- INTERNAL ORGANS: Now before your eyes glaze over at the mere mention of your internal organs and what they have to do with skin health, hear me out. Listen to me very, very carefully here: They have EVERYTHING to do with skin health, radiance, pallor, and texture. Think of the skin and face as the body’s way to signal to us what we can’t see on the inside. Ancient culture have known this forever (you’ve seen those maps that link different areas of the face to the organ systems… yeah, that stuff is real). If you live in an industrialized western country and you’ve never deep cleaned your liver, let me let you in on a little secret…. Now’s the time. Without going into too much detail, the world we live in is full to the brim with toxins of all sorts. To be alive right now is to be eating, drinking, and breathing toxins to various degrees. No need to worry about it, though, because the body was artfully designed for this very purpose and includes the most sophisticated of detox apparatus, the star of which is the LIVER! When you clean out your liver, you restore its ability to keep you all sparkly and squeaky clean from the inside out.
There are entire classes and books and protocols dedicated to how keep your liver running at full capacity
Beautiful skin is just as much about what you need to stop doing as it is about what you need to add to your routine.
So you’re ready to improve your skin beyond your wildest dreams? Congratulations! Entire books and classes could be written about all the things we in modern society do that’s actually terrible for our skin, but below you’ll find three simple, easy things you can do right away that will have a noticeable effect on your skin. Want to relieve yourself of inflammation and acne? Reduce wrinkles and strengthen your glow? You’re in the right place. Read on, beauty!
- Colonics & enemas
Oh God. Yes, I’m going there. Right away. There is perhaps nothing more important to your skin’s health and elasticity than your colon and gut health. And the vast majority of us are unfortunately walking around with intestines loaded with compacted old fecal matter, parasites, and seriously who knows what else. SO. GROSS. If you’ve never completed a gut healing protocol, this most definitely includes you and your skin no doubt reflects it. When our gut isn’t healthy, it creates acne, inflammation, wrinkles, and dullness in the skin. In short, not cute.
If you’ve ever had a colonic, you know the levity you feel right away after it’s finished. Heavenly! You feel the pores on your face able to breathe again and there’s often a glow that comes along with it.
- Irritating your skin with harsh products (use only oil cleansing)
Look, I get it. We’ve been told for years and years that, when it comes to skincare, more is more. That we need to add the latest treatment or product to our arsenal. That if we just do X, like a magic bullet, our skin will be supermodel, airbrushed perfect. We’ve all tried the latest drugstore trend only to be used a few times and grow dust in the cabinet before being thrown away a year or two later. We’ve all dropped hundreds of dollars at the department store beauty counter and gone home hopeful for the first time in a long time that *maybe* just maybe this will be the magic bullet we’ve been waiting for, only to find it’s just more of the same, more chemicals, more fragrance, more inflammation, and more disappointment.
Here’s the answer to the beauty product cycle of hell: Stop it. Seriously, just stop. Stop confusing your skin, stop adding more and more to your regimen, stop irritating your skin. Most people don’t want to hear this, but with skincare, the medicine of subtraction and simplifying down to the bare essentials is really, really truly the beginning of getting control over your skin issues.
The best place to start is typically with your cleanser. Are you using a harsh, soapy cleanser? Or something with a lot of chemicals and irritating fragrance? When I was a teenager, I used to study beauty and fashion magazines like it was my job. I wanted to soak up every single morsel an apply it to my life so I could be the most beautiful side of myself. And, I distinctly remember reading and insane amount of misinformation in those magazines. The two biggest pieces of absolutely terrible advice were 1) your food has absolutely no impact on your skin and 2) you need detergents to cleanse because oil will absolutely, very definitely clog your pores and you need to stay away from it, especially if you have acne-prone skin.
So, all through my teens and 20s, I avoided anything with fat or oil like the plague. “Only non-comedogenic,” I’d say.
Oil-based cleansers are the best there is. They not only cleanse at a deeper level, but also provide deep nourishment and condition the skin, restoring and correcting its natural pH levels, which in turn soothes inflammation. Used correctly, they are the most gentle and thorough way to cleanse your skin while encouraging cellular regeneration.
- Supplements: MSM + Collagen
Once again, this is a huge topic that could span many blogs and books. Your diet is an extremely key piece of the overall skincare puzzle and few things matter as much as what you do and don’t put in your mouth. Over the next week I’ll be sharing more specifics about the type of diet I’ve used to give me the best skin of my life at my mid-30s, but I’d like to start with a couple heavy hitters that produce noticeable results within the first two weeks of regular use. Ready to meet your new best friends?!
Collagen. You’ve heard of it, maybe you’ve dabbled in adding it to your regimen here and there, but to get the most out of it, you need to commit to consuming A LOT of collagen. Without getting too scientific, collagen is one of the basic building blocks that give our body beautiful skin, hair, and nails as well as elasticit… it’s responsible for the elasticity in our neck and suppleness in all of our skin and joints. In short, don’t be running short on collagen! If you’re a modern woman (you are), you’re not getting anywhere near the amount of collagen your ancestors did for millennia and now once you get into your 30s, your body’s natural production of this magic substance slows way down, which results in looking aged, dry skin, slow hair/nail growth, and tension in the joints. Unless you supplement! I personally have a multipronged approach to making sure I’m constantly, every day loading my body with as much collagen as I can possibly stand. I mean, any chance I get, I’m sneaking it in there