It was a great week in beauty. I colored my roots! The week leading up to coloring my roots is always a challenge. I'm in denial of having to go through the ordeal for the first three days, the next two days I suddenly have energy, go out, buy the box of dye and then I fizzle back into dread. Finally, when I can no longer take the two tone head, I color my roots. Then I am overjoyed at how great it looks and promise to not dread it next time. Right. One of my 2015 Beauty Resolutions was to not go longer than 3 weeks between touch ups and I have been rather true to this resolution. Reminds me, I need to do a 2015 Beauty Resolution Report Card. I've stretched it to 4 weeks that last time or two. I could almost do my touch ups in my sleep. I'm fast and I find it easy but still dread it. I think my favorite dye is Garnier but I do like Feria as well.
Beauty Lesson - Skin Care Chit Chat
Every time I turn around or flip the pages of a magazine, bam, there is another skin care product or line or claim or endorsement. Somehow all logic flies out the window and off we run to buy the latest and greatest. Flowers from the top of the Alps, water from the depths of the Hawaiian ocean, algae from the tundra, plants from the desert, tea leaves from China, snails from Japan, apples from Switzerland, always something new.
Skin care is very basic. At the very minimum you cleanse, you hydrate and for the morning, you also apply SPF. The next step up in a routine is to exfoliate at least once a week. Exfoliating is using "something" to remove the dead skin cells. When we're young, dead skin cells are well behaved and are happy to jump off the skin in a nice regular cycle. As we get older, those skin cells get tired and they stick around a wee bit too long. Exfoliation helps get them off.
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| Me, cleansing my face |
After adding an exfoliation step, adding some type of anti-oxidant into your routine is a good thing. I don't know the number but I'm guessing there are 100s, maybe 1000s of anti-oxidants. Chances are, your moisturizer has some but if you can step it up with a mega dose of anti-oxidants, that much better. Which anti-oxidant among the hundreds? That's another post, maybe a book. If I had to pick one, I would pick Vitamin C since it is easily found in both the drug store and department store. It's versatile and is a good multi-tasker for two of the most common concerns which are age spots and sagging.
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| Me, exfoliating with a peel off mask! |
Time for thinking about the heavy hitters, now. Treatment products. This is where the list goes on and on and all those ads and claims and apples from the Swiss Alps come into play. What ingredient is best at treating X? Aha. You want to treat X and Y and You want it all! So do I. Does that mean you need more than one treatment product? Maybe. Like Vitamin C, some ingredients are multi-taskers. Other ingredients are very specific. For instance, retinol is "the" multi-tasker of skin care. Hydroquinone, an ingredient to lighten dark spots, is very specific and only attacks dark spots. Retinol will attack wrinkles, sagging, dark spots and texture and a few more. Then again, retinol comes in various shapes, forms, percentages, and formulas. Additionally, the base it is in is important in determining how deep the retinol will penetrate. Sadly, not everyone can use retinol as it can be irritating. Chances are with a bit of determination, you can find a form that works. However, that takes time and the money to spend on products to experiment with. What a pain. That's yet another post....the virtues of retinol in all its shapes and glory.
There we have it. Cleanse, moisturize, SPF, exfoliate and treat with anti-oxidants or targeted ingredients or both. The one aspect of skin care that can't be measured is time. It has taken years, decades of smiling, talking, makeup, sun, pollution and the kitchen sink to get your skin where it is today. 30 days of a new product will do about nothing. This is particularly true if you are already using decent skin care. Probably the one most game changing ingredient is retinol but even with the mighty retinol, it takes months and months and months.
Good skin care slows the clock down. It will not stop age spots. It will not banish wrinkles. It will not give you a face lift. If you could live two parallel lives, one using basic skin care outlined above and one with just cleansing and moisturizing, the first you will look younger compared to the second you. The you will still be wrinkled and sagging and spotted. But less so. Keep that in mind. Skin care slows the hands of time, it doesn't reverse years of life. Thank goodness!
If someone asks me to only pick one thing for great skin care, it would be a broad spectrum SPF 30 or higher 365 days of the year. Sun is skin's number one enemy. End of story.
Cheers,
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