We all want to keep our skin looking fresh and pampered. To do this, it’s important to make sure we’re doing skincare from both the inside and the outside. With help from wellness expert Bryce Wylde, we’ve compiled a guide on keeping your skin glowing.
Let’s start with skincare from the inside.
Even with our heightened awareness of immune support, many of us forget about our skin! Dry, cracked skin is an open pathway for environmental irritants to enter our bodies. If you’re constantly washing your hands, you probably suffer from cracked skin, which opens you up to environmental risks. You can actually catch diseases by having cracked skin!
To understand how this works, he’s a primer on how skin functions:
- There are 3 layers to the skin: the epidermis, the dermis and the subcutaneous fat.
- The epidermis is the top layer of skin, AKA the one you can see with the naked eye.
- The dermis is the second layer. It’s thicker and does the most work of keeping unwanted objects out of the body. If it’s unhealthy, diseases can get through more easily.
- The subcutaneous fat is the bottom layer, which stores energy and provides padding to the organs of the body, along with other functions.
Since the cells of your body are surrounded by a membrane that is made of fat, it is important to fill your diet with good fats. These fats, like EVO, nuts, seeds, Omeg-3, red palm, coconut, avocado, ghee and chia help the skin to stay healthy and plump. Bad fats, like vegetable oil, canola oil, rapeseed oil and cottonseed oil actually cause the skin to break down instead! If you zoom in on the epidermis and dermis, healthy cells will be made up of healthy fats and balanced electrolytes. They will appear plump and smooth. Unhealthy cells will look shriveled and shrunken, like raisins.
Electrolytes are also key to having healthy skin.
Having balanced electrolytes are crucial to getting the glow you want. To help bulk up your electrolytes, try making your own at-home sports drink. It’s kind of like a saltier, bitter, lemonade, but we promise you it’s worth drinking to rejuvenate your skin.
What you’ll need to make this drink is:
- 2 litres of water
- 1 squeezed lemon
- ½ tsp Himalayan rock salt
- 1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
Electrolytes are minerals that carry an electric charge when dissolved into your blood. They can be found in the rock salt, the potassium from the blackstrap molasses, and the magnesium and bicarbonate from the lemons. All the ingredients help regulate nerve and muscle function and maintain your acid to base balance while aiding hydration. It’s ideal to drink this throughout the day at least once a week or possibly more for strenuous exercise, heat, or dry skin.
Now that you’re taking care of your skin from the inside, let’s talk skincare from the outside.
Summer is coming up, which means more people are going barefoot. While the feeling of the grass beneath your toes is wonderful, it’s also a potential conduit for bad bacteria to enter unhealthy skin. Using a foot scrub is a great way to take care of the skin in that is coming into contact with all of this bacteria. We’ve even got a recipe for this that you can use: take your leftover coffee grounds from your morning coffee and mix into Udderly’s “Udderly Smooth Cream“. Scrub the mixture into your feet and cover with a plastic bag, then socks. Sleep with them like that overnight.
Now, you may be asking: why coffee grounds? Well, coffee has antioxidants which are present in the grounds as well, and the coarse texture of the grounds helps to have an exfoliant effect on the feet. This blend is water soluble as well, so it washes of easily when you’re done. And beside repairing your damaged skin, that’s a great way to use leftover coffee grounds.
With your feet fixed, let’s move on to the hands and face.
Here we’ve got a face mask that works as a hand mask as well! To make this mask, mix your “Udderly Smooth Cream” with 1 tsp of matcha. That’s it! Just apply liberally and let it sit for 20 minutes or so. The matcha in this mask is a powerful ingredient that uses antioxidants, including EGCG, to fight premature aging, redness, and irritation, while also moisturizing. You can cut out a piece of paper approximately the size of your face and fill it up with your cream before adhering it, or you can just go straight from the bowl.
We hope your skin is feeling more refreshed and hydrated, and that you’ve got yourself a nice glow for summer!
