Organic skincare is the most natural and friendly regime.

If you have the time and inclination, you can create your own organic skincare products and store them in your fridge.

If you take that route, then you’ll simply need to head to your favourite health food store and buy some key ingredients and start mixing. Organic skincare is really an art that, once perfected, can give wonderful results. You must keep in mind that (although worthwhile) organic food products are fairly expensive and they have a short shelf life.

If you don’t have time to mix your own skincare products, but you still want to use organic skincare products or integrate a few lines in your current anti-aging routine, you might simply want to head to your natural health food store and instead of hitting the fruit and veggie section, you might want to hit the skincare and body care section.

A number of spas in Canada are now carrying organic base anti-aging products.

I’ve found a number of really great lines. Stay tuned for more…

Simply put, natural skincare is caring for your skin in a natural and chemical-free way. Natural skincare devotees believe in enabling the skin to take care of itself without any assistance from synthetic materials/chemicals.

Natural skincare is about integrating good and holistic habits in the way you lead your day-to-day life. Natural skincare devotees don’t follow the latest trends or buy the newest product. They usually adopt an overall way of life that impacts the health of their skin.

Natural skincare is a lifestyle choice. I’ve managed to integrate a great number of the core doctrines of this movement, but I’m not able, ready or willing to do a 360° in the way I live my life or in the skincare and anti-aging products I buy. That said, there are some really easy things that you could do if you were considering adopting or integrating some of the core values of the natural skincare movement.

Some basic steps:

1. The first and foremost natural skincare step is to drink a lot of water! Water helps to flush out the toxins from the body, in a natural way. Drinking enough water everyday has a huge impact on the good health of your skin (and all of your other organs). The other important thing to remember about water is that it’s an excellent way to keep moisture in your skin. Moisture will become your best ally in aging well.

2. Regular exercise is the next thing on the cards. Exercise increases the flow of blood that helps in getting rid of body toxins and keeping you healthy (sweat is good). Exercise also helps in beating stress, which is the worst enemy of good health and one of the best culprits to premature aging.

3. Healthy food and eating habits are also recommended for natural skincare. Your diet should be a healthy mix of nutrient-providing foods. Raw fruits and vegetables are known to provide essential nutrients to your body and help to get rid of body toxins.

4. Avoiding excessive exposure to sun and protecting your skin from harmful rays from the sun are two other natural skincare strategies. I never leave home without my SPF 30 moisturizing lotion. I even made sure to choose a foundation that contains SPF 15.

5. Aloe vera helps rebuild the skin and daily application of aloe vera gel is one of my best natural skincare secrets. As I’ve said, aloe vera is a Latin beauty secret and thanks to a friend of mine who suggested I use it some 15 years ago, I’m a devotee of this product.

Here’s what I’m still struggling with:

1. A good sleep is also instrumental in maintaining good health and in beating stress. As a natural skincare measure, a good sleep delays the slacking of skin. I don’t know about you, but if I’ve only had five hours of sleep in my body, I not only look terrible, but I’m also incredibly on edge. I’m like most people who are overbooked and who have resorted to cutting back on their sleep to make everything in their life fit. That said, the times I do get seven-and-a-half hours of sleep I wake up feeling amazing and my skin usually looks radiant. I just wish I could sleep seven-and-a-half hours every night.

2. Beating stress is another natural skincare therapy. Stress causes overall damage to body and health. I’m still on a journey to beating stress. Actually, excessive stress is the main reason why I started practicing meditation. Some people have adopted yoga as a way of beating stress, but in my case yoga increased my stress level because while holding on to certain positions my mind would wonder and think about ALL the things I still had not done or had to do. In my case, meditation shuts down my conscious mind and allows me to de-stress.

The opinions on the best “how-to” methods for basic personal skincare differ from person to person; and in Canada from culture to culture. Some people believe that going to a spa every other week is personal skincare. Others believe that personal skincare is just a matter of applying some cream or lotion on your skin, every now and then. Then there are people who think that basic personal skincare is an event that happens once a month or once a year. Others believe that weekly microdermabrasion is the way to go. Basic personal skincare is not that complicated and neither does it have to be that expensive (considering how beneficial it is). Basic personal skincare is all about following a routine (and sticking to it).

