Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

I’m so excited. One of my favorite Christmas gifts I received was one of those single serve blenders that you use to make single servings of shakes or smoothies. They are a lot more convenient than making a smoothie in a large blender.

First, you don’t have that big blender to clean afterward, which is a nice relief because I hate dishes, and second, you get it all in one cup, so you don’t have to also use a separate cup and dirty that dish as well.  Nice!

But I digress on my love for the single serve blender.  Fruit smoothies are one of the healthiest, skin boosting cocktails you can make for yourself.

Fruits, such as darkly and brightly colored berries are chock full of antioxidants, which fight the free radicals in your system that kill healthy skin cells. A diet high in antioxidants is recommended if you want to achieve glowing, healthy, and ageless skin for as long as you possibly can, well into your advanced years.

Antioxidants are also a potent anti-acne ingredient because they help repair the skin damage that is done by acne, and they also help to clear acne from the inside.  Natural acne remedies such as Acnezine use the principle of heavy antioxidant use to fight acne.

Another ingredient that I love to add to my smoothies is ground flax meal.  Flax meal is high not only in digestive-healthy fiber, but it also is rich in another powerful skin healthy nutrient, omega 3 fatty acids.

Flax is a vegetarian source of omega 3 fatty acids.  These acids really boost the skin’s luminosity from the inside, and they help to regulate hormone and blood sugar activity, both of which are KEY to helping get clear skin.

Hormonal acne is a tricky thing to treat, and these fiber rich smoothies which also contain omega 3′s are very good at regulating the two things which impact it most, hormones and blood sugar. This is why diet is so important in maintaining clear skin – the food you eat quite literally is like a drug to regulate the various bodily processes that govern clear skin.

You can also add healthful powders to your smoothies which both help thicken the texture and make it more substantive and filling, and add a bevy of skin-clearing nutrients. There are a lot of good “greens” powders which basically powder strong antioxidants like broccoli, spirulina and chlorophyll, all excellent for detoxifying the tissues.

This is a continuation of our story (ok, rant) about the vital importance of wearing sunscreen on your face in the winter. Picking up where we left off…

Well that’s because reflection really does make it more concentrated and damaging.  My rule of thumb is just to make a it a habit to apply sunscreen – of course the noncomedogenic kind – every day, whether it’s winter or summer.

I may choose slightly different types between the seasons since I usually like a thicker and more emollient one in the winter dryness, but nonetheless, I ALWAYS have a lotion with sunscreen on as my base in the winter, just like I do in the summer.

It’s the only way to totally protect your face against UV damage, which ultimately damages the skin and leads to earlier photo aging. It also can aggravate acne by drying out the skin and forcing the skin to produce more sebum, which in turn leads to more breakouts.

It seems counter intuitive since sun lamps used to be used as a treatment for acne, and the sun’s rays can be therapeutic to a point, but burning the skin will almost always cause a breakout, or at the very least cause your skin to become temporarily more oily and difficult to handle.

I remember one time I got my face really burned in the winter. It was a situation where I was younger, I went skiing with my family and was totally unaware of the skin problems I’d have in the future (this was well before my acne-laden teen years, when I was blissfully ignorant of how your skin can ruin your life when you’re younger).

We were on a snowy mountain top, and I didn’t like to wear hats all that much and I also wasn’t wearing any sunscreen, nor was I wearing sunglasses or anything else that could have protected my face against the powerful UV rays that were bouncing off of the crisp white snow.

It was a bitterly cold day there on that mountain top, and very blustery. I remember getting the most painful combination of sun and wind burn ever on my face. My face was so dry and fried that next day that I felt like if I smiled my face would surely crack.

This is just one lesson as to the damage you can unknowingly do when you think your skin is safe from UV damage in the winter. Like I said, just make it a habit to NEVER go without a lotion with a sunscreen in it as your base and you’re be just fine.

