Top 10 Tips Your Skin Will Love | Beauty Care slideshows | Well Being center

Five Servings Of Fruits And Veggies Per Day Is Good For Your Skin

Orange, yellow, red, and purple vegetables are particularly important. They contain lycopene, beta-cryptoxanthin, lutein, and alpha-carotene, all of which the skin uses to buffer and extend its supply sunlight-protective beta-carotene. It's possible to get too much of a good thing, of course. Eating more than a kilogram (about 2 pounds) of carrots in a single day will result in temporary orange tinting of the skin. Eating less sugar, getting concentrated omega-3 essential fatty acids in a fish oil or flaxseed oil supplement, and consuming less cooking oil will help your skin make more anti-inflammatory compounds than inflammation-producing compounds, and drinking at least 8 cups (about 2 liters, or 4 American-sized "glasses) of water every day will keep your skin from sagging from dehydration.

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Photo courtesy of Bongani by sxc.hu : www.sxc.hu/photo/1384705
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Beware Of Long-Term Tanning

There's general agreement that tanning, at least the kind of tanning you do in the sun or in a tanning bed, not the kind of tan you get from a bottle, is deadly for the skin. The sun's UV rays break down DNA in the skin. With defective DNA, the skin starts producing rough spots, red spots, gray spots, areas of dryness, and warts. Sun exposure also increases risk of common, disfiguring cancers such as basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. You can't look good if you have to get a chunk of skin cut off your nose because you got too much sun early in your life. Get some sun without sun protection every day so your skin can make vitamin D, but just 20 minutes a day is enough. Otherwise, sun block is always best, unless you live in northern Europe, Russia, or Canada, or you only get out at night. Even in winter, skin needs protection from the sun.

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healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/skin/a-top-dermatologists-5-best-anti-aging-tips-1

Use A Retinoid Cream

Retinoids are all the rage for rejuvenating aging skin. Once the principal tool of acne treatment, tretinoin topical is now available in safe, non-toxic doses not just to clear up blackheads, whiteheads, and pimples, but also for stimulating the growth of the skin from the basal layer up to restore color, tone, and texture. Unlike the retinoids prescribed for cystic acne, the new retinoid creams don't cause itching, peeling, or irritation, although it is still a good idea to use sun block during the day and restrict use of retinoids to night. You don't need a prescription for retinoid creams. They're even available online, and many users agree they are worth the extra price.

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Stick To A Daily Routine (Day And Night)

You've heard the well-worn admonition to get your beauty sleep. One of the most important things anyone can do to attain and maintain beautiful skin is to get 6 to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. Sleep is the time the brain sorts out the hormonal signals that control our appetites. Get your beauty rest and your brain will be better able to help you resist those treats that create the fat pads underneath your skin. Planning your day so you don't stress out is great for your skin, too. Wrinkles can be caused by inelastic, dried-out, sun-baked skin, but they can also be caused by muscular tension beneath your skin. Minimize the tension in your muscles and you'll reduce the wrinkles in your skin.

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Exercise Your Sags, Bags, And Wrinkles Away

Moderate amounts of exercise are great for your skin. Any kind of physical activity that gets your heart pumping increases the flow of oxygen and nutrients to your skin. Dull skin brightens up when you exercise. The targeted exercises known as "Facercise," created by Carole Maggio, can remove double chins, bags under the eyes, smile lines, crow's feet, and forehead creases, although you'll need to do them on a consistent basis, at least 10 minutes a day but no more than once a day. Taking a day off from Facercise occasionally is OK. Compulsive exercise, often a form of anorexia, isn't good for your skin or any other aspect of your health. But as long as you are exercising no more than 2 hours a day, you are careful about sun protection and staying hydrated, and you give your muscles a chance to recover after weight lifting or resistance routines, exercise is all good for your skin.

