals failure and regression is supported by powerful antiaging industry selling us everything from antiwrinkle creams to miracle age-rewinding pills to plastic surgery. A quick Google search on the words “antiaging products” produces overwhelming list of 10,600,000 results.

The inevitable process of skin aging begins as early as the mid-twenties. The natural regeneration processes occurring at the cellular level begin to slow down. Environmental factors such
as sun exposure, pollution, toxic ingredients in skincare, and our daily diet all affect the speed of the skin aging, showing up as wrinkles, sagging, hyperpigmentation, and broken capillaries.

This fatalistic approach overlooks the importance of our lifestyle and well-being determining our biological age.

We all know someone who looks ten or fifteen years younger than their chronological age. This is because their inner calendar shows their biological age of thirty while their passport may reveal they are well past fifty. Yoga teachers, for example, almost always look far younger than their fellows who do not practice a healthy mind-set or clean diets.

In a nutshell, biological age is determined by a complicated combination of factors such as cells and tissue function, physical structure of the body, and cognitive function. The way we age is in our own hands. A lot of symptoms of aging are a result of our lifestyle. Poor diet and hormonal imbalance bring on hair loss, cellulite, and abdominal fat. Relentless tanning and smoking result in early wrinkles, parchment-like skin, and heart disease. Alcohol consumption adds to the risk of heart disease and obesity. Lack of energy, stooped posture, diabetes, poor eyesight, bad memory—all these diseases that people consider as inevitable signs of aging largely stem from negative living and negative thinking.