This blog is an extract from a Winter Skincare Surgery.
I’m going to go through a little bit about what the skin does, how it’s affected during the winter and what we can do to keep it looking lovely and radiant.
As a qualified holistic therapist, I know about the function of the skin and how important the skin is. I’m also passionate about skincare and how we can look after the whole of our body, let alone just our skin.
The skin is the largest organ of the body, with many, many functions. Primarily it allows things to enter our body and it also allows things to exit our body as well, through secretion and excretion (the removal of waste material from the body, such as urine). It protects us, it protects our organs. It regulates our temperature. Importantly, during this time of year, it helps us prevent moisture loss. Like I say it excretes things out of our body like sweat, for example, and it also absorbs.
Your skin absorbs whatever you put on it. So that might be medication, perfume, or skincare products. It produces vitamin D, which obviously at this time of the year, we’re limited in. If you can get out in the sun as much as possible, then that will help the natural production of vitamin D. But if you can’t, there are always vitamin D supplements, which are really beneficial at this time of year.
The skin is made up of three different layers. When you’re looking at skincare, you want to look at the top layer and the middle layer. I will talk more about those as we go through a skincare routine later on.
The outer layer is called the epidermis. It’s the layer that protects your skin, and this is the layer that we moisturize. It’s like putting your overcoat on to protect the outer layer of the skin.
The middle layer is the dermis, this is the layer we always want to work on with regards to our oils and our serum. It’s the layer that produces new skin cells, so you always want them nourished and hydrated, so that when they come through, they’re really as hydrated and as plump as possible. That is whats helping to reduce your fine lines and your wrinkles. So it’s this, the dermis, which is the layer that really needs nourishing, especially during the winter when were producing less natural oil on its own.
The deeper layer, the really deep layer between your skin and your muscles is what’s protecting your organs. It’s a shock absorber, but we’re not going to be focusing on that in our skincare routines.
On top of your epidermis, the outer layer, we have what we call an acid mantle. This has a natural pH level of between 4 to 5 pH balance.
The acid mantle is what protects your skin against bacteria. With all the hand gels that are being used at the moment, the high alcohol content and all the chemicals that are in them, hand gels are destroying your own acid mantle. It’s destructive, it’s disrupting your natural pH balance and it’s preventing the natural breakdown of bacteria. Obviously, hand gels are really being promoted at the moment to protect you, theyre actually stopping your body doing the function that it that it’s made for. So if you do need to use a sanitizer, which obviously at this time, in this current climate we do, then I’d recommend Neals Yard Remedies Natural Defense Hand Spray. Now it does have some alcohol content, but there’s no chemicals in there, the essential oils are natural antibacterial and antiseptic to kill off any germs. So rather than using the harsh chemicals of some of the gels that are around to protect your hands, I would recommend this, it’s 99.9%
proven to kill to kill nasty bacteria. But, if you can avoid it, as much as you can, obviously, that’s difficult in this current climate, and I’m not recommending you stop altogether, but the less that you use it, the more your body’s own natural defenses will kick in.
What affects the skin? Normally, the skin is affected by things like smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, any recreational drugs, any medication you take, caffeine, hormones, your diet affects the condition of your skin, and the weather affects the condition of your skin. In the winter, this is even more pronounced. You go out into cold weather, you go out into harsh winds, and your blood vessels will open up and your blood will rush to your skin to protect it.
Then you come back inside, you’ve got the central heating on, as you warm up, your blood vessels will dilate and take your blood away from the skin. So they’re expanding and contracting continually, which isn’t particularly healthy all the time. A central heated environment also dries out the skin. So your skin is really affected by the extreme conditions that you’re coming in and out of and it’s drying your skin out. Naturally during the winter, you are not producing as much oil naturally either. So you’ve got that internal dehydration going on as well as external. Your skin really needs extra care during the winter months to keep it looking radiant. Diet as well can affect the condition of our skin. During the winter, our diet isnt always as healthy. We go for those stodgy comfort foods, your body’s got to break that down, and maybe lack of exercise as well, you’re not getting that circulation system moving.
So there’s lots of factors there that are going to really affect your skin differently during the winter.
What can we do differently to look after our skin and protect our skincare during the winter?
My first top tip, just as with your clothes you have on extra layers to keep yourself warm and keep yourself protected. You need to layer your skincare on your skin as well to protect it. As we go through a skincare routine, I’m going to show you what I do and how I do that, and what the different layers do.
My next top tip is to use a cleanser that’s a lot lighter than maybe your normal cleanser, as Ive said your skin isn’t producing as many natural oils as it normally does, so you don’t want harsh chemicals on there. For cleansers, I would recommend something like a cleansing milk and a hydrating micellar cleanser, which is very much water based.
The frankincense cleansing melt, is also a very gentle cleanser. It’s an oil based cleanser that’s really gentle. So you want a much gentler cleanser during this time of year.
You actually want to exfoliate more during the winter as your skin is becoming duller . So you actually want to exfoliate more regularly than you do at any other time of year to get rid of those dead skin cells.
