Showing posts with label redness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label redness. 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!




Saturday, July 11, 2009

I am too Young to be Aging


I am too Young to be Aging

At fifty-four going on fifty-five in September, I look forward to the new experiences that will come to me as I grow older and wiser.

But I am still a client for healthy proactive “anti-aging” skincare as are my regular clients. So off I went to Chicago to listen to chemists introduce new ideas and new natural ingredients for better looking skin.

We all know that poor lifestyle and over exposure to the elements will accelerate the aging of our skin and our appearance. The speed and amount of damage as well as the ability of the skin to repair itself depends on our genetics and in Ayurvedic term our Doshas.

What are the signs of skin aging?
The first signs are surface and are mainly in the Epidermis. Not protecting skin from ambient moisture loss and living in desert like or extremely cold climates can cause fine lines, enlarged pores, and redness along with light hyper-pigmentation. Fine lines and redness can also occur temporarily as we dehydrate our bodies with blimps in our diet or stress levels. An overnighter for work or school or an evening of over consumption of alcohol and cigarettes will have similar results. Prescription drugs and antibiotics will cause dehydration during the course as well. These light and sometimes temporary signs of skin aging can appear as early as in our twenties.

This type of skin aging is easy to remedy as the causes are in the Epidermis, the top most layer of our skin.

Remedies
Remedies can be as simple as applying a serum before your moisturizer to having a good facial. Exfoliation can be very helpful in smoothing out the complexion. This can be a homecare product like an AHA gel or a jojoba scrub or be a spa treatment like a Microdermabrasion.

Since the capillaries are in the skin to carry away debris, cellular waste and toxins, using natural products can contribute to the longterm health of the skin and capillaries.

Choosing gentle exfoliants made from natural ingredients for home use would support skin repair without long term damage to skin cells and capillaries.

Avoiding aluminum when receiving Microdermabrasion will lessen exposure to controversial ingredients that are known to affect long term health.

For individual advice please feel free to contact me at jean@pureandsimple.ca or go to http://www.pureandsimple.ca/ for product and spa information


Innovative information and remedies for deeper wrinkles and pigmentation, chronic redness and redundant skin will be discussed next.