We’re all familiar with the notorious “bad hair day”. What we are also pretty familiar with but don’t seem to take much note of is the just plain “bad mirror day”. You know the ones. You wake up and you have several sets of wrinkles that weren’t there yesterday and your skin, which has taken on a pasty or blotchy look just hangs there. Of course, the older you get the worse shockers bad mirror days can be, but the young experience their own version of these things. It’s just as traumatic to be 20 and wake up looking 35 as it is to be 55 and wake up looking 65 (or worse).
If you spent the night before slamming down daquaris or margaritas, the bad morning might not be such a surprise. We all know if we get a bit toasted, that is what our face is going to look like in the morning. Sometimes, though, why we look so awful some mornings just isn’t instantly apparent to us. We may wonder for a few minutes, do some sort of fix or make an attempt to hide the devastation, but in the long run how far do we go in examining why we look so much worse some days than on others?
The truth is that if you are experiencing bad mirror days fairly frequently, it is something you should be taking note of very closely. Your skin is an organ and when it is looking bad, it’s not going to be functioning all that well, either. If your skin is doing poorly, many other organs that you can’t see may be suffering just as badly. The bad mirror day is not something to just blow off and ignore.
When you find yourself frequently waking up badly, you need to start taking notes. There are many reasons that you might be looking worse than usual, or that it is becoming more usual to look pretty bad when you wake up. It’s time to start making a check list for yourself to get to the bottom of the situation. You will want to examine all the things that you can think of that might have a negative effect on your skin so you can see if there is some pattern so you can avoid irritants before the damage becomes permanent.
The first thing to ask yourself is if you drank enough water the day before. Dehydration will take an almost immediate toll on the body. Fortunately this one is easy to fix if you do it right away and don’t allow yourself to repeat the dehydration too often. If your checklist includes a lack of liquids as a usual item, start right there and make sure that you can write it off your list in the future. That may be all it takes to correct the bad mornings. If not, you need to look further.
Lack of sleep is another reason for looking run down that is pretty easy to figure out. Not getting enough sleep once in a while is pretty normal. If you are experiencing lack of sleep too often though, you are putting your whole body in jeopardy. You might need to make some life adjustments to ensure you are able to sleep a bit longer each night. Perhaps you have a job that is too demanding for you and need to find a different company to work for that is not hazardously demanding. Maybe you need to hire someone to take care of a few odds and ends for you that keep you running just a little longer than is healthy. Perhaps your spouse needs to be made to understand that you are having too many demands on your time and you need to have more help or to be left alone to sleep longer. Whatever adjustments would aid you in getting the extra sleep you need should be made. Lack of sleep can do more than make you look like a zombie. It can be deadly.
What did you eat the day before? Did you eat a lot of processed foods or drink soda pop? Write down everything you can remember. You might find a pattern in what you eat and how you look. Processed foods and beverages contain a myriad chemical additives and all forms of sugar and sugar substitutes. By writing down what foods you ate each time you wake up less than prime you may be able to narrow down exactly which foods you are having the worst reactions to and can get them out of your diet before they destroy your whole body’s health. The more of these chemicals and sugars you can cut out of your diet, the more generally healthy you will be and the better your skin will look.
Was your room too hot or too cold the night before your mirror screams at you? If your checklist shows that your room was either hotter or colder than normal when you wake up looking bad, you have an easy solution on hand. A room that is too hot can make eyes puffy and lined. A room that is too cold can just upset good sleep.
Are you exposing yourself to forms of pollution some days that you aren’t always exposed to? When you wake up looking bad, take a washcloth and pour some rubbing alcohol on it and wipe your face. If you are wiping off blackish dirt, think about where you were the day before. If you can avoid going somewhere that always results in black film on your skin, avoid going there any more often than you need to. If you have to go there, make sure to wear a non-toxic makeup foundation when you go. It’s much better to have toxic waste sitting on your makeup than absorbing into your body through your skin. Be sure to wash your makeup off thoroughly when you get home. If you remove brownish residue when you wipe your face, you aren’t getting your makeup off well enough before you go to bed and need to improve your cleansing routine. Even the best non-toxic makeup will still clog pores and keep your cells from breathing freely at night. After you wipe your skin clean with the alcohol, be sure and moisturize with a non-toxic moisturizer. Alcohol is a great cleanser, but it will dry your skin if you don’t moisturize after you clean with it.
