Skin Care - Part III

20 minutes skin care routine

• Cleanse face with gentle cleanser to suit skin type, using a cotton ball or a washcloth.
• Steam face with head over bowl of steaming hot water for 2 minutes.
• Apply moisturizing, purifying face mask.
• Bathe or shower with a few drops of relaxing essential oil or invigorating oil in the water. You may also put used herbal tea bags, or cucumber or potato slices over your eyes to remove the bagginess around the eyes. Relax totally for 10 minutes.
• Pat body dry with thick warm towels. Apply body lotion all over while skin is still moist. Take special care of feet, knees, elbows, and neck.
• Remove mask with warm water and spray or splash face with mineral water.
• Apply eye-soothing gel (if you are going out) or night eye cream (if you are going to bed) around eyes and on lids.
• Apply moisturizer to face if going out, or your favorite night cream/oil if not.
• Apply hand cream and a nail cream around cuticles.

Basic Skin Care

The care you give to your skin depends to a large extent on the type of the skin you have. However, we will discuss the basic skin care principles first. Then we will go into specific recommendations based on the type of skin you have.

A daily routine of skin care requires no more than ten minutes and requires only three simple steps each evening and morning:

• Cleanse
• Tone
• Moisturize

Night care

1. Cleanse. Remove any makeup with cleansing cream or a natural makeup remover. Wash with mild soap or other cleanser, rinse, and pat dry.
2. Tone. Apply an acid-containing solution to restore the pH balance and protective shield. For dry skin, use a mild freshener-toner. For oily skin, use an astringent preparation.
3. Moisturize. Splash on cool water or mist with a spray bottle. Blot, but do not dry completely-moisturizer magic relies more on retaining moisture than in providing it-then smooth on a few drops of your moisturizer.

Day care

1. Cleanse lightly to remove nighttime accumulations, refresh your face with a few splashes of water, and pat dry.
2. Tone by applying a freshener or astringent.
3. Moisturize around your eyes. If your face is excessively dry, mist or splash with water, blot, then lightly cover with moisturizer.

Other Steps That are Useful for Skincare

• Apply Masks
• Eye Treatment
• Facial Massage

Cleaning the Skin

Cleaning the skin is important as it removes the dead cells from the surface of the skin. It also will remove the dust and dirt that chokes the pores on the skin. If the dust is allowed to accumulate, it can block the pores thus blocking the secretion of the glands from coming to the top of the skin providing it the weapons it need to fight against infections, toxic agents etc. It also gives the shine or glow to the surface of the skin.

Soap and Natural Cleaners

Skin experts recommend avoiding soap because of its high pH. A high pH (alkaline) soap will dry the skin and diminish its life expectancy. The skin's surface is mildly acidic, having a pH of around 5. Most soaps are well over 7, and some as high as 10. Soaps with a high pH will not only dry the skin but also eliminate its acid mantle (coating on the surface).

You can make good skin cleansers from natural products. For example, products that contain vegetable oils, such as coconut oil, and water, combine with sebum and allow it to be dissolved and rinsed away. At the same time, water dissolves dirt.

Effective skin cleansers can contain a number of different vegetable oils, including coconut, sesame, or palm oils. These are safe and effective cleansers and have a relatively low pH. Stearic acid provides the skin a pearly firmness.
Another organic products that is increasingly useful in skin care is seaweed. The high mineral content of seaweed stimulates circulation, helps eliminate toxins imbedded in the skin, and leaves the skin feeling smooth. Seaweeds can also strengthen the immunity and healing functions of the skin by providing the needed minerals.

Facial Scrubs

Facial scrubs help clean the surface of the skin by removing the dead skins and the dirt mechanically. We recommend that you use a facial scrub that contains a mild abrasive. The coarseness of these abrasives vary. For example, it may contain very fine, mild base of oatmeal or ground-up almonds. Some products may contain, however, coarser materials such as silica or fine sand or the shells of almonds, apricots, or walnuts.

Since women spend considerable more amount of money and time on makeups and skin care, we would expect that their skin will be smoother and blemish free compared to that of men. However, studies have found exactly the opposite. These studies have found that men have fewer blemishes and smoother skin than women on the face. Experts suggest that men are exfoliating their faces every day by shaving. The razor removes the top layer of dead cells every day. This allows the skin to breathe and eliminate waste much easier. This may explain why men's facial skin is much more smoother than women's. Women can accomplish the same by using a mild abrasive scrub on their faces, every other day.

European women have been using exfoliants for decades. People in India and the orient had been using natural exfoliants to clean their skin.

The Right Way To Wash Your Fac

1. Moisten your face with water. Work up a lather by rubbing the soap between wet palms. Using your fingertips (not the bar of soap), massage the lather into your face and throat.
2. Rinse thoroughly with a washcloth or with splashes of water. Take three times as much time for rinsing as compared to what you took for lathering. The important thing is that you remove all of the soap so any caustic it contains won't burn your face.
3. Blot dry with a soft towel; vigorous rubbing with coarse material aggravates and tugs at your skin.