3 “Secrets” to Clear Skin (No More Acne!)

Not sur­pris­ingly, the arti­cles I wrote on get­ting flaw­less skin and ban­ish­ing dark cir­cles con­tain much of the same infor­ma­tion you would need for cur­ing acne (I rec­om­mend you read them first if you haven’t already ). I would say about 80% of the “clear skin recipe” is diet, the rest is genetic poten­tial, exer­cise, skin care, and herbal assis­tance. And for acne, there is one more spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion, and that is hor­mones.

{HOW TO GET RID OF YOUR ACNE IN 3 STEPS}

Get­ting rid of your acne comes down to these 3 things:

• Bal­anc­ing your hor­mones in order to bal­ance sebum (oil) production
• Eat­ing a a qual­ity diet to min­i­mize waste prod­ucts in your body and bring more nutri­ents to your organs (includ­ing your skin)
• Keep­ing to a good skin care rou­tine to pre­vent dead skin cell build-up and acne bac­te­ria growth

{STEP #1: HOW TO BALANCE YOUR HORMONES FOR CLEAR SKIN}

ELIMINATE THE GREAT PRETENDER
Ever notice how women tend to get a pim­ple or two (or three…) around period-time? This has to do with an increase in estro­gen, the hor­mone that is closely tied with the con­di­tion of our skin. Now, if you keep com­ing in con­tact with a com­pound that pre­tends to be estro­gen, what is going to hap­pen? Quite a bit. These arti­fi­cial estro­gens (xenoe­stro­gens) in our envi­ron­ment can cause acne, weight gain, thy­roid dys­func­tion, repro­duc­tive prob­lems, and a whole host of issues. Your expo­sure to these com­pounds can be greatly reduced by:

• Drink­ing out of glass instead of plas­tic (do not use coated stain­less water bot­tles either, as they con­tain xenoe­stro­gens in the lining)
• Using glass or stain­less un-lined food containers
• Using nat­ural skin and care prod­ucts with­out parabens, syn­thetic ingre­di­ents, and arti­fi­cial preservatives
• Eat­ing organic foods to avoid pes­ti­cides con­tain­ing xenoestrogens
• Drink­ing and bathing in qual­ity fil­tered water to remove xenoe­stro­gens from the water (in my per­sonal well-researched opin­ion, I sug­gest you do not buy Brita, Pur, etc., they are cheaply made and fil­ter poorly)
• Using phys­i­cal sun­blocks instead of chem­i­cal sunblocks
• Using non-hormonal birth con­trol methods

MAKE USE OF HERBS
Per­son­ally, in addi­tion to elim­i­nat­ing unnec­es­sary plas­tic, I took a hor­mone bal­anc­ing herbal blend called “Restore” from Herbally Grounded to help remove the arti­fi­cial estro­gen from my sys­tem and nat­u­rally reg­u­late my hor­mones. I took the sup­ple­ment for a total of 6 months, and it com­pletely got me back on track. I highly rec­om­mend it — their shop­ping cart is not up right now, but you can call them and they’ll ship to you if you’re not local. They say to take Restore con­tin­u­ously, but you only need to take cer­tain herbs for a select period of time to get your body back on track, and then you go back on if/when needed. Kinda like cycling steroids haha.

Many women also have a lot of suc­cess with chaste tree berry (also known as vitex), which is widely used for female hor­mone bal­ance. The herb increases prog­es­terone lev­els, which pre­vents estrogen-related breakouts.

I also per­son­ally rec­om­mend Dr. Bob’s Drug­less Guide to Bal­ance Female Hor­mones — it’s a really help­ful book about get­ting a good under­stand­ing of hor­mones and how to keep them bal­anced nat­u­rally. Whether it’s acne, dry skin, menopause, men­strual issues, it’s all hor­mone related, and it’s impor­tant that we under­stand what fac­tors influ­ence our hor­mones and how to bal­ance them ourselves.

