How Your Skincare Routine Can Help Boost Your Mental Health
Your skin, and how you look after it, can deeply impact your emotional well-being. Here’s how to boost your confidence and lift your spirits by learning to love and care for the skin you’re in.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and we firmly believe your skin can play a major role in your state of mind.
Think about how you feel when you look at your face in the mirror. Those ‘off’ days when your complexion looks kinda lousy rarely fill you with confidence. But other days when your skin seems to naturally glow from within? Priceless for your self-esteem. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. More serious skin concerns like rosacea, eczema or hormonal acne can often stop people from leaving the house and living a normal, day-to-day life. In a 2014 study carried out by the National Rosacea Society, for example, a massive 90 percent of rosacea patients reported low self-confidence and over half said they avoided regular face-to-face contact.
The fact is simple: your skin plays a vital role in the way you feel about yourself. When it looks and feels awesome, you feel better about yourself. It’s just the way the human psyche works. But the thing is, we’re all different and your skin and its condition should never define you. Yes, your crow’s feet might drive you crazy and sure, that zit on your chin is as annoying as hell. But remember, 1) you're not alone – imperfect skin is perfectly normal and 2) nobody notices your 'flaws' as much as you do.
If you’re feeling stressed about your complexion, however, here are a few ways to help you fall in love with your skin again – and up your self-confidence levels at the same time.
1. Enjoy A Consistent Routine
While trying new products and upping your skincare game is fabulous within reason, having a consistent skincare routine allows for true noticeable results to start happening. This makes it one of the best ways to maintain healthy skin. You wouldn’t skip brushing your teeth every other morning, would you? Then respect your skin in exactly the same way.
Set aside five or 10 minutes or so each morning and evening to gently cleanse, tone, treat and moisturize your skin using the best ingredients and formulations for your skin. And remember, apply them according to their instructions and always in the correct order. Look after your skin – especially before bed when it’s getting ready to regenerate and revive itself – and your skin will look after you.
Having a regular morning and evening skincare routine doesn't just benefit your skin, however. It also helps give you structure, grounding and has been proven to improve mental stability. Studies show that people who have more consistent routines throughout the day are less likely to suffer with mood problems and depression. To boost your state of mind even further, use products that make you feel good and you enjoy using like our Vitamin C Super Serum+ which contains essential oils like pink grapefruit, lavender and ylang ylang to help lift your mood and alleviate anxiety.
2. Get Your Glow On With A Weekly Pampering Session
Taking care of your skin is awesome for your mental health because it allows you to focus on yourself and stop worrying about all the other stuff that might be stressing you out. Set aside one hour a week to pamper your skin and you will immediately improve your well-being (not to mention your complexion) without even thinking about it. Lock the bathroom door, light a candle, run a bath, play some calming music and drink wine (hells yeah). Whatever you need to switch off and concentrate on you.
During this time, you might also want to think about indulging your senses with a little facial massage. Massaging your skin is one of the best ways to boost circulation and help lymphatic drainage for firmer, smoother, more radiant skin. This relaxation process also sends messages to your brain that it’s time to be calm which lowers the production of cortisol (the stress hormone) and simultaneously reduces your anxiety levels. Try a two or three minute facial massage as you cleanse your skin with warm water and our skin brightening Vitamin C Daily Cleanser. Close your eyes to focus your mind, then work the pads of your fingers all over your face and neck using gentle but firm circular motions.
Sidenote: when your skin looks glowing and radiant, nobody will even notice your wrinkles or age spots. Oh, the power of a little me-time.
3. Break Your Bad Beauty Habits
Do you touch your face all the time, therefore spreading germs, chemicals and bacteria all over your skin? Perhaps you just can’t resist picking at your pimples, always making them so much worse… Bad habits are often a sign of stress, anxiety or just plain boredom, and while some are harmless, the aforementioned spell disaster for your skin.
Take control of your bad beauty habits by understanding when and why you do them. Figuring out your triggers allows you to understand the reason for your actions and enables you to find alternatives that don’t totally screw up your skin. For example, if you find yourself picking your face in the evening when you’re bored watching TV, find something else to do with your hands like knitting. Can’t resist scrutinizing your skin before bed looking for something, anything to squeeze? Then throw out your magnifying mirror. Nobody ever sees your skin at such a close range, so gouging out that tiny blackhead and risking more damage than reward? So not worth it.
If you're looking for support with mental health issues or would like to help raise awareness of Mental Health Awareness Month, please head to Mental Health America for more information.
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![5 Unusual Things That Can Trigger Breakouts]()
No idea why you’re getting an influx of acne right now? Many lifestyle habits can trigger your breakouts – and sometimes they’re found in the most unsuspecting places.