Are you getting enough aerobic exercise? Your skin may suffer if you are not. Conversely, if you are exercising daily or most days and your skin is breaking out or otherwise looking bad, your body might be expelling toxins through your skin. Some of the previous points on the checklist will reveal if you are taking in too many chemical toxins. If you can’t correct the problem with better hydration and nutrition, you may have something more serious going on that you need to look into.
Illness can also show up on your skin and if all other points of your checklist don’t show up a problem and you are cleansing your skin thoroughly each night, you might need professional help to find out if you have a deficiency, imbalance, or even an illness you are not aware of in your body that you need to address.
No matter what you do, you will never be able to completely avoid an occasional bad mirror day. By keeping track of your activities though, you can reduce them to a minimum. . A little bit of applied vanity can go a long way in maintaining your body’s optimal health. It won’t hurt your self esteem to look better most days, either.
©2010: Sally Taylor
I was asked a question recently about whether wrinkles can be scrubbed off of the skin and thought it was a good question to answer online. The question was whether wrinkles can be scrubbed off over time.
It may seem that you can scrub wrinkles away to an extent. After washing our wrinkles don’t appear to be so deep. For a few hours they may not be as noticeable. The water used when we wash will temporarily hydrate and plump skin so wrinkles may appear to have been scrubbed away. Another reason wrinkles may appear lighter after a good washing is that gentle scrubbing can help exfoliate dead skin cells which will make wrinkles appear deeper and more pronounced than they may actually be.
All in all, however, the only way a good scrubbing can actually erase wrinkles is if you take the first layer of skin right off. It is not advisable to do so. Chemical peels are sometimes used in this manor to take the top eroded layer of skin off. It will take a few days for the skin to heal and accidents can happen. Nobody should EVER try this process on their own. Even trained professionals run into problems now and then.
The problem with the chemical peel is that it does not get to the root of the problem of wrinkling so it won’t be long before your skin looks just the same as it did before the peel.
If your skin is wrinkling, you can make it look a bit better externally by gently scrubs followed by moisturizers. You can also use lightly acidic face masks such as the one in my guide Secrets of Beautiful Skin and Hair Revealed. When used on a regular basis an acidic skin mask will keep pores clear and keep skin exfoliated properly. Use a mask that you need to wash off rather than a peel off mask as there is more drawing power in the wash off masks to keep your pores clear.
At the depth of the issue, however, if you want fewer wrinkles, you have to tend to those from where they originate – inside your body. Your skin is an organ and no amount of anything you can slap on it from the outside is going to keep it young and supple. While you must work on your skin from the outside, you must give this organ what it needs internally to stay healthy, too.
If you do not drink enough water, your skin will become dry and no amount of lotions or oils will be able to fix dehydrated skin – you must drink dehydration away. Your skin also needs the proper nutrients to function correctly and if it isn’t getting what it needs, the wrinkles are going to set in no matter what you do on the outside.
Only proper internal maintenance accompanied by a good external care system will fix damaged skin or prevent problems in the first place.
It is commonly held to be true that soap and water should never be used on the face or neck. This myth was started, and effectively so, by skin product manufacturers. It is not only nothing more than myth, it can also be harmful to your skin to believe it.
Skin care product manufacturers make a lot of money selling you cold creams and “special” cleansers deemed to be good for your skin. They have gone through much expense to make women believe that soap will destroy your skin in order to get you to opt out of buying that bar of soap and buying their products instead. If you take a look at what they are selling, however, you will find that what you are buying is a lot of problems for your skin down the road that you will need more products to correct. Unfortunately, as your spending escalates, your problems do as well.