EAT THE RIGHT FATS
Prostaglandins are fats that act like hor­mones, con­trol­ling skin and mus­cle con­di­tion, as well as inflam­ma­tion — which is why it is imper­a­tive that you are con­sum­ing qual­ity fats at a proper amount in order to pro­duce ben­e­fi­cial prostaglandins respon­si­ble for clear skin. Incor­po­rate these 4 sim­ple things into your daily rou­tine:

• Do not con­sume “hydro­genated’ oils or fats ~ these trans-fats harm your heart, waist­line, and skin
• Con­sume more Omega 3 fats in the form of wild-caught fish, fish oil, and organic grass-fed/truly free-range ani­mal prod­ucts (i.e. eggs, yogurt, kefir) ~ flax seeds may or may not be okay for you
• Do not eat fast food, creamy salad dress­ings (unless you make it your­self), and fried foods ~ these will throw off your hor­mone bal­ance by pro­duc­ing the “bad” prostaglandins that pro­duce acne and inflammation
• Eat more fresh organic fruit and green smooth­ies to bring more nutri­ents to your skin and keep your organs run­ning smoothly

The only fats I con­sume are Carl­son Labs fish oil in lemon, and organic first-cold-pressed olive oil. The foods I eat that con­tain fat are grass-fed yogurt or kefir, grass-fed buffalo/beef (1–2 times per week), and raw fish (very rarely, maybe once per month or less). I do not con­sume any other ani­mal prod­ucts — no milk, no pork, no chicken, no but­ter, no cheese, etc. Grass-fed yogurt or kefir and grass-fed buf­falo and beef con­tain high amounts of CLA, an extremely healthy fat that pro­motes healthy weight and body fat per­cent­age (and even helps over­weight peo­ple lose body fat) and does not neg­a­tively effect our hor­mone bal­ance. What WILL effect your hor­mones in a bad way is con­ven­tional ani­mal prod­ucts, where the ani­mals are treated poorly, injected with hor­mones to make them grow faster and larger, and given antibi­otics to treat their numer­ous dis­eases due to unsan­i­tary con­di­tions. When the ani­mals are killed, they are sub­jected to incred­i­ble stress and abuse, caus­ing their bod­ies to pump stress hor­mones into their body, and you end up con­sum­ing this array of hor­mones, which then screw up your body’s nat­ural bal­ance and can result in acne. Know your source, or don’t eat meat.

BE WARY OF EXCESS PLANT ESTROGEN
Another impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion is nuts, seeds, and soy. I do not con­sume nuts, I eat seeds very rarely, and once in a great while I will eat natto (fer­mented soy­beans). I was a 100% raw food­ist for over 2 years (and vegan for a total of 5 years), where I gained 20 pounds (!) from includ­ing nuts, seeds, avo­ca­dos, and nut but­ters in my diet. Not only are nuts and seeds high in fat, they’re high in estro­gen, so it’s a double-whammy of prob­lems (we all know excess estro­gen causes weight gain). Flax oil is also high estro­gen, and I avoid it because I would rather eat freshly ground flax seeds and not con­sume a highly con­cen­trated estro­genic oil. If nuts and seeds do not have a neg­a­tive effect on you, by all means, keep eat­ing them! But then, you wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily be read­ing this if you didn’t have acne or reg­u­lar blemishes…so give the no-nuts/no-seeds/no-soy thing a try and see if it helps. You can always go back to hav­ing a small hand­ful when the urge strikes.

I also want to note that dur­ing my time as a raw vegan, my skin was not fair­ing well — I would always have blem­ishes on my fore­head, and some­times even on my lower back or chest. It was gross. So I did a TON of research, decided to stop eat­ing nuts and seeds, and replace them with more fruit and greens. I went back down to my nor­mal weight in 2 months, and my skin com­pletely cleared up in just under 1 month. Raw food is becom­ing quite pop­u­lar, and it can be a won­der­ful diet, but make sure that if you do it, you do exten­sive research and achieve some bal­ance. For me, a vari­a­tion of Dr. Doug Graham’s 80/10/10 works well and I nat­u­rally shift into this diet in the sum­mer months — I sim­ply include more greens than his rec­om­mended amount, and do not eat super-sugary hybrid fruits like bananas and pineapples.

On a side­note, there has been research done on how nuts have heart pro­tec­tive qual­i­ties. I agree that they do, but so does eat­ing healthy in gen­eral, as well as con­sum­ing omega 3 fats from fish, krill, and grass-fed eggs/kefir/yogurt. If you have a prob­lem with estro­gen and its effect­ing your health and skin, then it’s worth it to switch your fat sources from nuts and seeds to some­thing else.