As you know, acne is caused by one thing and one thing alone: an excess of sebum that causes your pores to become blocked with oil, dead skin cells, bacteria and other impurities. Eating too much chocolate doesn’t give you pimples. Neither does moisturizer. Sure, they can trigger breakouts if you’re genetically susceptible to them, but acne isn’t caused by uncleanliness, a poor diet or crummy skincare routine. It’s caused by blocked pores. End of.
OK, so this begs the question: why bother trying to cure them if your breakouts are totally out of your control? Well, here’s the thing. You can’t change your genes, that’s for certain. However, what you can do is keep acne-triggering factors under control to help lessen the blow. Sleeping well, reducing emotional stress and eating a healthy, well-balanced diet; all these things are important for maintaining balanced sebum and therefore reducing the likelihood of you breaking out week after week.
But there are also some less obvious reasons why you face might be suffering with regular breakouts. So if you’ve already dispensed with things like smoking, poor cleansing and too much exfoliation, but you’re still getting pimples on the reg, it might be time to look at some of the more unexpected areas of your life.
On that note, read on for five slightly more unusual causes for your breakouts.
1. Your Pillowcase
Getting enough beauty sleep is crucial for the health of your skin, but if you’re sleeping on a dirty pillowcase for a solid eight hours every night dirt and bacteria is inevitably going to build up and irritate your pores. This is especially true if you sleep on a synthetic pillowcase because man-made fibers don’t absorb sweat as effectively as natural fibres like cotton or linen.
The answer? Go natural all the way, for starters. Also, cleanse and moisturize your skin before bed to reduce the amount of grime getting on your pillowcase. Tea Tree Super Cleanser+ is a great acne-fighting cleanser that balances and clarifies your pores. Follow this with Retinol Moisturizer to lightly hydrate and moisturize your skin while boosting cellular turnover to keep your pores free of dead skin cells.
Finally, wash your pillowcase every three or four days. And ditto, your face towel. Old, dirty towels that are used by the whole family for drying their hands and who-knows-what-else are another breeding ground for germs and bacteria. Do you really want to be swiping this all over your freshly cleansed skin? Thought not. So, invest in a couple of cotton face towels for you and you alone and wash them every other day.
2. Your Makeup & Hair Products
Your skincare routine might be spot on, but what about your makeup and hair products? Rich hair conditioners, for example, are notorious for containing heavy ingredients like cocoa butter and coconut oil which, granted, are incredible for moisturizing your precious locks, but are not so great for acne-prone skin. Of course, we know you’re not smothering your face with conditioner but still, it can settle on your face when you rinse your hair so always cleanse your skin after, never before conditioning.
Makeup can similarly clog up your pores, especially if you use formulations that contain oil. So don’t do that. Instead, look out for noncomedogenic products (this means they’re less likely to block pores) and use powder rather than liquid formulations whenever possible.
3. Your Workout Routine
Do you love to get a good sweat on when you’re working out? High fives to you. However, allow all that sweat and grime to sit on your skin and your pores are going to clog up quicker than your instructor can say ‘hit the floor for ten push-ups.’
Cleanse your skin thoroughly and swiftly after exercising (the longer you leave your skin doused in sweat and grimy workout gear, the more bacteria is likely to breed), and always use a mild but effective cleanser that helps to detoxify your skin without drying it out. Our Charcoal Clarifying Cleanser is a goodie as it harnesses the powers of coconut-derived activated charcoal which destroys skin-smothering impurities to offer a deep, gently purifying clean every time.
4. Your Winter Cover-Ups
Any fabric that rubs against your skin can lead to unwanted issues in the long-term. Remember how face masks were causing ‘maskne’ back in the pandemic? This was all due to friction from the mask combining with the obvious culprits of sweat, dirt, oil, bacteria and humidity which caused dryness, irritation and pimples.
Thankfully, for most of us, the days of having to wear a mask 24/7 are over. However, if you spend a lot of time outdoors in the winter and like to wrap yourself up in woollen hats and thick, heavy scarves, these can cause similar problems, trapping sweat and increasing friction around your chin, jaw, neck and forehead.
To help reduce breakouts caused by beanies, scarves (and even turtleneck sweaters), avoid synthetic fabrics and launder your winter cover-ups regularly. Weekly, at least.
5. Your Laundry Detergent
Speaking of laundry, your choice of detergent is also imperative. Just like your beauty routine, certain ingredients in your laundry detergent can be super irritating – especially if you have extremely sensitive or acne-prone skin. Fragrance, for example, can be a real Debbie Downer, as can harsh dyes, essentials oils, strong surfactants and preservatives.
To reduce the likelihood of your laundry detergent triggering those pesky breakouts, first up, choose liquid over powder detergents. Why? Because these leave behind less residue on your clothes and fabrics (who knew?!). Also, never use more detergent than is recommended on the label, avoid fabric softeners and try double rinsing your laundry after washing to remove as much residue as possible.
5 Unusual Things That Can Trigger Breakouts
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