Cold creams are an unfortunate purchase for anyone. Not only do many of these contain toxins, which in themselves can ruin skin integrity, they also are a terrific way to clog pores and choke skin cells, and some even provide excellent breeding grounds for bacteria and fungus to grow. To reverse pore clogging and remove film you need more products to effectively get the creams off of your skin and out of your pores. While you can remove the creams with some astringents, toxins from the creams will absorb into your cells and tissues where they will not be so easily removed. If the cream is actually toxin free they will not remove toxins from your skin completely as the cream itself will leave a film residue on your skin. Astringents can be purchased to remove the creams. These actually will do nothing more than what manufacturers say you should avoid using soap for in the first place. Now you not only have absorbed any toxins the creams may contain, you have also spent quite a bit more than you needed to. It is a vicious and expensive cycle.
Cleansers which work more like soap, such as body washes, are actually not any better than soap and may also contain harsh chemicals or toxins. Those without toxins are not much different than soaps without toxins – just more expensive. If you have an endless supply of cash that might not bother you. As for me, I’d rather have the extra money to spend on other wants rather than wash it down my bathroom drain. The amount I can save buying an inexpensive bar of non-toxic soap instead of a non-toxic body wash will buy me a month’s supply of a supplement that will work to rebuild my collagen to keep my skin integrity solid and beautiful.
The truth is soap is made to clean your skin. That is what it does. It was not meant to moisturize skin. That is why you need to use a moisturizer after you wash your skin. You may have been warned that scrubbing with a wash cloth will pull your skin and cause it to wrinkle. Nonsense. If your skin integrity is good it can take a bit of scrubbing. If your skin is stretching from a bit of scrubbing you need to pay attention to your skin integrity rather than buy more cleansing products. Scrubbing helps ex-foliate and remove debris from the surface of pores so it is actually good for your skin to scrub a bit. If you scrub too hard, of course, you can cause raw patches, but you don’t need to scrub hard if you are keeping up with proper daily and weekly skin care.
Some soaps are harsher than others and you will want to use soaps that do not irritate your skin. Make sure to read the ingredients of the soaps you purchase to make sure you are not using soaps with toxic ingredients. Remember that high prices do not necessarily mean a safer product. Some soaps also can leave a bit of a film on your skin. Soap film can be easily removed with just a splash water with vinegar or salt mixed into it, so soap films are not as big of a problem as manufacturers would like you to believe. Soap film is more easily washed away than many residues from cosmetic products.
Once you dry your face and neck be sure to use a moisturizer. You would need the moisturizers if you used cold creams which always require astringents to remove properly as well so you are not losing ground. Soap is not meant to moisturize, so if you are buying soaps that promise to do that you are wasting your time. As stated, some soaps are milder than others, but soap is on your skin for just a moment and any moisturizers in soap would be washed off before they have time to penetrate. A good moisturizer is one that is water soluble and absorbs quickly. If you have dry skin, you might also want some emollient oils in your moisturizer. If your skin is oily, make sure you are using just plain moisturizers. As with soaps, make sure you buy a moisturizer with no toxins. Health food stores will have many – but do not assume just because you found it in a health food store it is toxin free. Check the ingredients and if you have questions, leave it on the shelf.
Never – never – never use ANY product that is anti-bacterial. Bacteria can be washed away effectively with soaps, which is how a soap works against bacteria in the first place. If you are worried about bacterias, rinse with vinegar or salt water which both effectively work against bacteria and fungus without exposing you to poison, which is what “anti-bacterial” agents are.
When planning what to use to cleanse your skin with – remember what your goal is. It is to clean your skin. That is what soap does. Do not confuse the goal of cleaning with the goal of moisturizing, fighting wrinkles, or clearing acne. There are ways to do all of the things you need for your skin using natural items kept in most households. You can find out all of these methods in Secrets of Beautiful Skin and Hair Revealed.
2007-2008 © Sals Secrets Revealed
Your skin is bombarded by toxins every day. Toxins from the air and elements that come in contact with your skin soak into your pores where they clog your body’s ability to breath naturally. Some toxins can be readily absorbed by the cells where they can reap excessive amounts of damage. Removing these toxins is of extreme importance to not only your appearance, but your overall health as well. While washing is necessary to get rid of these toxins, normal bathing isn’t always enough to completely clean the skin.