{STEP #2: HELP GET RID OF ACNE BY EATING A QUALITY DIET}

FOOD BASICS FOR CLEAR SKIN
Eat­ing a good diet is essen­tial for every organ to work prop­erly — you can­not have flaw­less skin with­out the right foods (and if you see peo­ple with acne-free skin who eat crap, that does not mean they are healthy inside, nor does it mean their skin will stay nice for long on their poor diet).

Now, what I eat con­sists of really sim­ple, really tasty, organic, unprocessed foods. I have a bal­anced mix of cooked and raw foods from both plant and ani­mal sources…

• If I eat rice, it’s brown, not white. Brown rice has far more nutri­ents (includ­ing B vit­a­mins, great for skin and stress) and far more fiber.
• If I eat dairy, it’s fer­mented and grass-fed, not milk or cheese. Fer­mented dairy is vir­tu­ally lactose-free, and con­tains ben­e­fi­cial bac­te­ria that help you absorb nutri­ents. Over­all great for skin.
• If I eat grains, it’s only rice. I espe­cially avoid wheat because it is well-linked to inflam­ma­tion, acne, and diges­tive issues.
• If I eat fruit or veg­eta­bles, they are organic, either fresh or flash frozen. Non-organic pro­duce con­tains xenoe­stro­gens and harm­ful pes­ti­cide residue (can’t be washed off – it’s in the flesh), which is not a recipe for good skin.
• If I want some­thing sweet, I eat fruit or a fruit smoothie. I do not eat hybridized, seed­less fruit — they are too high in sugar, too low in fiber, and can spike your insulin…which results in an inflam­ma­tory response that leads to skin dis­or­ders like acne.
• If a recipe calls for “sugar” (which causes inflam­ma­tion which can lead to acne) I sub­sti­tute it with raw, unfil­tered honey, ste­via (the green pow­der, not the refined white pow­der), fresh apple­sauce, or molasses, depend­ing on the recipe.
• If I eat meat, it’s organic, grass-fed, local from peo­ple I know, and/or wild. If you can’t get meat like this, buy it online from a rep­utable farmer (do your research), or don’t buy it at all. It’s that important.

One excit­ing thing to note is that I read a study 2 or 3 years ago about sev­eral sci­en­tists vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent cul­tures and tribes to exam­ine the qual­ity of the people’s skin. They found that civ­i­liza­tions that did not con­sume many starches and “white” food (like pota­toes and white bread), and instead ate a lot of veg­eta­bles, greens, fruits, and meat (when avail­able) had no inci­dents of acne among them.

The com­mon thread with these foods is that they do not spike your insulin, which means they are non-inflammatory, which also means they will not con­tribute to acne. The less inflam­ma­tion you have going on in your gut, the less acne (and other skin dis­or­ders) you will have.

DON’T WORRY – TAKE IT SLOW
I do not rec­om­mend you make a dras­tic change from your cur­rent eat­ing habits. Go about it slowly to give your body time to adjust. This way, you will also not get thrown into a sort of “detox” sce­nario where you break­out more, get headaches, cold or flu-like symp­toms, etc. For instance, if you cur­rently buy con­ven­tional meat, switch to grass-fed. If you buy con­ven­tional pro­duce, go organic more often than not. Use free-range eggs from happy hens. Switch from cow’s milk to goat’s milk, or get off dairy milk entirely and go for rice milk or almond milk. See what I mean? Small changes first. They add up after awhile, and before you know it, your skin will be clear, you’ll have more energy, your body odor will be weaker or nonex­is­tent (I never have to wear deodorant…I just don’t stink!), and you will get sick less often.