Many of us tend to forget, even though we’ve been told about it before, that we still have to be vigilant in putting sunscreen on our exposed body parts (namely our face) in the winter, just like we do in the summer.

Somehow though, it never really sinks in and we may end up with a combination sun/wind burn on our faces if we go skiing or partake in some other similar outdoor sport in the winter.

This is especially true of the bright, sunny winter days when there is still a lot of snow on the ground.  We just had a day like that today where I live. It looked like it should be 50 degrees outside because it was so bright and sunny, and yet it was only 25 degrees outside.

Yup, the snow was as frosty and crunchy as ever, frozen into a veritable tundra or ice to walk on, yet, the sun still shown like it does in the tropics. I think we all have a mental barrier about that, and I’m not excluding myself.

I thought for sure before I set foot outside that it would be warm and balmy, sure enough it wasn’t.  What we really forget is that the bright sun and bright white snow is especially dangerous for us to burn our precious facial skin and put it through trauma and damage, on top of what damage it has suffered from our acne.

Now, add a high elevation, such as when you are skiing on top of a snowcapped mountain, and you’ve got levels of UV rays that are just as high as they would be on a sunny beach in California!

The truth is, most of us are bundled to a T when we are out in these types of elements, so the majority of our bodies are covered. However, one of the most important parts is often neglected – the face.

Your poor face takes a beating between the environmental polluters and toxins it comes into contact with every day since it is not covered with clothes, and the potentially damaging rays of the sun.

The white snow acts as a reflectant, intensifying  the UV rays and effectively bouncing them back up off the ground, and on to your face at an intense rate.

Remember the movie Something About Mary? Remember Magda, the leather faced old lady who used a reflective piece of foil like board to get her face tanner?

Since this is too long and is going to be broken into a two parter, be sure to bookmark us and come back for part 2 – and in the meantime, wear your sunscreen on your face all winter!

Getting a good night’s rest is a well known way to feel energized, help to avoid getting those cold and flu bugs that go around, and generally extending your longevity, since sleep is connected to how long people live.  However, I don’t think anyone really gave the old time saying “get your beauty rest” any real credence.

Now, it seems that a new study is actually proving that getting your eight hours of rest every night really does in fact make you look much more attractive and appealing to other people.  A study that was commissioned recently had volunteers take pictures who had respectively gotten too little sleep and the right amount of sleep.

Generally the “right amount” of sleep can vary slightly between individuals, just as other bodily preferences do, but most people thrive on eight hours per night. This eight hour mark has been around for a long time because it consistently is proven that this is how people function best and feel their best.

The volunteers who got eight hours of sleep the night before actually got much more positive feedback on the attractiveness of their pictures, while the sleep-less group got more negative feedback. Some of this type of feeback included how “healthy” they looked and overall how “attractive” they looked in these pictures.

The study pretty much overwhelmingly proved that other people prefer to look at people who have been well rested. Generally, one’s skin looks ten times better after a good night’s sleep than it does if they have been sleep deprived.

The skin relies on sleep just like any other bodily organ does. When it is deprived of this nightly rejuvenation, it takes on a slackened look, has less tone and good color, and generally may be more prone to breakouts as well.

Sleep should really be one of the hallmarks of a good complexion because of the power it holds over making your skin look better, but also because it makes your overall facial appearance more attractive.

Your eyes are wider and more alert, which is more attractive, your skin tone is better, and you have a very healthy and vibrant “aura” to your skin when you’re well rested and feeling good and energized.

Night time is really a time of rejuvenation for the skin. Your body temperature elevates at night, and forces much needed oxygenated blood to the face, which helps to repair it and soothe it, and to prepare it for the next day of being bombarded with environmental toxins.

Many people experience an odd facial flushing, almost like rosacea or acne rosacea, when they drink wine. Some people are a little more averse to red wine than white, but some experience flushed, hot skin from drinking either variety of wine.

People who actually have rosacea often have their condition aggravated when they drink alcohol of any kind, but especially when they drink wines.

