Showing posts with label Skin aging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skin aging. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Why Are You Getting So Red in the Face?



When you were young, a flushing of the skin was considered attractive. The pink disappeared as fast as it came.

As a young adult, the redness can still not be tempoary. It can now appear when you are being emotional, using irritating skincare products, eating spicy foods or drinking alcohol.

As you age, the causes of the redness grow to heat, extraneous exercise and consuming hot foods and drinks, cigarette smoke and other chemical inhalants. You may even suffer redness when stress or lack of sleep. The medications prescribed to you can be another trigger.

Also as our age advances, the redness becomes more chronic and at times seems to make our faces puffy looking.

Redness is more widespread in the summer due to the higher heat and humidity exacerbating the other triggers for redness. Summer heat and sun exposure can easily increase the area of redness and the length of time of the redness.

Puffy red cheeks may be unattractive and take attention away from the beauty of your eyes. But the real reason to act is because you want to correct the situation the redness is warning you about.


Why do we get red?

How prone we are to redness is genetic. Those of us who are predominately Pitta or have a Pitta imbalance will get red from a trigger more easily than those of us who are predominately other doshas.

The skin appears red but the redness is really in the dilated capillaries that have not return back to stasis due to inelasticity or weakness.

How do we prevent or reduce redness?

We should reframe from doing the things that cause our capillaries to dilate. Most of them are within our control. We can start by reducing our consumption of spicy and hot foods, and of stimulating foods like caffeine and alcohol. Dilated capillaries cause dehydration of the body due to poor circulation.
Avoid white sugar, cigarette smoking and stress as they can over stimulate the adrenals and cause dilation of the capillaries.

In addition to dilation of blood vessels, Cigarette smoking adds toxins into the blood stream and depletes the body of vitamin C, which helps keep skin and capillary wall elastic.
Detoxification can reduce redness as it removes toxins from the organs so that excess toxins in the bloodstream can be filtered. There are many ways to detox - from fasting (http://www.webmd.com/diet/fasting), to herbs/teas ( go to Thunas for a customized blend http://www.astoriamills.ca/thunaherbals), to manual detoxification with Chi Nei Tsang (http://www.chineitsang.com/cnti/About.html ). Also when organs are too toxic to function properly, toxins can be offloaded into bloodstream. An overloaded blood vessel can remain dilated leaving skin chronically redness and hyper sensitive to heat.

Don't use aggressive skincare. Find skincare for rosacea and sensitive skin at (http://bit.ly/ijPIwu) Too much chemical peeling and continual use of irritating ingredients like retinal or AHA in skincare products can result in chronic redness. Don’t trading acne or wrinkles for red ness.

Avoid other ingredients that cause skin irritation and allergies like petroleum derivatives like propylene glycol, sulfates like sodium laurel sulfate and Vaseline (Petrolatum) and mineral oil (Paraffidium) in cleansers and creams lotions.
Extra help for summer heat can come from your diet. Eat sweet juicy fruits like melons, papaya, and grapes. Eat salads and raw vegetables with lemon juice based dressing instead of vinegar. Eat cooled or cold foods and drinks. And enjoy sushi.
Carry an Organic Lavender Hydrosol with you to keep skin cool and inflammation away. Get a pocket size at http://bit.ly/j1h4ia. Keep a bottle of Organic Witch Hazel Hydrosol http://bit.ly/jxu2O5 in your refrigerator to give you a quick pick me up.
Exercise indoors or in shade. Cool skin down immediately with the chilled hydrosol to reduce redness.
Now you can enjoy the warm weather!




Monday, July 20, 2009

Skin Aging : Stage 2


Preventing and Remedying Aging Skin

Why do we call anything that maintains youthfulness, “anti-aging”? We blame “aging” for what is the result of “not caring for ourselves”. Depending on the luck of our genetics and our attention to our personal care, we will notice changes in our skins appearance in our thirties and forties. Lines are deeper and more permanent. Pigmentation is more prominent and wide spread. Our skin appears duller and more uneven. Our pores are larger and there appears to be more bumps and moles. Now the problem is goes deeper than our epidermis to our dermis layer. The long-term lack of skin hydration is now causing more permanent and deeper damage.

Prevention is simple.

1. Keep skin hydrated.
2. Get enough rest,
3. Eat lots of vegetables and fruit.
4. Drink enough water.
5. Limit unprotected sun and extreme temperature exposure.
6. Take liquid Vitamin D to keep skin and bones healthier
7. Balance skin moisture and hydration level with proper skincare.

Hydrated skin keeps capillaries walls elastic and the dermis functioning optimally. When epidermal skin cells are dehydrated, they cannot perform well in protecting capillary walls which result in skin redness. Long term redness will result in darkening of the skin. When the epidermis does not protect the dermis, Collagen and Elastin production is downgraded causing skin to lose tone and more moisture and for skin cells to reproduce differently. Skin tags, moles, inverted pores and hyper pigmentation are results of wayward skin cell production.
So how can we fix this type of skin damage?

1. Start to practice better lifestyle and personal care by following the prevention suggestions above
2. Intense Pulse Light (IPL) can give dramatic improvements and advanced-aged skin-repair
3. Microdermabrasion and skin peels can improve skin appearance for those who need less dramatic improvements
4. I am currently researching the results of new safe treatments using Ultra-Sound and Radio Frequency