Most water now contains a host of toxins itself. While you may wash away dirty toxins you picked up in a city with highly polluted air, you will sometimes just be exchanging these air pollution toxins for water pollution toxins. When you bath or shower, your body absorbs the water and any toxins that are in that water. These toxins will range depending on the quality of your water system but can include high poisons such as fluoride and chlorine which the government dumps indiscriminately into our water supply. Many bacterias and fungi are present in water supplies as are toxins from electricity production, industry, warfare, pesticides, and even a host of pharmaceutical drugs!
Needless to say, a normal bath doesn’t go far to counteract the effects of a day’s coating of toxins, but rather just changes some of them for others. To get a bath that is truly a cleaning experience, you might have to buy a filter for your home. There are many filters on the market that make some nice sounding claims, but to get the real poisons out of your water you need a filter that works by reverse osmosis. These filters reverse the process by which many of these toxins are dissolved into the water. That they are actually dissolved in the water is why just a filter won’t remove them. Reverse osmosis will remove 99% of the harmful elements from your water supply.
If you cannot immediately afford a reverse osmosis filter, you can buy gallons of either water cleaned by reverse osmosis or distilled water. If you like deep luxurious baths, buying gallons of water might prove a bit expensive, but it is a well placed investment in both the appearance of your skin and your overall health. Once you have enough pure water for a detox bath, you will want to, and need to, boil some of the water to bring the bath to the temperature you desire. Boiling will not only heat water, it creates a process which allows water to crystallize as pure healthy water is supposed to do. Your DNA receptors will thank you heartily for exposing your skin to such wonderful water.
Add a teaspoon or two of ginger and a quarter cup of baking soda to your bath water. The ginger will open your pores and clean them. The baking soda will also give a cleaning boost to clogged pores and abused skin. If you suffer from rashes or other skin ailments a quarter cup of oatmeal flour is a soothing remedy for skin aggravations. Putting a bag each of chamomile and black or green tea in some of the water you are boiling and adding to bath water also provides soothing remedy for skin ailments and a boost for detoxifying the surface of your body.
You will not feel like the same person after one of these truly detoxifying baths. The more often you can provide yourself with pure water detox baths, the more you will see a change in your general appearance. This change will also be a signal that you are improving your total body health. After all, the first element in attractive beauty is healthy skin.
2007-2008 © Sals Secrets Revealed
Dehydration is one powerful skin wrinkler. People that understand how aged that dehydrated skin looks often take recourse by drinking at least 8 glasses of water per day. It is a shame they don’t take as much thought in checking to make sure the water they drink is not fluoridated. Even small amounts of industrial (sodium, silica) fluoride will quickly ruin every effort a person makes to keep their skin looking young and smooth.
While low levels of natural (calcium, magnesium) fluoride can be ingested with no real notice, industrial (sodium, silica) fluoride is what is being dumped into our water. This form of fluoride, even in very small concentrations, is poisonous and damages your body’s collagen system. Collagen is a protein that is produced in specified cells. Some cells produce collagen which forms fibers that give structural support to the skin, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. Some cells will produce collagen that is mineralized and, along with calcium, builds bone and tooth enamel. Fluoride in amounts as minute as 1 part per million disrupts the sythesis of collagen and induces mutation. The cell will then try to compensate by producing more collagen, but because the collagen is imperfect it does not function as intended.
As the body loses it’s ability to control the production of collagen, it also loses the ability to determine which collagen should be mineralized and which shouldn’t. This loss will result in the mineralization of skin, muscle, and other tissues that should be fibrous. Wrinkles are the result. Bone and tooth collagen which should be mineralized often is not and so subsequent bone and tooth malformation and loss sets in as well.
