Many people struggle on the right ways of facial skin care. With a wide range of facial skin care products in the market today, it could be very confusing to know what is right from wrong. If you are one of those who yearn for what is best in taking care of your skin, here are some guidelines for you to have that younger looking skin.

Remember that knowing your skin type is the first step in proper facial skin care. Skin care solely depends on the type of skin you have. Skin is categorized as oily, normal or combination, dry, sun-damaged and sensitive.

There are four basic steps in facial skin care. The first step is cleansing. It is important to look for a good cleanser that best suits your skin type. Keep away from bar soaps that make your skin dry. Avoid too much cleaning though. Washing your face at night is fine. Use lukewarm water in the morning. Avoid using hot or cold water in your face because it may break capillaries. The best way to wash your face and lose dirt as much as clogged pores is using warm water. Use only a pea-size of cleanser and then, rinse with lukewarm or cool water. It is important to remove your makeup before going to bed using the right makeup remover.

The second step is to exfoliate. Many people forget to include exfoliation in the weekly facial skin care regimen. But the right exfoliation makes so much difference in the appearance of the skin. One of the reasons why men’s skin appears to be younger looking is because of shaving. Daily shaving helps in exfoliation. Chemical peels, retinoids and microdermabrasion are the different methods to exfoliate the skin. Scrubs help in eliminating the top layer of dead skin cells but it may also make your skin dull. Exfoliating once a week is best to keep the skin glowing. It is important to use only gentle scrub that has tiny grains. Using cheap scrubs with big grains may tear and harm your skin.

You can use Retinoid, which helps in eliminating dead skin cells as well as creating skin collagen. It is the structural fiber of the skin and as one gets older, collagen breaks down and produces large pores as well as fine lines. Retinoid is said to be a miracle skin saver. How about using toner? Some say that toners are necessary, some say otherwise. Toners help in eliminating makeup and dirt and oil. You can rely on good cleanser for this issue so it is really up to you if you still want to use toners.

The third step in facial skin care is moisturizing. No matter what type of skin you have, moisturizing should be a part of every skin care regimen. Moisturizer helps in sealing moisture into the skin and even if you have an oily skin type, it is still best to moisturize.

The fourth step is using sunscreen as part of the facial skin care. Applying sunscreen is necessary because sun damage is the best source of having wrinkles. Whether it is winter or summer, observe using sunscreen.



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Men have been notorious of being careless with their skin. Their skin care regimens seldom go beyond soap and water.

However, lately there has been increased awareness among men about the needs and requirements of their skin and this has fuelled a market segment consisting of special skin care products for men. There is such an extensive range of men’s skin care products available in the market that it gets difficult sometimes to make a sane choice.

While some prefer to try out a variety of skin care products to see what works for them, others stick to one particular product and hope it does the trick. Choosing skin care products that work well for your particular skin can be a daunting task. This is because there is plethora of options available, all of them claiming to be the best and promising to do wonders to the skin. In midst of all these, how do you know what the best skin care product is for you.

Here are 5 points you should consider while buying skin care products for men.

Know Your Skin Type

Before you go about finding skin care products, you should know what exactly your skin needs. And this can only be assessed by knowing your skin type. Is it normal, dry, oily, combination or sensitive? Skin care products are designed to address the specific requirements of the various types of skin. For example, dry skin needs more moisture, oily skin needs controlled exfoliation, acne prone skin needs bacteria fighting ingredients that heal acne and so on. Determining your skin type will let you know what skin care products best suit you.

Get a Men’s Cleanser

Cleansers are a very important part of the skin care regimen. And since men’s skin is intrinsically different from women’s they need special cleansers designed for their specific gender. Men generally have bigger skin pores than women and accumulate comparatively more dirt and debris. Thus they need a tougher cleanser that can flush out the toxins and clean the skin well.



Include a Toner & Moisturizer in your Regimen

Most people fail to realize the importance of toners in the skin care regimen and prefer not to use it at all. Men’s skin succumbeds to harsh treatments like shaving and this disrupts the pH balance of the skin. Toners not only help balance the pH levels of the skin but also ensure that the skin pores are absolutely clean and no residue of cleanser is left behind.

Additionally, when the skin is stripped ofnatural moistures due to shaving and cleansing, using a moisturizer hydrates the skin and restores the lost moisture. However, if you have oily or acneic skin, use a lightweight oil-free moisturizer. Moisturizers relieve skin dryness and prevent premature aging of the skin and keep wrinkles and fine lines at bay.

Buy Skin Treatment Products

If you have severe skin conditions like acne, anti-aging concerns or so on, make sure you buy specialized skin treatment products rather than general skin care products. This is because treatment products address specific skin concerns, go to the root level of the problem and cure the same.

