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Anti Aging Skin Care » How to Prevent Skin Damage?
How to Prevent Skin Damage?
Do you believe that you lead a healthy lifestyle, eat the right stuff, exercise adequately and look after your skin? Stop and take a closer look. Are you doing things that could accidentally damage your skin? These silent killers may be the reason your appearance is lackluster despite of your best efforts.
- Not drinking enough water:
This is perhaps the most repetitive advice and the least followed. Your body requires at least two litres of water a day to remove toxins from your system, partly through your kidneys and partly through your skin. If you lack this, toxin build-up will have an effect on your skin as well as your general health, making you tired and dull. Keep that bottle filled with water on your desk, and drink!
- Picking your pimples:
We do it unconsciously, when nervous or just as a habit. Pimples do not harm your face permanently. What makes your scars untreatable is your picking, pinching and playing with them -- scars so deep that even dermatologist cannot get rid of them completely. Prevention is the best treatment, so stop touching your face and start proper anti-acne treatment.
- Shaving the wrong way:
Women who make use of razors for body hair should beware -- shaving against the direction of hair growth (that is from below upwards) causes ingrown hair, damaged follicles and introduces infections into your hair roots that can cause painful recurrent boils. To prevent the damage of your skin shave only in the direction of hair growth.
- Not using sunscreen on a hill station:
If you have gone for a high altitude holiday and the cold weather makes you believe you don't need sun protection, then you are wrong. At higher altitudes, there are few layers of atmosphere between you and the sun to filter UV rays, so your ultra-violet exposure increases. You need your sunscreen even more!
- Taking hormone supplements for body building:
It is not just the men, even women who want a 'toned' look promptly take DHEA (DeHydroEpiAndrosterone) supplements. These are recognized to cause acne even on normal skin, and flare up existing acne. Protein supplements are fine though, and essentially help your skin.
- Not reapplying moisture / sunscreen:
Are you the one who slaps on lotion in the morning and after that spend the next two hours at work without a further thought about your skin? Air-conditioned offices sap moisture from your skin in a couple of hours. In addition, no sunscreen retains its effect beyond two hours. Apply sunscreen regularly, at least during your lunch break, after a quick face wash.
- Waxing your upper lip / facial hair:
A nightmare for your delicate facial skin -- the strain causes tiny microscopic bleeding into your hair follicles that, over time heal with scarring and end up causing roughness and pigmentation that is extremely hard to treat.
- Going on a 'proteins only' diet:
Fad diets withdraw your skin (and body) of essential nutrients. You need vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and a variety of micronutrients that a single food diet cannot give you. Have a discussion with a professional dietician before embarking on drastic diet plans and get them to prescribe the appropriate nutritional supplements.
- Late night partying:
Your body sleeps at night, but your skin does not. Most of its repair and renewal work is done while you are in bed. Withdrawing it of the nightly eight hours of rejuvenation will obviously leave it looking dull and tired. Good sleep is necessary for good skin!
- Stressing out:
Stress can been seen after years on your heart and blood pressure, but almost immediately on your skin. So pay attention to your skin when it is trying to tell you something -- patchy complexion, blemishes, dullness, itchy redness, rashes appearing at periods of high stress, acne flare-ups -- all point to unwarranted high levels of stress. Try yoga, meditation, exercise or whatever is your best stress buster.
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