It is highly important, not only to youthful health, but to the maintenance a youthful appearance to avoid ingesting fluoride. In light of current scientific findings about fluoride much acitivism is now going on attempting to halt the fluoridation of water. While many towns and cities are ceasing the practice, there are still many more which are fluoridating water than not. Your local water provider will tell you the amount of fluoride they are dumping into your tap water. Some well water will also contain fluoride from natural rock sources. Have your water tested even if you are not using city water sources. It takes only 1 part per million to cause damage. If your water contains a lesser amount, do not be fooled into thinking that it is safe.
There are many other sources of fluoride in our diets other than water. Because the effects are bio-cumalative, it is important to restrict the amount of fluoride you are getting from all sources. Sources that contribute in major ways to your fluoride intake include toothpaste, teas (with instant and decaffeinated teas being extremely high), mechanically boned chicken, soda pop, ready to drink fruit juices, wine, beer, Teflon pans, salt (in some countries), processed cereals, and grains. Fluoride pesticides are also presently widely used and it is important to wash your fruits, vegetables, and grains before eating them.
If you have fluoride in your water, you need to get special filters to get rid of it. Not all filters will get rid of fluoride. When you buy a filter, make sure it specifically removes fluoride. Reverse osmosis systems are the best for fluoride removal, and a whole house system should be considered. Remember that you bathe in your water too, and skin is absorbant. Eat as naturally as possible, but wash your vegetables and fruits well before eating them. Avoid processed foods that contain high levels of fluoride. Remember that fluoride will accumilate over time and the best way to control a dangerous build up is to not ingest it in the first place.
While you can’t keep fluoride out of your diet completely, if you value radiant, youthful skin, and your whole body health as well, it is vitally important that you limit your fluoride exposure as much as possible. With DOW Chemicals putting increasing pressure on the EPA and FDA to allow increased intensity in fluoride pesticides you may even consider joining a local or online fluoride activitist group to help in the fight against fluoridated water and pesticides.
By keeping control of the amount of fluoride you ingest, you will find your efforts to keep your skin supple and smooth will become much, much easier and your overall health will improve greatly.
2007-2008 © Sals Secrets Revealed
The 15 billion dollars the beauty industry reaps each year serves as a loud testimony that people have a definite idea of what beauty is all about. These ideas are usually stoked by media, however, and don’t really have much to do with reality. Imagine the horror of spending thousands to straighten your nose or round your chin just to find the only thing you have achieved is the ability to blend invisibly into a crowd. Before you decide to take any major steps to change your looks surgically there are a few things about beauty you really need to consider.
Take your blinders off when looking at a movie star or model. Look at what is really there and not what you want to see. For example, check out how far apart Cheryl Tiegs eyes are or take a close look at Kirsten Dunst’s not so quite perfectly straight teeth. If you need drastic example of beauty that shouldn’t be, take a close look at Barbara Streisand. Most of Barbara’s facial features could be listed as beauty flaws yet she is nothing less than stunning. Somehow Ms. Streisand learned to pull all of these imperfections together into one memorable and wonderful face.
Imperfect features have never stopped a confident person from being beautiful. Flaws give a person individuality. Individuality is what gets you noticed. How many times have you seen someone with no flaws? With the prevalence of plastic surgery you may have seen quite a few. The key is that you might just not have noticed them.
It is the beauty industry’s goal to make you feel inferior for having these flaws rather than seeing them as individualistic and interesting. Before you are seduced into having the bump in your nose removed or your pointed chin rounded, remember that it may be these very features that stop a stranger’s eyes at your face when they are scanning a room full of people. It may be the feature that makes you memorable as well as noticeable. Do you really want to tamper with that?
There are a few things that all beautiful people have in common that you can achieve without the necessity of resorting to “the knife”. A consultation with a makeup artist is inexpensive compared to a plastic surgeon. They can show you how to highlight your features in a way that you will be able not only to keep your individual features, but actually use them to your advantage. By using make up tricks you can also change your looks as styles change. Do remember that styles change and if you have a feature changed to something that is more stylish today, you might find yourself out dated very shortly.
Health is also a trait that you will find that beautiful people have in common no matter what the current fad in beauty is. There is something extremely sexy about the radiant glow of health. Learn how you can achieve healthy naturally radiant skin. Once you achieve healthy skin, half of your battle for excellence is already won. Even makeup can’t hide ill health. It doesn’t hide great health either. Good health will make you feel as much better as you look, too.