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite cook­books because it can be frus­trat­ing fig­ur­ing out what you’re going to eat when you’re not used to eat­ing cer­tain things. I often make recipes from these three books, but I sub­sti­tute cer­tain foods where I need to (for exam­ple, if a recipe calls for pork, I’ll use grass-fed beef or buf­falo instead; if a recipe calls for wheat, I use rice or omit it alto­gether): Com­plete Guide to Mac­ro­bi­otic Cook­ing by Ave­line Kushi, The Eat-Clean Diet Cook­book by Tosca Reno, and The Eat-Clean Diet for Fam­ily & Kids by Tosca Reno. I make some­thing out of these books almost every day (along with my essen­tial rice cooker…love that thing, I even reviewed it). I have tons of raw food “cook” books on my shelf, but many use a but­t­load of nuts, seeds, and soy sauce (tamari) in their recipes, so I often don’t use them. My raw food meals aren’t fancy — it’s basi­cally me wash­ing the fruit, then eat­ing it; or me chop­ping up fruit and greens and putting them in the Vita­mix for 30 sec­onds (and I’ll refer to Vic­to­ria Boutenko’s Green for Life for some yummy green smoothie recipes).

And just a side­note, it’s impor­tant that you stick to your clean way of eat­ing and hor­mone bal­anc­ing pro­gram until your acne clears up. Then, occa­sion­ally, if the urge strikes you to have a piece of cheese­cake or what­ever, then do it. Hav­ing clear skin is really nice, but so is living.

TAKE EXTRA CARE OF YOUR LIVER
The liver is an enor­mously impor­tant organ. It’s our built-in fil­ter, and it also pro­vides us with clear skin should we choose to have it. A well-functioning liver will help you achieve acne-free skin. The dietary rec­om­men­da­tions listed so far will auto­mat­i­cally be help­ful to your liver, and you will start see­ing results in your skin. How­ever, if you are still expe­ri­enc­ing some acne after 3 months of imple­ment­ing the changes men­tioned in this arti­cle, then incor­po­rate these power tools:

• Milk this­tle ~ very liver pro­tec­tive, excel­lent in glyc­erin tinc­ture form or added to smooth­ies or tea (this is a seed, there­fore it’s estro­genic, but it should be very help­ful and not cause addi­tional acne)
• Dan­de­lion ~ pro­motes opti­mal func­tion­ing of the liver; drink as a tea, add to a green smoothie, or add it to soup, stew, or eat it as a side dish
• Bur­dock root ~ per­haps my favorite herb; high in min­er­als; treats skin and liver dis­or­ders; tastes great in soups, stews, and teas, and can also be taken as a tincture
• Turmeric ~ very liver pro­tec­tive, anti-inflammatory, too many ben­e­fits to list!; sim­ply sprin­kle the spice onto your meals; I also take Gaia Turmeric Supreme as a back-up
• Lemon water ~ a sim­ple lit­tle drink, have it in the morn­ing before break­fast to give a lit­tle boost to your diges­tion and liver
• Herbal tea ~ my favorite herbal tea for help­ing to clean up the blood and diges­tive sys­tem is Yogi Tea’s Detox; if you don’t have the time or money to get some of those herbs listed, go with this for now because it’s easy, cheap, and effec­tive (if I ate poorly and am get­ting some blem­ishes, I’ll drink this 2–3 times per day for 2–3 days, and my skin is all clear again)

You will also want to avoid ingest­ing alco­hol — it’s not a good idea to drink heav­ily when you need your liver to be in good shape. A glass of wine or sake here and there is fine, and bet­ter yet, avoid the hard alco­hol altogether.

Oh, and if you see any­thing online about a liver-gallbladder flush, please don’t do it. Not only has it been dis­proven as an effec­tive cleanse, but I know TWO peo­ple per­son­ally (friends, not just heard-it-through-the-grapevine) who had their gall­stones tested by inde­pen­dent lab­o­ra­to­ries and they were not gall­stones at all. Use your com­mon sense on this one — drink­ing a crapload of oil and Epsom salts is in no way going to be good for your liver. Eat­ing well and mak­ing use of some great herbs and spices are more than enough to cleanse your liver and keep it in great shape. You don’t have to go extremes.

OTHER THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Eat­ing this way is not dif­fi­cult or expensive.

You know what’s dif­fi­cult? Look­ing at the mir­ror and being upset that you have acne.

You know what’s expen­sive? All those acne creams and potions that cost $60 a bot­tle and fail to treat the real problem.