Here are the most basic steps to proper personal skincare:

Cleanse: You should always use soap-free cleansers – I’m always shocked when aestheticians tell me how many of their clients still use soap and water to cleanse their face and then wonder why 20 years later they have deep wrinkles. Soap will dehydrate your skin with time even if you have extremely oily skin. You should also use warm water for cleansing (hot and cold water, both, cause damage to your skin).

Exfoliate: Removing dead skin cells is important in order to increase the effectiveness of all basic and anti-aging skincare products. Exfoliate two to four times per week for oily/normal skin and one to two times per week for dry/sensitive skin. You might need to exfoliate more often in hot and humid weather.

Moisturize: This is one of the most important steps in personal skincare. Even people with oily skin need moisturizers. Moisturizers not only seal the moisture in your own skin cells, but they also attract moisture from the air whenever your skin needs it.

Protect: There is no excuse for not wearing sunscreen since so many moisturizers and foundations come in SPF 15 and better yet SPF 30 formulations. You should use sunscreen everyday – rain or shine.

“The packaging is as important as the product itself.” This premise is something that most of the manufacturing companies understand very well. The same holds true for you too. Your outer-self, i.e. your skin, is as important as your inner-self. I’m a firm believer that beauty comes (first and foremost) from the inside-out, but if anyone tells you that the condition and health of their skin is not important to them, then you know they are lying. Given the choice, we’d all opt for healthy looking skin, right?

A lot of people do realize the importance of skincare. This might be one reason why there are so many skincare products on the Canadian market and most of the skincare products seem to sell very well (billions of dollars every single year!). We generally tend to associate skincare to good looks. However, there is more to it than just that. There are multiple benefits associated with healthy and glowing skin.

First of all, it has a good effect on your self-esteem (if you’ve ever had acne or facial scar, then you know what I mean). It makes you feel fresh and energetic. Even though confidence starts from the inside-out, a healthy skin plays an important part in building self-esteem. Not to mention that this flow of positive energy exuding from your internal and external confidence is experienced by people around you and you will quickly discover how they respond positively to your overall radiance.

Seriously, healthy skin can be instrumental in changing the way you feel about yourself and what you project.

Good skincare is not that difficult and integrating a good skincare routine into your day-to-day life and sticking with it will do wonders in helping you aging as youthfully as possible.

Who knew there was so much terminology to understand before buying anti-aging products or before considering anti-aging treatments? If you’re looking for a few basic definitions, you might want to take a look at my compilation of Anti-Aging and Skincare Glossary.

Acne as a teenager was one of the most unpleasant memories I have of those years. Not only did I suffer from severe acne as early as the age of 12, but my dermatologist put me on a strict diet where I was not allowed to eat any chocolate, pop, chips and fried food. I still remember some of the topical treatments that seemed to increase the sebum production in my skin once I’d wash them off. My body gave me a decade of respite from acne in my twenties just to kick back into full swing in my early thirties. Acne as an adult is not much more pleasant than when I was a teenager, but now I have to deal with being concerned that aggressive treatments might leave permanent scars (because as I age, my skin repairs itself with a little less ease) and severe skin dehydration (increased propensity for premature wrinkles). Adult acne is the thorn in my side (don’t even get me started on the permanent scarring). If you also suffer from adult acne and if you’re looking to understand some basic facts, you might want to check out my compilation of acne terms: Anti-Aging and Skincare Glossary.

If you knew which were the things that could accelerate the rate at which you age, would you act upon that new found knowledge or would you brush it off and not care?

You don’t have to decide right this minute, but you might be interested in the four most significant aging culprits:

1) Facial Exercises: Facial exercises will actually do you more harm than good. In fact, facial exercises mean repetitive movements and repetitive facial movements actually lead to fine lines and wrinkles. If you’ve been sold in believing they’ll maintain your looks (like I was), you need to stop as soon as possible, because you’re actually getting the reverse effects. As our skin ages and loses its elasticity, the skin is incapable of bouncing back to its line-free state. Therefore, fine lines and wrinkles become permanently engraved on the face. Each time you use a facial muscle to make a facial expression, you create lines and wrinkles. Normal everyday expressions are a good thing, but deliberately forcing facial movements is just asking for trouble. I was guilty as charged when it came to nightly facial exercises, but quickly stopped when a dermatologist let out the ugly little secret on forced facial movement.