A last item you might take notice of is the shine in the eyes of the people you consider beautiful. People with true beauty radiate confidence, a keen lust for life, and a drive for success no matter what their beauty flaws are. Frustration, boredom, and lack of confidence show and will work against the most perfect of features. If you don’t feel good about life or yourself, that nose job isn’t going to make you beautiful. It will just change your nose.
2007-2008 © Sals Secrets Revealed
A lot of you just aren’t going to like the most important beauty secret. Of course, it’s your choice whether to heed nature or not. The fact is though, unless you just want to be considered just another case of no competition, you need to let the idea sink in deep that there are certain factors of beauty that are completely indispensable if you are going to have radiantly beautiful skin, hair, or body tone.
You can run to plastic surgeons and have your face lifted until your feet don’t touch the floor, suck enough fat out of your thighs to roast a whole pig in, or tuck that tummy until it hits your backbone. You can use every form of skin mask and wrinkle cream on the market. If you don’t have a handle on the most important aspect of beauty and health control, anything you do will just fall right back apart again. Are you one of those who spent five or ten grand this year at a plastic surgeon or esthetician to look awesome? Did the work come with a life time guarantee? Of course, it didn’t. In that you can find your first clue.
The deep dirty truth about beautiful skin is that it can not be fully healthy unless all the components of the skin system are healthy. That means capillaries, connective tissue, muscle, skin layers, and the skin cells themselves. Of course, this means the right nutrients, that’s a given. But all the vitamins in the world aren’t going to do you much good without the most essential element. That element is aerobic exercise. Now that you want to shoot me where I stand, I will explain that statement.
Your skin, your largest organ, is an intricate system with many elements working to support it. If any of these elements break down, your skin will lose its integrity. If the elements under the skin, muscle and connective tissue, break down your skin will wrinkle and sag. If the capillaries fail, or blood cells can’t get nutrients to the skin cells, they will starve or suffocate. When blood cell don’t remove wastes quickly and efficiently cells become diseased. You can not correct one of these elements and expect to maintain beauty. They must all be functioning correctly. That is where aerobic exercise comes in.
In today’s world we are continually bombarded with toxins. These toxins are more or less waste material. When you carry enough waste material your body can become toxic itself and cause you disease and illness. Aerobic exercise allows blood to pump through more efficiently to places where toxins are accumulating and carry them out of your system through the lungs or kidneys away from the cells where they cause disease.
Through aerobic exercise the blood cells can also more quickly deliver the most important nutrient to your cells. Oxygen. If you do not agree that oxygen is the body’s most important nutrient, try to hold your breath for about five minutes. You will notice the effects long before you pass out, which will be only a few minutes. You can live days without water, and weeks without food, but you won’t survive more than a few minutes without oxygen. Needless to say, skin cells that aren’t well oxygenated don’t stand a chance of looking healthy and vibrant.
To get all of this oxygen to your skin cells your blood needs a good clean highway. That means your capillaries have to be kept in top working order, too. By exercising religiously, these highways are kept elastic and nutritious oxygen can be pumped to those cells and any damaging toxins or proteins that are threatening to them can be pumped away before it can become a problem.
Muscles and connective tissues, too, need to be kept elastic and well toned if they are to support the skin organ which covers them. When the muscles and connective tissues lose tone, the skin is allowed to sag and wrinkle. Not only is wrinkling a poor beauty statement, it is a very strong indication of the shape of the interior portions of your body as well.
There is no way to replace what aerobic exercise will do for your skin. There are other elements your skin needs as well, but if it is not getting the waste removal and oxygenation that aerobic exercise provides, there is only so much else you can do for it. So put away all of your cremes, lotions, and plastic surgeons phone numbers and go take a walk, ride a bike, or crank up the radio and dance. You might find some incredible ways to get that exercise that will cause you to smile and add just a bit more radiance to that wonderful complexion.
2007-2008 © Sals Secrets Revealed