If you really want clear skin, you’ll make this work. You’ll find good, inex­pen­sive sources for what you need, like online shop­ping, farmer’s mar­kets, co-ops, or even grow­ing a lit­tle gar­den. You’ll make your food in advance and bring it with you to school or work. You’ll say no when some­one offers you some high-fructose-corn-syrup-filled treat, or a fast food lunch. You’ll ignore the peo­ple around you who think your new way of eat­ing and doing things is dumb, picky, a hippy thing, or any­thing else…because, hey, you’re the one with awe­some skin and a healthy body. Who’s a dumb picky hippy now, huh?

It took me about 2 years to get my fam­ily to really read the ingre­di­ents and care about the food they’re buy­ing. A lot of times, peo­ple just don’t real­ize what’s in their food, because in their mind, why would any­one use a bag of chem­i­cals in that box of cook­ies? Well, you wouldn’t, but food man­u­fac­tur­ers would. The other bump to over­come is think­ing it doesn’t really mat­ter, and that being “picky” about your food isn’t nec­es­sary. My answer is always this: “I wouldn’t have to be ‘picky’ if food was real food. I wouldn’t have to be ‘picky’ if other peo­ple didn’t try feed­ing GMO corn to cows and putting chem­i­cals on the plants I want to eat.”

Eat­ing well is totally worth it, because slather­ing on a cream to cover up the under­ly­ing prob­lem is not going to solve any­thing. You are the only one respon­si­ble for your health, and you can choose to be healthy with beau­ti­ful skin.

{STEP #3: BANISH ACNE WITH THE POWER OF GOOD SKIN CARE}

After the first two steps, this one is gonna seem like a cake­walk. First and fore­most, skin­care depends on your skin type. You can have oily skin with acne, dry skin with acne, mature or young skin with acne…you name it. Using prod­ucts that cater to your skin type while pre­vent­ing and heal­ing blem­ishes is very important.

I always advo­cate going with nat­ural prod­ucts. The rea­son is pretty sim­ple: nature pro­vides an abun­dance of effec­tive tools for our skin, your body knows exactly what to do when in con­tact with nat­ural ingre­di­ents, and it can do no harm unless you’re aller­gic or it’s obvi­ously a toxic plant (which you wouldn’t use or see in a skin care prod­uct any­way). The basic rule is: if you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin. What­ever you slather on is going to find its way into your blood­stream and through your organs, so make sure it’s good stuff.

I love this book!

If you want more infor­ma­tion on skin treat­ments, using your hands to heal your face, “skin fast­ing,” and treat­ments for spe­cific types of acne, I very highly rec­om­mend Chizu Saeki’s book, enti­tled The Japan­ese Skin­care Rev­o­lu­tion. It’s one of THE best books I’ve read on skin­care — her take on the skin is refresh­ing and pos­i­tive, and she pro­vides a wide vari­ety of spe­cific solu­tions that are really easy and effec­tive. I’ll prob­a­bly do a post or YouTube video on this book soon (I just did one on Ama­zon), that’s how much I love it.

I’m going to rec­om­mend prod­ucts for each skin type from sev­eral nat­ural brands that I am most famil­iar with and have per­son­ally used, or still use. (Please note that I am not affil­i­ated with any of the brands listed here, and I am never com­pen­sated for any rec­om­men­da­tion or review that I give). For more infor­ma­tion and links to my 2009 “Top 10″ nat­ural brands list, click here (opens in a new win­dow). So let’s get to it!

ALL SKIN TYPES
Makeup: Since you want to get rid of acne, it’s impor­tant you’re not clog­ging your pores with makeup gunk every­day, because you’re not help­ing your skin get any bet­ter by doing that. Use a min­eral makeup — it will not look cakey or dry on oily skin, but for dry skin, be sure you are very mois­tur­ized before apply­ing and mix the min­er­als with your mois­tur­izer for a creamy appli­ca­tion. The min­er­als will also ben­e­fit your skin and allow it to breathe. My favorite min­eral brands are Alima and All Nat­ural Face because they do not add any parabens or bis­muth oxy­chlo­ride like many other pop­u­lar min­eral makeup brands. If you pre­fer creamier foun­da­tions or stick foun­da­tion, try Vapour.

Makeup Remover: Use olive oil or coconut oil on a cot­ton pad or ball, and swipe it over your makeup. It’s cheap and VERY effec­tive — it gets off all the makeup in just one go.