Obagi Clenziderm M.D. Acne Therapeutic System for Normal to Oily Skin – It is a three step system that identifies and treats the primary causes of acne and help promote a clear skin. The system includes:

Obagi Daily Care Foaming Cleanser (4 fl. oz) – To clean off all the dirt and debris from the skin and reveal brighter skin from within

Obagi Pore Therapy (4 fl oz) – To clean the skin pores of dirt and oil residues

Obagi Serum Gel (1.8 fl oz) – To deep cleanse and treat acne with benzoyl peroxide

Obagi Clenziderm M.D. Acne Therapeutic System for Normal to Dry Skin is the same thing as above but it treats acne concerns on normal and dry skin types. The system includes:

Obagi Daily Care Cream Cleanser (6.5 fl oz) – To remove the excessive oil residues and dirt

Obagi Therapeutic Lotion (1.6 fl. oz.) – To remove acne and prevent further breakouts and inflammations

Obagi Therapeutic Moisturizer (1.7 fl oz) – To moisturize and hydrate your skin

Buy Suitable Shaving Products

Make sure the shaving products that you buy suit your epidermis type and care for your specific skin condition. Shaving products generally are comprised of three major components – Pre-Shave, Shaving Creams and Aftershave. All these products have moisturizing and conditioning agents that hydrate the skin and enhance its quality.



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A professional skin care regime is one of the most important parts of maintaining your skin’s health. Your skin is not a smooth surface like a sheet of glass. On the contrary, your skin is more like a riverbed, full of little lumps, bumps, crevasses and holes. You can give these dermatological names such as fine lines, pores, sebaceous glands, etc., but at the end of the day the fact remains your skin is far from a flat, smooth surface.

Because of this and because your skin is a living, breathing part of your body and fulfils several major functions including temperature regulation, immune defence, protection from the external environment, etc., you will need to look after it if you wish to have it work at its optimal level and hope to have good, healthy skin into your late 70’s and beyond.

What about the type of products I should use for my skin care regime?

You should always choose natural skin care products as many commercially mass-produced skin care products utilise potentially toxic chemicals and highly modified ‘natural’ ingredients.

Wildcrafted Herbal Products hand makes a range of holistically-natural skin care products suitable for your particular skin type. These products are based on traditional naturopathic principles and utilize herbal extracts and essential oils to produce lasting effects.

Their products are designed to benefit your skin’s health for the long term and include only the best ingredients suitable for your specific skin type.

Daily Skin Care Regime

Cleansing your skin

Cleansing your skin is one of the most important steps if you want to maintain a healthy, vibrant and youthful looking skin.

As well as providing the basis for an advanced skin care regime, effective cleansing can actually improve the quality of our skin, enhancing its radiance and keeping it looking younger for longer.

Thorough cleansing is one of the most important steps of a complete skin care regime. Cleansing of your skin should be done morning and night to ensure the removal of surface impurities, make-up, and stale skin oils. When regularly performed cleansing will enhance the skin’s ability to breathe and maintain its other important functions.

One of the best ways to do this is to make cleansing your skin part of your daily skin care regime.

This is how you do it:

First, moisten your face with lukewarm water. Then apply a small amount of facial cleanser. Gently spread the product over your skin, using light, circular movements. At this stage, spend an extra minute massaging the product into your face to boost your skin’s circulation and help decongestion.

Secondly, be sure to be gentle, your skin is a delicate organ and needs to be treated with care and respect.

Lastly, rinse off the cleanser, using lukewarm water and pat your face dry.

If you are still using ordinary soap, STOP. You are seriously compromising the health of your skin. Throw it away and start using a quality cleanser.

Toning your skin

Toning is the second step in your daily skin care regime. These days, women often leave this step out and yet it is just as important as the cleansing of your skin or the moisturizing. It is a must include step. The one or two minutes it takes are worth every second if you desire to have healthy, vibrant skin with a minimum of lines and wrinkles. Don’t leave this step out.

You have just spent time cleaning your skin, ridding it of stale oils, makeup, dead skin cells and other impurities, now you have to tone your skin.

A quality cleanser may contain such ingredients as clay. This helps to remove dead skin cells and other impurities, but may not rinse off totally. This is why you need to use a quality toner.

Firstly, it removes every last bit of the cleanser such as the fine clay particles and other residues from the cleansing process.

Secondly it will close the skin’s pores to protect it from further loss of moisture, which invariably happens when cleansing your face.

Thirdly it provides nutrients and restores the pH balance of your skin.

Now that is worth spending a minute or two, isn’t it?

