Want smooth, healthy, glowing skin?
Let’s face it. From dealing with acne as a teenager to wrinkles and sun damage as an adult, maintaining healthy skin can be a lifelong challenge.
With so many different skin treatments available, it can downright confusing – not to mention frustrating – figuring out what to do.
So I decided to write this simple guide for how to get beautiful and clear skin.
Read on if you want to learn what you can do to achieve gorgeous, glowing skin.
What Causes Skin to Be Rough
First, it’s important to understand what can influence your skin’s health:
1. Age
As we age, our body creates less and less of the key elements that keep us looking younger. Collagen provides firmness and support. By the time we hit the age of 50, we’ve lost almost half of our collagen.
2. Genetics
Genetics play a large role in determining the outcome of many features of our body such as eye color, hair color, height, and personality. Your DNA can contribute to skin problems affecting tone and appearance, such as acne, freckles, and dry skin, as well as more harmful disorders such as skin cancer.
3. Sun Damage
One of the biggest causes of skin damage is too many UV rays. Sun damage can produce obvious signs of damage, such as wrinkles, blotches, and spots, but it can also produce more subtle problems such as skin cancer and precancerous growths.
4. Stress
Stress happens to everyone, but it can have harmful effects on your skin, hair, and nails when it is unchecked. Wrinkles, undereye bags, dry skin, acne breakouts, rashes and hives, flushing, and thinning hair can all be signs of too much stress.
5. Environment
Environmental factors such as toxins including alcohol and drug consumption, allergens, pollution, and climate extremes can induce early skin aging and other skin problems.
How to Get Smoother Skin
In this post, we’re going to cover the easy, simple things that everyone can – and should – do to promote healthy skin. We call these the Level 1 treatments.
We’ll cover other ways to get smoother skin in future posts.
The Journey to Beautiful Skin: The Easy Things
Let’s start with the easy things that everyone should be doing for their skin:
1. Improve your diet to get better skin
You know that junk food is bad for you, but did you know that it’s also bad for your skin? Refined carbs, alcohol, and processed foods all contribute to the destruction of good bacteria and create an imbalance in your microbiome, leading to inflammation that can show in your skin.
So stay away from chips, soda, candy, and other unhealthy foods. Instead, add more vitamins and oxidants to your diet. Vitamins A, C, and zinc all play an important role in skin health and repair, so add more fruits and vegetables to boost your skin’s defense against free radical damage.
2. Get enough sleep
Stress can wreck on your skin, especially when you’re not allowing your body to recover from the daily grind. People who are exhausted often appear with skin that is dry, sunken in, or sallow. So make your beauty sleep a priority and get at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night to rejuvenate your mind, body, and skin.
3. Get regular exercise
In addition to the other many benefits of exercise, exercise induces more blood to be pumped through the face, leading to more micronutrients and healing properties in the skin. Exercise also helps to reduce inflammation, which will help lead to smoother skin.
4. Commit to Cleansing and Exfoliation
Cleansing and gentle exfoliation can give the skin a more radiant, smoother appearance by removing dead skin cells from the surface and allowing fresher, brighter layers of skin to glow.
Double cleansing according to your type of skin can remove pore-clogging oils, dirt, and makeup without over-washing your skin and drying it out.
Exfoliation can be performed chemically using peel (such as glycolic, lactic, and salicylic acids) or mechnically using a scrub or a fine brush such as the Clarisonic device.
If you’re looking for an even deeper exfoliation, head to the plastic surgeon’s office to receive medical strength treatments such as chemical peels, microdermabrasion, and laser skin resurfacing.
5. Boost hydration inside and out
Hydrate your skin from the inside out. Drinking plenty of water will not only flush toxins from your body, but hydrate your cells to help them become plumper. Drinking at least eight to ten glasses of water per day are recommended.
Hydrating your skin from the outside in using moisturizers is also critical. Moisturizing is an important step to replenish lost volume, prevent dry patches, and balance your skin’s production of sebum. Moisturizing lotions and creams act as hydrators that plump up the skin cells and smoothen the texture of the skin by adding an oily layer to the surface. Adding active ingredients such as a retinoid, vitamin C, growth factor, or alpha hydroxy acids can make moisturizers even more effective.
When hydrating your skin using moisturizers, it’s important to take note of your skin type and sensitivity to pick the right ingredients. Choosing the wrong moisturizer can actually make your skin worse. Good bets are hydrating mainstays like hyaluronic acid, cermamides, and glycerin.
6. Avoid the sun
It’s hardly a secret that UV radiation transmitted through sunlight is bad for the skin. Chronic sun damage has the cumulative effect of destroying the collagen and elastin that are fibrous components of skin that keep it firm and supple. Sun exposure also increases the risk of skin cancer.
So make it a habit to use broad-spectrum sun protection every day. For daily use, a broad spectrum SPF 30 sunscreen can give adequate protection against both UVA and UVB rays. For extended time outdoors, use SPF 50 or higher.
7. Avoid smoke
Smoking is another habit that wreaks havoc on the skin over time. There are more than 4,000 known toxins in smoke, and they damage collage and elastin. Smoking also causes vasoconstriction, which inhibits blood flow and oxygen from reaching skin cells, also promoting aging. Smoker’s show premature aging such as increased wrinkles and sagging skin, as well as an increased risk of skin cancer.
Where to Learn More About Getting Beautiful Skin
Do you want to take your skin care to the next level?
Stay tuned for future posts in which we'll give you even more tips for achieving smoother, healthier skin, including stronger and more advanced treatments.
Would like to improve your skin? Maybe we can help. Click here to send us a message describing your problem.