It was thought at first that the reason for the facial flushing was because of the sulfites in most wines. Sulfites are really just a type of preservative that most wines have in them for a longer shelf life. You can buy wine without sulfites, but it is usually a little more expensive.

Now, they are showing in some research that the sulfites in wines may actually not be to blame for most of the cases of facial flushing from drinking wine.  Rather, they think it may be a tiny organism within the wine that is a biproduct of fermentation that may produce the allergic-type reaction that occurs in certain drinkers.

Many times the facial flushing that occurs with drinking wine is very noticeable, and therefore can cause some embarrassment and self consciousness from the drinker.  After all, facial flushing is not something anyone wants, hence the many natural treatments for rosacea these days.

Often times people of European descent with very light skin are more susceptible to wine facial flushing that those with darker complexions.  This is because you can see through to the multiple veins, capillaries and tiny blood vessels under the skin in people that are fairly complected, making it a much more noticeable problem on them.

If you experience facial flushing when drinking wine, but just enjoy wine too much to give it up, try a sulfite-free wine instead and see if that might be the cause for your flushing.  It’s worth a try, and it’s better for you since sulfites are a preservative and preservatives really aren’t good for your health.

Even thought some have proclaimed the “death of the supermodel”, there are still plenty of beautiful models who have made a name for themselves these days.

Heck, many former supermodels have now become moguls in their own right, with skin care and clothing lines, endorsements out the wazoo, and more money than they ever would have made strictly sticking to the runway.

Sure, there are now countless actresses who have replaced the former supermodels who graced magazines, and yes, many of those actresses have flawless skin, but there are also many models who, at any age, have have notably great skin, and those are the ones we will talk about today.

Many of the models that have flawless skin are actually Victoria’s Secret models. These models must not only have gorgeous facial skin, but they also have to take impeccable care of the skin all over their body.  God forbid they ever get a case of body acne, because their bodies are what made them famous!

Some of the Victoria’s Secret beauties that come to mind as far as great skin goes are Gisele Bundchen, Adriana Lima and former Angel Tyra Banks. Not only do they have bangin’ bodies, but their faces are a showcase in perfect complexions and great skin tone and bone structure.

No doubt they have stringent facial and body skin care routines, especially when their jobs rely so heavily on them baring much of their bodies and faces much of the time.  Victoria’s Secret even has a lot of body and skin care products available now for purchase, and of course they want to put their best faces forward to model the goods.

There are a ton of former quote unquote “supermodels” that had terrific complexions. The supermodels of yesteryear that still have maintained impeccable complexions even now that many of them are in their forties are a long list.

Christy Turlington for one. This olive skinned beauty strutted her stuff in the nineties and earned record money for walking the runway. Her face graced many covers of fashion and beauty magazines, and her skin was so amazing that it literally glowed with an earthen aura of health.

Linda Evangelista was more of a porcelain beauty. With her delicate facial structure and flawless porcelain skin, she also commanded a huge salary.

Elaine Erwin, now married to John Mellencamp, was another all American fresh faced beauty with a million dollar complexion.

We’ve created an all new page devoted to acne rosacea and rosacea, which is a close relative to acne since it has many of the same underlying issues affecting it, and even is often aggravated by the same things.

Rosacea is a really tough to treat problem, and often people use chemical-laden products which only aggravate the condition further. We of course recommend that you only use naturally plant based products, and we make those recommendations on our new natural acne rosacea treatment page.

Choosing the right skin care products is important when you have acne, but it’s really really important when you have rosacea or acne rosacea because usually this means you also have extremely sensitive skin that reacts to certain chemicals and irritants more extremely than other skin types.

Sure, there are some fairly effective treatments in the Doctor’s office these days, but why spend all that money and potentially be put on some sort of drug when you can treat it effectively at home for less cost and more naturally?