Treat: A great way to treat blem­ishes is with tea tree oil. This is my favorite go-to treat­ment. It’s non-drying and is just as effec­tive as ben­zoyl per­ox­ide. Witch hazel toner and white wil­low bark extract (they get sal­i­cylic acid and aspirin from white wil­low) are both very effec­tive at pre­vent­ing and heal­ing blem­ishes, and these ingre­di­ents are in some of the prod­ucts I rec­om­mend. You can also try a blem­ish treat­ment stick from Talu­lah or Evan Healy. In addi­tion, use home­made masks (I’ve pro­vided a few recipes so far, more to come!), cot­ton lotion masks (see The Japan­ese Skin­care Rev­o­lu­tion), and try masks from the nat­ural brands I’ve listed here. You can use masks sev­eral times per week to help heal and re-balance your skin.

Heal: For acne marks, apply vit­a­min E oil (make sure it’s not mixed with other oils) to the spots. You can also apply fresh lemon juice to the areas every day to lighten them faster — just squeeze a few drops of lemon juice onto your fin­ger and dab on the dis­col­ored areas, and leave it on. Organic milk and yogurt will also help lighten acne marks — sim­ply spoon some onto your whole face or dis­col­ored areas and leave on for 5–10 min­utes, 3 times per week.

OILY SKIN
You are actu­ally quite lucky. Oily skin tends to wrin­kle less, and you may think your oili­ness causes acne, but that’s not the case. The oil is very pro­tec­tive, you just need to make sure that dead skin cells and bac­te­ria don’t com­bine with your oil to cre­ate pim­ples. Eat­ing well, eat­ing the right fats, and using the right skin­care will all ensure that you do not pro­duce too much oil and will improve your over­all skin condition.

Cleanse: In the morn­ing, wash with water and per­haps a toner, like cham­pagne, or a laven­der or orange blos­som hydrosol. You don’t want to over-wash your face, as you’ll only make it more oily. At night, use a gen­tle, non-drying cleanser, such as 100% Pure Organic Cran­berry Cleans­ing Foam, Talu­lah Gera­nium Sap Puri­fy­ing Cleanser.

Exfo­li­ate: Exfo­li­ate 1–3 times per week with a gen­tle scrub that does not con­tain any harsh beads, such as ground up nuts or seeds. Exfo­li­at­ing reg­u­larly will remove any dead skin cells still on the sur­face, which is a breed­ing ground for acne bac­te­ria. It will also refine your pores. Use some­thing like 100% Pure Pineap­ple Facial Scrub, Talu­lah Vanilla Bean Reju­ve­nat­ing Cleanser, or the very pop­u­lar lemon­grass Exfo­li­ate Foam­ing Cleanser by Suki. If your skin is also sen­si­tive, try rub­bing the scrub between your palms for a bit to soften, and add a lit­tle more water or a few drops of your reg­u­lar cleanser if needed.

Mois­tur­ize: Use light­weight serums and oils. Using oil on oily skin is actu­ally a good thing — grape­seed oil, rose­hip oil, and olive oil, for instance, are excel­lent mois­tur­iz­ers and are help­ing in get­ting your oily skin to pro­duce less oil. Excel­lent serums include 100% Pure Aqua Boost Hydrate Serum, Talu­lah Oma Face Serum No. 1, Evan Healy Rose­hip Treat­ment Facial Serum, or Liv­ing Nature Bal­anc­ing Day Lotion. At night, use your serum/oil and fol­low up with a cream filled with potent antiox­i­dants and skin clear­ing ingredients.

DRY & COMBINATION SKIN
Incor­po­rat­ing the right fats into your diet and using good mois­tur­iz­ers will help re-balance your skin and pro­tect it from flak­ing, wrin­kling, and blemishes.

Cleanse: In the morn­ing, wash with water and just use a rose or orange blos­som hydrosol to wipe your face clean. You don’t want to over-wash your face, as you’ll only make it more dry. At night, use a gen­tle, non-drying cleanser, such as 100% Pure Laven­der Honey Cleans­ing Foam, Talu­lah Gera­nium Sap Puri­fy­ing Cleanser, or Talu­lah Moon­flower Cleans­ing Balm.