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Photo courtesy of Lori Groovy Green Livin by Flickr : www.flickr.com/photos/daveynin/4491798768/
www.allure.com/skin-care/anti-aging-skin/2012/8-surprising-anti-aging-skin-tips#slide=2

Sleep On Satin Or Silk

Most Americans are familiar with the song by the Moody Blues that goes "Nights in white satin, never reaching the end, Letters I've written, never meaning to send. Beauty I'd always missed with these eyes before. Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore." The usefulness of lying on satin sheets and pillow cases for getting your beauty rest is so well known some of our most popular artists sing about it. Not only will sleeping on satin help maintain your hair style, it will also reduce the strain on muscles, allowing more restful sleep, with less friction that cause tiny abrasions and reddening of your skin and less muscle tension that can result in wrinkling of your skin.

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Apply Sunscreen More Often

Sunscreen is a must whenever you go out into the sun, summer or winter, for more than about 20 minutes at a time, unless you are blessed with deeply pigmented brown or black skin. Remember that water washes most sunscreens away. You'll need to reapply your sun protection every time you dip into the pool, you get splashed with water for fun, or you get covered in perspiration. How much sunscreen is enough? The SPF factor tells you the number of hours, at least in theory, you can stay in the sun without getting burned if you can stay in the sun one hour with no protection at all. The darker the skin, the lower the SPF that is adequate for your skin's solar protection. If you live in a place like Cozumel or Miami or Phoenix or Brisbane, however, SPF 70 all summer long is best for protecting your skin.

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www.allure.com/skin-care/anti-aging-skin/2012/8-surprising-anti-aging-skin-tips#slide=3

Eat Antioxidant Rich Foods For Flawless Skin

We all know antioxidants are good for us, but sometimes we are not entirely sure how best to get them. In a phrase, fresher is better. The sooner you eat a fruit or vegetable after it has been picked, the greater its antioxidant content, and the better it will be for your skin. The more quickly you get fruits and vegetables into cold storage, the greater their antioxidant content. (This doesn't mean you have to refrigerate foods like tomatoes or bananas that stop ripening when they are refrigerated. Just eat them as soon as possible after purchase.) Raw is best, but steamed is almost as good. Frying vegetables, however, typically depletes their antioxidant content. That doesn't mean that you can't have a little fat in your meal. Consuming at least 5 grams (a teaspoon) of vegetable oil in a salad dressing helps your body absorb the skin-protective antioxidants found in all kinds of vegetables.

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health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/aging/anti-aging-tips/seven-anti-aging-tips5.htm

Start Hormone Replacement Therapy

There's no doubt that estrogen replacement therapy--for women, of course--can prevent the wrinkling and dryness that comes along with menopause. However, hormone replacement therapy doesn't correct existing skin problems, and there are certain risks that come along with any kind of hormone replacement therapy, namely increasing the risk of blood clots and cancer. So take the middle ground. If your primary concern is skin care, use the bioidentical hormone skin creams that help preserver your skin. Don't take pills or injections that can cause problems in the rest of your body. Unless you are buying skin care products made in China, you won't get actual estrogen or progesterone in a non-prescription skin cream, but bioidentical hormone replacement actually works in skin care. Be aware that when it comes to estrogen, "the real thing" in skin creams can make sun damaged skin even more wrinkled.

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health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/aging/anti-aging-tips/seven-anti-aging-tips9.htm

Massage Takes Away Stress... And Wrinkles

Massage is good for more than muscles. By relaxing the muscles beneath the skin, massage reduces the wrinkling of the skin. And an even better way to do massage for skin care purposes is with an ultrasound device. Low-energy, high-frequency ultrasound, the same technology used for ultrasound in the doctor's office but at a somewhat lower frequency (just 1 million vibrations per second), opens molecule-sized channels through the skin. These tiny channels that appear for just one ten-thousandth of a second are large enough to let molecules of skin care products penetrate the skin, but small enough to keep dust, viruses, and other disease-causing microorganisms out. If you are going to use a skin care product on unbroken skin, not for acne care, applying with an ultrasound massager is the way to go.