So, without further ado, please check out our natural acne rosacea treatment page and see what we have to say about tips, tricks and lifestyle and diet changes, as well as product recommendations to get calm, clear skin.

I wholeheartedly believe that a diet that is too high in sodium can make your skin look terrible. Why is that? Well, sodium is very deyhydrating, and it literally sucks the moisture right our of your skin. Also, seemingly opposite, it leads to water retention, which makes the skin look puffy, tired and overall “older”.

I’ve often noticed that after a heavy sodium meal, my skin tends to look pretty rough. It generally looks more puffy, not as youthful, and just generally older.  Have you ever noticed after eating a lot of salt how thirsty you are? That’s because sodium makes your body feel like it needs more fluids.

Excess sodium is bad for your heart because it increases blood pressure and leads to water retention. That’s why so many people who have dangerously high blood pressure or heart problems are put on diuretics.

Diuretics are drugs that make you pee a lot more, so that you pee out a lot of the excess sodium you’ve taken in, and so that the water retention never reaches critical mass.

Eating a low sodium diet tends to make your skin and face look more “defined” without looking dehydrated and sallow, as a diet high in salt tends to do.  Your coloring is usually a lot healthier.

One of the reasons that I recommend everyone take a high quality fish oil or omega 3 supplement, such as krill oil or flax oil, is because I believe it really helps your skin to retain moisture, from the inside.

This is why people who eat a lot of fish or get a lot of omega 3 fatty acids in their diet through other means such as raw almonds, walnuts, avocados and such, tend to have really beautiful, luminous skin.

Omega 3′s really lend themselves to a healthy, vibrant complexion.  It’s not accident that they also happen to be excellent for heart and circulatory health, just the opposite of salt. Funny that two things that are good and bad for the heart and also good and bad for the skin, but hey, that’s usually the way the body works.

In addition to internally hydrating the skin, I recommend that you really give your skin a good dose of heavy external moisturizer at night and in the morning. This way, it helps to keep the moisture in the skin and keep that protective barrier up, so that if you do happen to consume too much salt, at least you have some “insulation” against dehydration of the skin.

Trust me, hydration equals beautiful skin!

Hey readers!  Sorry for taking a little longer break than usual since my last posting, but I was kinda busy with holiday stuff, like just about everyone else on the planet. I’m also busy trying to clean out my body from all the toxic stuff I put into it over the holidays.  I ate way too much.

Not only that, the foods that I ate were  not good for my skin. When something is not good for your skin, it means it also is not good for your body.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, so to speak, when we are talking about overall healthful foods to eat and the foods that are also most conducive to a good complexion.

Foods that are popular around the holidays are very heavy on sugar, butter, salt and generally in bad kinds of fat.  Transfats are no good for the skin, but healthy fats with omega 3 fatty acids in them are wonderful for the skin.

Unfortunately healthy fats are not typical in your traditional holiday fare here in the US.  Here’s what I’m doing to cleanse my body out of all the bad fats, cheeses, salts, and sugary foods that I ate over the holiday, so my skin can breathe a sigh of relief.

I’m going to do a no meat, low fat and mostly vegan diet for at least a week. This type of diet usually helps my skin get back it’s healthy glow after I’ve abused it with bad food choices pretty quickly.

I also try to make sure I get tons of fresh fruits in as well. Fresh fruit and fruit smoothies are like a cocktail for a good complexion. They provide antioxidants, acids which are excellent for skin health, and special types of enzymes and fibers which lend themselves to a glowing complexion.

For me, I feel like not eating any animal fats for a week really gives my system a breather. It helps cleanse out my digestive system and keep things moving, so to speak. This way, it can move out the toxins that I ate for a month in a row.

I also like to eat a lot of a food called quinoa.  Quinoa is a grain which is an excellent source of fiber and also happens to have a lot of skin-healthy vitamins in it.  It goes well with any vegetarian dish too.

I actually look forward to eating this way. It feels good to get my system back on track only eating a lot of veggies and fruits.