5 Things You Should Be Doing Every Day For Healthier Skin

You'll see me say this over and over again.  While professional and in office skin treatments can absolutely be transformative, it's truly what you do every day that creates the biggest impact on how your skin looks, feels and behaves. 

So here are 5 things you should be doing EVERY DAY for healthier skin.  Some of these you may not have thought about being important to how your skin is doing, so I am here to tell you and explain why.

5) Check Your Temperature

I recently had a client email me photos of her skin for a consult.  She said she had issues with rosacea and some acne and dryness.  Her pics were post shower it seemed, and I could tell from her flushed and irritated skin right away that she was taking too hot of showers. 

Washing your face with water that is too hot damages your natural moisture barrier causing dryness and dehydration.  Hot water can even stimulate histamines in your skin which leads to flushing, bumps, and even itching.  

So wash your face and shower with water that is gently warm, not HOT.

4) Wash Your Face at Night

I know, I know, you hear this alll the time in magazines and articles.  But it's TRUE that the simple act of washing your face at night is important for healthy skin. There are several reasons and it goes beyond just helping with breakouts:

For one, our skin works with our body's circadian rhythms to detox, restore and repair itself while we sleep.  Most of our skin aging comes from daily external sources like UV but also pollution in the air.  Our skin is our body's first line of defense against that pollution, while also working to fight off bad bacteria, molds and protecting you from environmental conditions.

When you go to sleep without washing your face, all that pollution, allergens, invasive bacteria etc, things your skin has been exposed to all day stays on your skin, making it harder to repair itself over night, while also continuing to damage your skin cells.  

My recommendation for those who fall asleep on the sofa regularly before washing their face is to do it just before or just after dinner.  That way it is DONE while you are still awake. If you think oh I just need to do it before I go to sleep, then it's likely you'll fall asleep before you get to it.

3) Nurture Your Barrier

Our skin's barrier is taken for granted by most people and skin professionals alike.  When I first became an esthetician over 12 years ago, deep peels, lasers and Retin-A were all the rage.  Over the decade however, I frequently saw the long term negative effects of clients whos skin had been overtreated by years of over doing those kinds of services or products.  

Within the last 3-4 years or so, I've seen a startling amount of clients with disrupted barriers from the overuse of oil based products causing congested and very dehydrated skin at the same time.

You can maintain your skin's natural barrier by using moisturizers that have a proper balance of the things your skin's nature moisture barrier is made from which is water, cholesterols, fatty acids, ceramides, hyaluronic acid and also oils/lipids.  Using an oil serum and then and oil balm moisturizer will disrupt that balance and block water from properly going into the skin.  

This is why I designed all my moisturizers to be barrier restoring.  If you want to know which one would be best for you, you can take my quiz by clicking here.

2) Supplement The Right Things

There are SO MANY supplements for the skin on the market.  Everything from Collagen Peptides, to hair-skin-nail capsules claiming they will help to get better skin.  But knowing how and what our skin functions from I've narrowed it down to only a couple essentials for most skin types.

Most dietary nutrients for the skin should be from your diet. With that said, studies done in America and Germany showed that 80% of participants were Omega 3 deficient.  Omega-3s are not just important for over all health, but play an important role on the skin's ability to hold moisture, prevent inflammation and heal itself.  Because of this, unless you're eating cold water fish more than a couple times per week,  I recommend most people living in the US take a liquid Omega-3 fish oil supplement. 

This is even more important for vegans/vegetarians as their diet is very Omega-3 deficient since the main sources for omega-3 that are most absorbable by the body are from animals.  So for strict vegans I recommend Ahi-Flower extract.  

I also recommend taking vitamin C daily as it is a nutrient we can only get from external sources, and is necessary for our skin's process in making collagen and wound healing.

1) Wear Layers

We commonly hear about how we need to wear SPF daily rain or shine.  But we don't often hear about how much and reapplication.  Most people are not wearing the necessary amount of SPF to get the full protective benefits of the SPF number on the tube.  When SPF studies are done to give the # rating you see on the packaging, it's usually with about a golf ball amount of product.  Not the micro pea size most people are applying.

Also, if you're wearing makeup, it can be difficult to reapply any kind of sun block.

Enter my SPF layering technique, and think of it as multitasking in the am:

Step 1: Apply clear sunblock

Step 2: Apply tinted SPF or Makeup with SPF

Step 3:  Apply Powder SPF (color or tinted) and enjoy your day.

Mineral makeup is great for daily wear as most of it naturally has SPF in it, and many of the mineral makeup companies make translucent powders with SPF that are great for men too.

There you have it, my 5 things you should be doing everyday for healthier skin.  I hope perhaps you learned something new!