Sleepy Spice: Cut to the Core
Following on from the concept of holistic health and wellness as a recipe, this week we’re talking Acid.
We’ve covered Salt, the basis of any savory dish. This is where we build up from. In beauty and wellness, sleep is our salt, the essential element that helps us look and feel our best. Without beauty sleep we look and feel groggy and sluggish, with little motivation to exercise or eat well for our body. Boosting your sleep with Beauty Pillow’s range of support pillows and silk accessories can help to boost your sleep hygiene, for deeper beauty sleep every night.
Next, we covered the flavor element of any dish: Fat. This is where the flavors penetrate into the dish. Without a healthy amount of fat in our diet, our bodies can’t process nutrients or properly fuel our movements and brain functions. Of course, we know that too much fat, and too much of the wrong types of fat aren’t good for your body. Keeping the balance of fun and flavor is key to your holistic health and wellness journey. Getting the natural endorphin rush of exercise or socializing can help bring the flavor to your daily life. Supporting your active lifestyle with functional beauty tools like the Beauty Pillow and the Knee Pillow are great ways to keep your life full of flavor at any age.
This week we’re talking Acid. In cooking, acid helps to cut through the flavors, bringing harmony to the dish and keeping everything in balance. When we’re talking about acid in health and beauty, we’re talking about keeping everything in balance for a clear and glowing complexion.
Guards Up
The skin is a complex organ. The skin’s microbiome needs to be nourished and kept in balance in order for our skin to look and feel soft, smooth and moisturized.
Different skin types have different needs and environmental factors can impact on the skin’s balance. A drier climate might result in your skin overproducing oil to compensate, while a humid environment might lead to more sweat and perspiration, meaning lighter products are more effective.
Maintaining your skin’s moisture barrier, and protecting your skin from lifestyle and environmental stressors is essential.
Moisturizing acids like hyaluronic acid help to attract and trap moisture to the skin’s surface. Maintaining a healthy moisture barrier is essential, no matter your skin type. Regular use of an active serum high in hyaluronic acid will help to maintain your skin’s moisture barrier, year round.
One of the great things about this rather unassuming acid, is that it’s suitable for all skin types. Typically, oily skin isn’t thought of as needing extra moisturizing help, but working to maintain your moisture barrier can help reduce the frequency of breakouts and non-hormonal acne.
When your moisture barrier is clean, but not stripped and moisturized but not oversaturated, your skin will be in a state of balance. This means less oil and sebum is likely to be produced, cutting down on the number of whitehead, black heads, pimples and more severe forms of acne.
Adding a Silk Pillowcase to your bedroom is a great way to supplement your skincare routine. Silks' naturally moisture resistant properties mean oil, sebum and skin or hair care products aren’t absorbed into the fabric. Traditional pillowcases, on the other hand, absorb oil, moisture and products from your skin and hair and transfer them back to your face as you move in the night. This transference, coupled with movement over rough or scratchy pillowcases can increase the rate of skin irritation and lead to more breakouts and acne.
If you’re more on the dry side and feel like you need to slather on moisturizer, hyaluronic acid is definitely the best acid for you! Dry skin will benefit from regular use of gentle cleansers that don’t strip the skin. Removing excess oil and dirt from the pores will lay the foundation for clear skin. Adding a hyaluronic acid serum after cleansing will help add an extra layer of moisture where you most need it.
Layering your active products can be a little tricky, luckily hyaluronic acid plays nice with most day time actives, so it’s easy to layer products for dry skin. Adding an extra layer of hydration under your moisturizer might seem a little excessive, but adding a thicker moisturizer over the active hyaluronic will help to seal the moisture in, creating a hydration barrier for your skin.
An occlusive treatment might be more suitable at night. During sleep, our bodies are hardly resting, they’re in active repair and reset mode, and so is your skin! Your body’s largest organ is hard at work repairing and rejuvenating tired skin cells. Why not give your skin an added boost with the Beauty Pillow and Skin+ Pillowcase?
Beauty Pillow’s patented design elevates and cradles the head, reducing the amount of nightly compression and boosting circulation. The Skin+ Pillowcase is infused with antioxidant carotenoids that repair and rejuvenate the skin while you sleep. Antioxidants are essential tools for skincare repair and rebuilding. These powerhouse molecules fight the effects of environmental and lifestyle stressor like free radicals that can decrease the skin's elasticity, increasing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.
Protection First
Moisture is essential for maintaining and repairing your skin’s barrier, but the best thing you can do for your skin is to protect it. Protecting your skin is all about daily practice. It doesn’t have to be daunting and it doesn’t have to be too complex or expensive.
Keeping your skin in its best possible shape at any age is all about sticking to the basics. Cleansing your skin each day, especially after wearing makeup is the first step to keeping your skin looking and feeling good at any age. A gentle cleanser that removes oil, makeup and dirt that builds up from pollution and city living is essential.
Adding a simple Vitamin C serum to your routine after cleansing and before moisturizing will help to reduce uneven skin tone and pigmentation, work to eliminate dark spots and boost your skin's look and feel. Vitamin C or ascorbic acid is a great acid to use in your daily skincare regimen.
A powerful antioxidant, Vitamin C helps to counter the effects of harmful environmental free radicals like harmful UV Rays on your skin. Free radicals are uneven molecules that, left unchecked, can develop into serious disease and illness. Free radicals damage our skin by degrading the cells and impacting on the amount of collagen we produce. Vitamin C counters this by protecting the skin from free radicals and boosting the skin's collagen production.
More collagen production means our skin looks and feels plumper and lines and wrinkles are less defined. For great skin at any age, try using a liposomal Vitamin C serum. This new, high-tech version of the old classic is more stable than traditional ascorbic acid, which can go bad quickly and must be stored in a cool dark place.
Liposomal Vitamin C can be used in the same way as traditional ascorbic acid, which is great news for your daily skincare practice. Layering Vitamin C can be tricky, so it’s best done under the guidance of a dermatologist who can recommend the best types of acids and active ingredients for your skin type and environment.
Usually though, hyaluronic acid and Vitamin C are great friends! While the hyaluronic acid goes to work moisturizing your skin, the Vitamin C works to counteract environmental strains. Your complexion will look and feel soft and bright, so you can put your best face forward.
More than the Face
Keeping everything in balance means more than just skincare for your face. Your whole body needs to be looked after so your skin can shine and feel soft and smooth. Adding a daily sunscreen routine to your face as the last step in your skincare routine is essential, but it shouldn’t just be your face.
We need Vitamin D for our bone and muscle function, for cognitive function and for hormone release and production. But, did you know we only need about 15 minutes of sunshine a day to get our fill?
Enjoying some sun before the sun is at its highest and strongest is the best way to get into your Vitamin D for the day. After getting your fill, make sure you slather up the sunscreen on any area of your face and body that comes into contact with those beams of sunlight. Sunscreen is your best anti-aging weapon.
Covering your face with sunscreen will help to prevent the development of hyperpigmentation and help reduce the impact of free radicals on the delicate facial skin. Adding sunscreen to your hands, arms, shoulders and neck will help to protect your skin from the harmful effects of UVA and UVB Rays and keep your skin looking in top shape, no matter your age.
Supporting your skin care routine with Beauty Pillow's range of support pillows and luxe silks is the best way to look and feel good at any time of the year!