2) Smoking: Cigarette smoking is an enemy to anti-aging skin prevention. Smoking causes biochemical changes in your bodies that seriously accelerate aging. Smokers often wear the signs of these chemical changes on their face. Most long time smokers have an unhealthy yellowish coloring to their complexion and they develop deeply wrinkled, leathery skin. It has been reported that smokers as young as 20 battle with premature wrinkles. Smoking is a very complex subject because of nicotine addiction. If you are a smoker there are many anti-aging treatments that can control the rate at which you wear the signs of aging. I’ve located a number of experts who will help me bring this information to you with time. Truth be told, I did smoke in my late teens and early 20s, but I did stop when told of this fact.

3) Sleeping Positions: Resting your face on the pillow in the same way every night for years leads to wrinkles (I’m so guilty of sleeping on my side and waking up on my stomach with my head resting on the side). Sleep lines may start as fine lines, but after years of sleeping in the same position, they quickly become wrinkles and eventually become permanently engraved on the surface. If you’re a woman who sleeps on her side, you are more likely to see lines appear on your chin and cheeks. If you’re a man, you’ll notice these lines on your forehead since men often sleep with their face pressed face down on the pillow. If you sleep on your back, then you don’t have to worry as much about face-against-pillow wrinkles.

4) Gravity: Gravity is our biggest foe as we age. In your 50s, when your skin’s elasticity declines dramatically, the effects of gravity become evident. The unsettling fact is that gravity causes the tip of the nose to droop, the ears to elongate, the eyelids to fall, jowls to form, and the upper lip to disappear while the lower lip becomes more pronounced. Thank God for the Baby Boomers who have pushed the envelop and have created an entire industry that can help us work around the inevitable pull of gravity.

Skin cancer is a very serious matter. I had little knowledge of it until I bumped into a contact of mine who looked completely distraught.

When I asked Francesca* if she was okay because she looked very troubled she went on to describe how things were particularly difficult for her these days because a friend of the family (Rosamond*) got a final diagnostic from doctors.

Recent research shows there are two distinct types of aging. Aging caused by the genes we inherit is called intrinsic aging. While aging caused by extrinsic factors such as exposure to the sun is whole other ball game.

Intrinsic Aging a.k.a. Internal Aging

Internal aging, referred to by many wise souls as the natural aging process, is a continuous process that normally begins in our mid-20s. Even though our gene pool determines how quickly we’ll show the first signs of aging it’s safe to say that as early as our mid-20s the skin’s collagen production slows down and elastin (the substance that enables skin to snap back into place) has a bit less spring. Our mid- 20s reveal that dead skin cells don’t shed as quickly and turnover of new skin cells may decrease slightly. While these changes usually begin in our 20s, the signs of intrinsic aging are typically not visible for several decades (thank God for small miracles).

What are the many signs of internal aging on our skin?

It may be a pointless exercise to state the obvious, but I’ll enumerate them anyways:

• Fine wrinkles
• Thin and transparent skin
• Loss of underlying fat, leading to hollowed cheeks and eye sockets as well as noticeable loss of firmness on the hands and neck
• Bones shrink away from the skin due to bone loss, which causes sagging skin
• Dry skin that may itch
• Inability to sweat sufficiently to cool the skin

What are the many signs of external aging on our skin?

Most premature aging is caused by sun exposure. Repetitive facial expressions, gravity, sleeping positions and smoking are also factors that should not be ignored.

This might sound like a broken record but without protection from the sun’s rays, a few minutes of exposure each day over the years can cause noticeable changes to the skin. Freckles, age spots, spider veins on the face, rough and leathery skin, fine wrinkles that disappear when stretched, loose skin, a blotchy complexion, actinic keratoses (thick wart-like, rough, reddish patches of skin) can all be directly traced to sun exposure. Obviously, skin cancer is the most extreme (and most regrettable) form of sun exposure.