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Healthy Beauty Tips

by Mary Beth Janssen

What goes on in the heart and mind are reflections of our outer beauty. But there are simple ways to take care of your body that will bring out your inner beauty, as well.  Here are a few perfectly healthy beauty tips for beautiful skin.

Healthful Beauty Tip: Reduce stress. Stress hormones rob our skin of its nourishing blood supply, create free radicals and depress our immune system, disturbing our skin’s balance and appearance.

As you learn to relax, your skin cells will follow suit. Happy thoughts create happy cells in the body. Visualize beautiful skin. Meditate, breathe deeply, dance, or do whatever it takes to relax and reinvigorate yourself, calming your hormones and your skin.

Healthful Beauty Tip: Eat right. A varied diet with a balance of proteins, complex carbohydrates, good fats and plenty of natural antioxidants provides all the daily requirements to generate healthy skin.

High-quality protein helps skin growth and regeneration. Eat fruits and vegetables in abundance, along with whole grains, legumes, nuts, a bit of poultry and fish (particularly those rich in omega-3s, like salmon), and no- or low-fat dairy. Every day, take a high-quality multi-vitamin with antioxidants and omega-3s in the form of fish oil or flaxseed—along with at least two 500-milligram capsules of borage or evening primrose oil. Your skin and hair will benefit immensely.

Eliminate foods that spike blood sugar and insulin levels, especially anything made from white flour and white sugar, both inflammatory for the skin. You can also do your skin a world of good by reducing saturated animal fats and avoiding artificial ingredients and chemical pollutants. Alcohol, caffeine and spicy foods can decrease barrier function and increase skin reactivity and inflammation.

Healthful Beauty Tip: Sun protection. Although limited sun “baths” (early morning or late afternoon for 15 to 20 minutes) are very valuable for our body’s metabolization of vitamin D (so important for our bones!), sun exposure is the number-one cause of premature skin aging and wrinkles.

Sunlight sets in motion a series of wrinkle-inducing events. One of the best ways to protect the skin is to wear a moisturizing sunscreen with SPF 15 or higher when exposed to sunlight—whether outdoors or indoors (through windows). Look for “natural” sunscreens that contain zinc oxide, titanium dioxide—or a combo of both listed as “active ingredients.”

Healthful Beauty Tip: Stop smoking. Not only has it been proven that smoking initiates an earlier menopause, but it also exacerbates a wide variety of menopausal symptoms.

Smoking is a major cause of massive skin damage, severely compromising the skin’s ability to repair and rejuvenate itself. Create a powerful visualization around releasing this habit for good. Go see a therapist or a hypnotist, get the patch—do whatever it takes to stop smoking. Remember that one puff of a cigarette creates over a billion free radicals in your body. Very toxic indeed!

Healthful Beauty Tip: Bathe in moisture. Water is the cheapest and most effective skin moisturizer, bar none, so drink up. It’s absolutely essential for proper hydration, keeping the skin moist and plumped, supple, soft and clear. It improves the skin’s barrier function and helps the skin resist environmental aggressions. It even plumps out fine lines and prevents age spots. Drink eight to 10 glasses of purified or filtered water every day, without fail.

Healthful Beauty Tip: Get physical and get rest. Exercise exerts hormone-balancing effects on our skin. It also benefits the skin by increasing blood circulation, which provides nutrition to the skin cells and helps in expelling toxins, controlling stress, and promoting deep, revitalizing sleep. Sleep is when your skin—and your entire body—is busy regenerating, renewing, and rebuilding cellular tissue—which includes the healing of the hormone system.

Connect with Mary Beth @cosmicdenmother

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