The most effective holistic skin care routine focuses on the inside out.
Clear skin seems to be part and parcel of the norms and standards of beauty of our time. Whether in blogs, magazines or commercials, it seems everybody is obsessed with glowing skin. Proof of this obsession with good skin is in the following facts and figures:
The average woman in the US spends $3,756 per year on her appearance, 25% of which on her face alone. And yet, despite all that money spent, skin care remains one of her top concerns throughout the year.
And that’s for a good reason. Dull, unhealthy and acne-prone skin not only looks and feels unpleasant, it makes you overly self-conscious and insecure. Often, the emotional impact is worse than the physical.
But, there is are solutions that don’t involve spending a fortune on skincare products, peelings, facials, masks, mud therapies and spa treatments.
If you suffer from acne, redness, pimples, discoloration or dry skin, there are other remedies to your situation – one in particular that is 100% natural, highly effective and affordable.
Instead of rubbing chemicals on your skin you can nourish, repair and moisturize it from the inside out with all the nutrients, minerals and hydration needed to naturally shine.
How to do that? No rocket-science, just pure common sense and a little understanding of the human anatomy and how the body — and by extension its largest organ the skin — works.
We’re going to discuss the fundamentals of a holistic, 100% natural skin care routine, but before we do so, let’s focus first for a second on what your skin actually needs to be healthy.
Develop a Healthy Self-Care Routine
Managing your wellness can be confusing and overwhelming, our simple yet holistic guide to self-care can help.
Understanding Holistic Skin Care
The human skin is an exceptional organ. Bigger than any other organ, if you were to lay it out on a flat surface your skin would cover 21 square feet or 2 square meters.
These 21 square feet of skin are home to 300 million skin cells (that’s a whole lot of skin).
More than that, your skin sheds almost 40,000 dead skin cells every single minute. And it keeps growing new skin cells at an equally stunning pace.
This essentially equates to a cycle where your skin goes through an incredible rejuvenation metamorphosis, generating an entirely new layer every 28 days.
And that’s great news because it means the skin you have right now is not the skin you are stuck with forever.
Skin Care 101: Core Functions of Human Skin
Your skin is a complex, fine-tuned and very reliable grid of sensors that constantly pulls in a host of information about your current environment.
This information helps it to regulate and adjust your body temperature, and other factors, to be in tune with the season, the weather and your precise surroundings at any given time.
As a semi-permeable membrane, your skin is also vital in absorbing water and oxygen while at the same time excreting toxins through your sweat.
By the same token, it also serves as the first line of defense against outside bacteria, germs and infectious disease.
Finally, you can also think of your skin as a window into your body’s engine room. Many changes to your body’s broader health and well-being are going to be visible on your skin first.
For example, hives, rashes and itching can be your skin’s way of signaling a deeper issue such as an allergy, bacterial infection or an autoimmune deficiency.
Therefore, it pays to take good care of your skin and to be in tune with what it tries to tell you. This brings us right to the heart of this article: 5 secrets to clear, healthy and glowing skin.
Minimalist Skin Care Plan
Body Care Routine
The body is an intricate, intelligent machine that enables you to survive because it is so good at gathering information about and adjusting to its current environment. It does this through an elaborate system of sensors — including the ones built into your 300 million skin cells.
However, you can disrupt this well-oiled machine with poor health and wellness habits. One of the most obvious manifestations of this principle is that whatever you eat or drink affects your body as a whole and, by extension its largest organ, the skin.
This is just one of the reasons why many health and nutrition practitioners are such advocates of a plant-based diet.
If you stuff your liver and digestive system with a diet of low-grade, low-nutritional-value junk foods and-drinks — like processed foods, sugar, gluten, fats and alcohol — your liver will eventually become toxic as it malfunctions from overwhelm trying to filter out to much bad stuff.
As a result, toxins will start spreading through your bloodstream, ultimately wreaking havoc on your skin, causing inflammation, acne breakouts and other skin conditions.
If you want your skin to be healthy and radiant, you must start with a body care routine that includes a diet. This diet should replace unhealthy foods with superfoods that contain essential vitamins and minerals that your body (in particular your skin) thrives on.