Exfo­li­ate: Exfo­li­ate 1–2 times per week with a gen­tle scrub that does not con­tain any harsh beads, such as ground up nuts or seeds. Exfo­li­at­ing reg­u­larly will remove any dead skin cells still on the sur­face, which is a breed­ing ground for acne bac­te­ria. Don’t exfo­li­ate too often, it will make your skin more dry. Use some­thing like 100% Pure Pineap­ple Facial Scrub, Talu­lah Vanilla Bean Reju­ve­nat­ing Cleanser, or the very pop­u­lar lemon­grass Exfo­li­ate Foam­ing Cleanser by Suki. If your skin is sen­si­tive, rub the scrub between your palms for a bit to soften, and/or add a few drops of your reg­u­lar cleanser if needed.

Mois­tur­ize: Use light­weight serums and oils, and at night, include a cream as well. Using oil is actu­ally a good thing — grape­seed oil, rose­hip oil, and olive oil, for instance, are excel­lent mois­tur­iz­ers and ease dry skin much bet­ter than a syn­thetic drug­store mois­tur­izer. Excel­lent serums include 100% Pure Aqua Boost Hydrate Serum, Talu­lah Oma Face Serum No. 1, or Evan Healy Rose­hip Treat­ment Facial Serum. For a night cream, try Talu­lah Prim­rose Calm­ing Face Serum or any one of 100% Pure creams. I have also found that apply­ing coconut oil (I use Trop­i­cal Tra­di­tions coconut oil because they use tra­di­tional meth­ods and pack­age in glass, not plas­tic) to my face works won­ders and also pre­vents black­heads due to the lau­ric acid. It’s one of the few things that leaves my skin truly mois­tur­ized and doesn’t clog any pores.

MATURE SKIN
Fight­ing wrin­kles and acne at the same time can be strug­gle, and what’s going to help you out more than skin care is your dietary choices. Step #1 and #2 are extremely impor­tant for you.

Cleanse: In the morn­ing, wash with water and just use a rose, laven­der, or orange blos­som hydrosol to wipe your face clean. You don’t want to over-wash your face. At night, use a gen­tle, non-drying cleanser, such as 100% Pure Laven­der Honey Cleans­ing Foam, Talu­lah Gera­nium Sap Puri­fy­ing Cleanser, or Talu­lah Moon­flower Cleans­ing Balm.

Exfo­li­ate: Exfo­li­ate 1–2 times per week with a gen­tle scrub that does not con­tain any harsh beads, such as ground up nuts or seeds. Exfo­li­at­ing reg­u­larly will remove any dead skin cells still on the sur­face, which is a breed­ing ground for acne bac­te­ria. Exfo­li­ate 1 or 2 times per week if you have dry skin, and 2–3 if you have oily skin. Try 100% Pure Pineap­ple Facial Scrub, Talu­lah Vanilla Bean Reju­ve­nat­ing Cleanser, or the very pop­u­lar lemon­grass Exfo­li­ate Foam­ing Cleanser by Suki. If your skin is sen­si­tive, rub the scrub between your palms for a bit to soften, and/or add a few drops of your reg­u­lar cleanser if needed.

Mois­tur­ize: Use light­weight serums and oils, and at night, include a cream as well. Using oil on your skin is actu­ally a good thing — grape­seed oil, rose­hip oil, coconut oil, and olive oil, for instance, are excel­lent mois­tur­iz­ers and pen­e­trate deeply to assist your skin. Excel­lent serums include 100% Pure Aqua Boost Hydrate Serum, Talu­lah Oma Face Serum No. 1, or Evan Healy Rose­hip Treat­ment Facial Serum. For a night cream, try Talu­lah Ver­vain Flower Heal­ing Com­plex or any one of 100% Pure anti-aging, antiox­i­dant creams. Use your night-time mois­tur­izer to do Tanaka’s anti-aging facial mas­sage to elim­i­nate sag­ging and wrin­kles, and improve skin tone and texture.

{THAT’S IT!}

I know this was a super-long post, but I hope you found it use­ful and will start incor­po­rat­ing some great changes into your diet and skin care rou­tine to clear up your skin. And as always, feel free to com­ment or mes­sage me if you have ques­tions or requests, I’m here to help. Here’s to your new beau­ti­ful skin!

~Stephanie
xx

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