And you’re looking at a hydrating face mask, rather than a clay based face masks which draws out impurities and can dry out the skin a little bit. So your face mask, you’re going to look at a hydrating mask to layer and protect your skin.
So generally morning and night you always want to cleanse, you want to tone, you want to use an oil or a serum and you want to use a moisturizer.So you want to do that morning and night. Once a week, you also want to exfoliate and use a face mask.
Then as with any skincare routine, you’re going to use a toner. And now our toners don’t contain much alcohol, they’re really light, they’re mainly water based, your toner is the start of the hydrating process. But if you’re not happy using the toner at this time of year, if it’s a bit too harsh for you, then you could use one of the hydrating facial mists instead. So you’re really starting to hydrate your skin at that second stage of your skincare routine.
So, you’re going to cleanse you’re going to tone, then as you should be doing with the skincare routine all the time you’re going to add a serum or an oil. This goes through to the middle layer of the skin, the dermis, and this is the area of your skincare routine, the step of your skincare routine that’s going to hydrate your new skin cells that are coming through.
So you’re going to use an oil or if oils are too oily or greasy for you, if you want something a bit lighter that soaks in more quickly, then you’re going to use a serum.
Next as always comes your moisturiser. Your moisturiser is like your overcoat, your oil or your serum is your undercoat. And at this time of year, you’re not going to be going out without your topcoat on !
There’s two different moisturisers that I would recommend during the day. You may find that a thicker moisturizer is too much for you. So you might want a lighter moisturizer such as the frankincense intense moisturizer. This is a really really light product. So during the day you might want to go for a lighter moisturizer such as the frankincense intense moisturizer that’s quite light. Or if you’re happy with a thick moisturizer or your moisturizer you want to use at night, you could go for something a lot thicker, like the nourishing moisturizer or the frankincense intense lift moisturizer that’s thicker and that’s going to be more nourishing so you could use that at night.
If you want to use it during the day you can do as well.
At this time of year for your daytime routine, I would then add a third layer of skincare. This is going to be your scarf if you like and your protection and I’d go with a balm. I’d go with the Wild Rose Beauty Balm now if you’re not sure about a balm, it’s a more of an oil based product. It’s going to create a layer of protection on your skin. Especially when you’re outside in the cold harsh winter weather. You’ve got that extra layer of protection that’s just creating a barrier on your skin for the harsh weather.
Not forgetting as well, your eye cream. We don’t ever recommend using your face moisturizer around your eyes because it’s too heavy. The tissues around your eyes are very very delicate.
It’s like tissue paper and it absorbs the products that you put on your skin. So traditional face moisturizers are too heavy and you actually find that they collect in the bag area under your eyes, which results in making your eyes puffy which is completely defeating the object of an eye cream. Your eye cream is a lot lighter in texture.
So that’s your general morning and night routine, cleanse, tone serum or oil, moisturizer and if you’re going out during the day, you want to add that extra layer of protection. At night you can either use a thicker moisturizer or you could use a hydrating face mask.
So once a week you want to exfoliate, exfoliation gets rid of your dead skin cells. So while your skin is dull at this time of year, you’re really getting rid of those dead skin cells. It’s increasing your circulation and encouraging your skin to reproduce.
The buffing also encourages your skin to get rid of toxins. Again, because your skin’s not producing as many oils you want a lighter exfoliator so I’d be looking at the polishes. Rose hydrating polish is a really light polish, or the Palmarosa facial polish is also another light product. And then rather than using the clay mask which draws out impurities, I would go for a more hydrating mask to re hydrate and re nourish your skin. So we’ve either got the frankincense firming mask, now again, this is a mask that you can use overnight. It’s a gel base mask that you can wear overnight, absolutely no problem at all.
Or as we spoke about how protecting the Wild Rose Beauty Balm is, you could actually have a really good layer of beauty balm on overnight to really hydrate the skin and nourish your skin overnight as well. So they’re my top two recommendations for masks at this time of year and not forgetting our hands.
Our hands are outside they’re exposed again, they’re coming into centrally heated rooms that are drying out your skin generally so yeah, the whole of your body, your hands the whole of your body. I’d use a body polish to exfoliate regularly on your hands again, if you normally use a hand cream which I hope you do, I’d go an extra layer on your hand cream as well. We’d have to have hand polishes or you could use a body polish to exfoliate. Then I would go an extra layer on your hands at the moment and I’d use frankincense intense hand serum.
Now the frankincense range is the only range that we have our hand serum in. So you’ve got your hand serum which you’d put on underneath your hand creamto really keep your hands nice and soft and nourished. Not forgetting your lips, you can you can use a gentle scrub on your lips, then moisturise with a lip balm. We’ve got a couple of lip balms, we’ve got the lovely Bee Lovely lip balm or again our multitasking Wild Rose Beauty Balm you could put that on as a moisturizer and a protection for your lips. So I think that that is everything that I wanted to tell you about winter skincare today.
So my main top tips are Layer, Layer, Layer, Layer Layer for extra protection on your skin. Use a gentle cleanser and exfoliate more regularly and use a hydrating mask rather than a clay based mask.