If you are tired of waking up to bad skin, start tackling your skincare problems today with our skin food guide that outlines the best nutrients and foods for clear, healthy and glowing skin.
Keeping your skin naturally hydrated
As mentioned in step 1, a large part of keeping your skin hydrated is going to be what you eat and drink. However, there are also ways to supplement this from the outside. Topical lotions, creams and serums can keep your skin moisturized as part of an overall skin care plan that includes diet, sleep, cleansing and moisturizing. Once you are already reaping the benefits of eating and drinking the natural nutrients derived from a healthy diet, you can look to moisturizing products. Here are our favorites:
No7 Beauty Firming Booster Serum
A non-invasive firming solution that will almost immediately make your skin feel and look better. It is advertised as a product that gets rid of wrinkles quickly, but it is just as useful for the hydrating properties. This is a core staple of my skincare regimen.
Philosophy Nature in a Jar Moisturizer
If you are interested in a more natural beauty routine, but still want great looking skin, this product is a great one. With ingredients like tiger grass (what tigers rub against to heal), prickly pear fruit, shea butter, agave and more, the product is vegan, gluten-free, and has a natural origin ingredient index of 93.9%.
Hydration for holistic skin care
Water makes up 50% of your body and supplies your cells (including your skin cells) with oxygen and nutrients while carrying toxins and waste away.
Water is especially beneficial for your skin because it slows down the process of aging, keeping your skin cells elastic and fighting the formation of wrinkles.
And yes, stating the obvious: well moisturized skin looks incredibly plump and supple while dehydrated skin looks dry and lifeless.
More precisely, the skin glow everyone wants is largely due to proper hydration because water moisturizes, nourishes and eliminates toxins that would otherwise cause irritation and inflammation.
Supercharge skin care with superfoods
Another magic bullet for great, blemish-free skin (aside from hydration) are superfoods, particularly kale, spinach, sunflower seeds, almonds and walnuts.
Dark, leafy greens hydrate your skin and promote lymphatic drainage, leaving your face de-puffed and radiant. Kale, in particular, is one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. Packed with vitamin A and C, Kale is a collagen-booster, which is the protein responsible for your skin’s elasticity and strength.
Sunflower seeds and almonds are rich in Vitamin E, iron, zinc and Omega-3 fatty acids. These nutrients feature anti-inflammatory properties, moisturizing powers, free radicals protection and oxygen-supplying capabilities.
An easy and sure-fire way of taking in all the healthy greens, nuts and seeds your skin needs each day is to drink them in a healthy skincare smoothies.
Rejuvenate skin overnight
The concept of beauty sleep sounds cliché, but there couldn’t be a better description for the process that your skin undergoes at night.
During the day your skin is busy defending itself and the rest of your body from outside elements like sun exposure, UV radiation, the weather, dryness, environmental toxins and free radicals.
But, when you are sleeping it is the perfect time for your skin to focus on repairing itself and amping up the production of collagen — the quintessential anti-aging protein which single-handedly endows your skin with youthful elasticity, pre-empting sagging, wrinkles and fine-lines.
When you are asleep, your body also channels essential nutrients and oxygen to your skin. That is why, after a good night’s sleep you tend to wake up to more radiant skin and rosy cheeks while when you are sleep deprived you wake up looking ashy, dull and grey.
So, be a sleeping beauty and prioritize your sleep hygiene. Your skin will reward you for it.
Minimalist Skin Care
Have you paid hundreds or thousands of dollars on skin products or treatments only for your skin to end up looking the same, if not worse?
Believe it or not: we feel you. Because it has happened to us one too many times.
Unfortunately, a lot of self-declared skincare gurus, beauty brands and even dermatologists, fail to address the fact that your body is an integrated system where the state of one part of the body can directly impact the state of your skin.
They may advise you to apply a random, one-off product here or use a disjointed skin cleansing technique there, without ever connecting the dots for you to see the bigger picture.
It helps you build a personalized skin care routine and allows you to proactively take action on your skin problems by prioritizing 100% natural skin care solutions.
Minimalism Co participates in affiliate marketing programs that may pay a commission to Minimalism Co without affecting the price a customer pays.