Moisturising your skin

This is the third part of your daily skin care regime and should also be done morning and night using a day crème in the morning and a night crème before retiring.

A quality moisturiser protects your facial skin from environmental damage, provides nutrients for the skin and prevents loss of moisture, thereby slowing down the aging process.

In addition, a moisturiser should help to maintain the acid mantle of your skin, which is part of your immune system and if the pH of your skin becomes too acidic or alkaline, the acid mantel is compromised.

Weekly Regime

To complete your skin care regime, you should set aside a few minutes once a week, preferably at the weekend to deeply cleanse and nourish your skin. Your weekly treats should include, the use of a Facial Mask and Exfoliation.

These treatments encourage cellular repair, step up collagen production and help strengthen, tone and firm up your skin.

Facial Clay Mask:

Using a clay mask will help to draw toxins from your skin, whilst moisturising and nourishing the skin at the same time. There are different clays that will work for specific skin types and choosing the right products containing the clay that is most suitable to your skin type is important. There are 3 basic clays: Green, Yellow and Red.

Exfoliation

Think of Exfoliation from this perspective. Exfoliation removes dead skin cells, soothes the skin and improves its tone. Dead skin cells are the very top layer of your skin. Applying moisturiser to dead skin cells does not make sense, does it? So exfoliation, removes the dead skin cells, promotes blood circulation and helps to invigorate and prepare the skin to more easily absorb any moisturising product you apply.

Exfoliation also helps speed up the rate of cell turn over. Another word for exfoliation is scrubbing. Using a facial scrub at least once a week, makes your skin more receptive to creams and treatments. However care must be taken not to over exfoliate.

The aim is to remove any dead cells from the skins surface without disturbing the healthy cells beneath.

In conclusion, to follow a skin care regime is like taking out an insurance policy on the health and vitality of your skin. Can you afford not to follow a complete, daily skin care regime?



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We all know the importance of personal skin care. The opinion on how-to (for personal skin care) differs from person to person. Some people believe that going to beauty parlours every other day is personal skin care. Others believe that personal skin care is just a matter of applying some cream or lotion on your skin, every now and then. Then there are people who think that personal skin care is an event that happens once a month or once a year. Still others busy themselves with personal skin care all the time. However, personal skin care is not that complicated and neither is it that expensive (considering how beneficial it is). Personal skin care is following a routine or a procedure for attending to the needs of your skin.

Even before you start with a routine, you need to determine your skin-type (oily, dry, sensitive, normal etc) and select the personal skin care products suitable for it (you might have to experiment with a few personal skin care products). Here is a routine that should work for most people with normal skin.

The first thing on this routine is Cleansing. The three main ingredients of a cleanser are oil, water and surfactants (wetting agents). Oil and surfactants extract dirt and oil from your skin and water then flushes it out, thus making your skin clean. You might have to try a couple of cleansers before you find the one that suits you the best. However, you should always use soap-free cleansers. Also, you should use Luke warm water for cleansing (hot and cold water, both, cause damage to your skin). Take care that you don’t over-cleanse your skin and end up damaging your skin in the process.

The second thing on the this routine is exfoliation. Skin follows a natural maintenance process wherein it removes the dead cells and replaces them with new skin cells. Exfoliation is just a way to facilitate the skin in this process. Dead skin cells are not capable of responding to personal skin care products but still consume these products, hence preventing them from reaching the new skin cells. Thus removing dead skin cells is important in order to increase the effectiveness of all personal skin care products. Generally, exfoliation takes it place just after cleansing. As with any personal skin care procedure, it’s important that you understand how much exfoliation you need. Exfoliate 4-5 times per week for oily/normal skin and 1-2 times per week for dry/sensitive skin. Exfoliate a couple of times more in hot and humid weather.

Next thing on this routine is moisturizers. This is one of the most important things in skin care. Even people with oily skin need moisturisers. Moisturisers not only seal the moisture in your skin cells, but also attract moisture (from air) whenever needed. Use of too much moisturiser can however clog skin pores and end up harming your skin. The amount of moisturiser needed by your skin will become apparent to you within one week of you using the moisturiser. Also, applying the moisturiser is best when your skin is still damp.

The last thing on this routine is sunscreen. A lot of moisturizers (day-time creams/moisturisers) come with UV protection so you can get double benefits from them. Such moisturisers are recommended for all days (irrespective of whether it is sunny or cloudy).

Again, experiment with various products and also with the amount you need to apply. What gives you best results is the best personal skin care recipe for you. However, if you have some kind of skin dilemma, it is best to consult your dermatologist before you actually start using any personal skin care products.



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