Five steps to flawless skin

There’s never a more important time to take care of your skin than when the weather changes. The sun is out most days now and the exposure can damage our skin without us even realising it. It’s important to maintain a skincare regime as we transcend into spring and summer.

Here are some helpful tips for taking care of your skin and achieving a perfect natural glow, without using make-up.

You are what you eat!

It’s a phrase we’ve heard time and time again, but one that happens to be true. The more grease you eat, the more greasy your skin will be, and grease equals spots. The best way to gain flawless looking skin is by eating fruit and drinking water. Of course, everyone already knows this, it’s the oldest trick in the book, but the most affective if you give it the time to work. Often we’re impatient, we want flawless skin asap, so why not begin to up your fruit and water intake today?

Sleep

Often we’re too distracted by our phones, tv’s and tablets to even consider getting an early night. We’d much rather binge on a Netflix series than get some extra Zzz’s, too eager to find out what happens in the next three episodes (we’re all guilty of it!).

It’s time to go back to a routine, a set bed time through the week, one that will give enough time to finish all we have to do, catch up on TV and then head to bed with plenty of hours sleep. The recommended amount is 8 hours, and it seems like an almost impossible task, especially when you can’t seem to nod off. So compromise, 7 & 1/2 hours, or even just 7 - being sure to put down your phone or tablet at least thirty minutes before bed - experts say the more time we spend staring at the screen, the less likely our mind is to accept that it’s time to snooze.

A lack of sleep causes blood vessels to dilate, causing the look of dark circles, so the more sleep we have, the less concealer we will need to hide our dark circles. Sleep also reduced stress - stress which we know can age our skin. The more sleep, equals the less time we need to spend on make-up, sounds like a win-win! And hey, they didn’t call her sleeping beauty for nothing!

Cleanse, Tone, Moisturize.

Girls around the world have had their mother lecture them about a good skincare regime, I can still remember being bought a cleanser, toner and moisturiser set and being told to use it every day to maintain good skin - and know what? I’ve always stuck to it, and the times I’ve defaulted, it’s resulted in spots and blemishes. You don’t have to spend a fortune on a great set, in fact most drugstores do their own branded skin care products and they work just as well as any other. Simple has always been my favourite choice, it’s cheap, it’s got a wide variety of products and they’re perfume free.

It’s important to cleanse tone and moisturize each morning, and then end your day with an exfoliating facial scrub to rid your face of the dirt and exposure it’s experienced during the day. As exfoliating scrubs can leave your skin looking a little red and blemished, the ideal time to use one is at night, then tone and moisturize before bed. Face scrubs grind away dead skin and also help with blackheads, cleaning away the dirt and preventing them from returning.

Another tip, is to use face masks. Face masks peel away the dirt from your face and leave your skin feeling refreshed and flawless, although they can bring out spots and blemishes, they are great for cleaning the skin and for giving you a much desired soft to the touch effect.

Counting Stars

It’s imperative at this time of year that we up our SPF factor in our daily moisturiser, to protect our skin from sun damage and even worse, skin cancer. Skin cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer, people still seem unsure as to how important protecting your skin is as it’s completely vulnerable under the rays of the sun. We all have different types of skin, but the recommended SPF is factor 15, of course you can go for a higher number depending on how fair you skin is. It’s important to apply a good moisturiser than includes an SPF 15 each morning and a couple of times throughout the day.

For the best SPF protection, always check the back of your moisturizer or sun cream, the one with the most UAV stars will be the most effective. Not many people are aware of this tip, but the UAV star rating is even more important than the SPF factor.

LOL

Laughter is a great remedy for perfect skin. When laughing, your heart rate increases, pumping blood around the body and improving your skin tone. While it’s the easiest thing in the world to do, we often forget to laugh and smile, not realIing that it has a huge impact on our skin and health. So smile more and laugh more, really deep belly laughs that hurt and cause you to snort!