Here’s the top 5 things you can do today to help your skin recover from the party season and look your best in the New Year:
Get your sleep patterns back on track
The term ‘beauty sleep’ is absolutely true, your skin needs that restful time to heal and regenerate. And, did you know, your skin responds naturally to daylight, so it’s overnight restorative work begins as the sun goes down. If you want to help it, you can apply your night time products then, and really enjoy your evening wind down. Field Fresh Skincare’s Marshmallow Dream Cream has all the right ingredients: rich avocado oil sinks in as you sleep carrying hyaluronic acid and vitamin E deep down to help rejuvenate your skin while the double dose of marshmallow, from the leaf and root of the plant, softens and protects your skin. A heavenly combination of lavender, frankincense and bergamot essential oils settles your mind and, fans of the cream say, ‘gives the best night sleep ever’.
Keep drinking water
When it’s cold outside it’s tempting to cosy up with a hot chocolate and on a dark morning we can need our shot of coffee just to get going. But we still need water to keep our bodies flushed through. While you’re not likely to make much difference to dry skin by rehydrating from the inside (all the water you consume will be used by the rest of your needy body before skin gets a look in), making sure you drink plenty of water helps your body manage and expel toxins. And if they’re not carried out in your body’s waste water, they’ll find other routes out, like through your skin – which we experience as spots.
Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise
Dreaded dry skin is a classic symptom of the cold, dry winter months – not helped at all by our central heating and wrapping skin in layers of clothes. Take every opportunity to moisturise all over, and think in layers: After showering or taking a bath, while your skin is still a little damp, apply a body oil to add moisture, and then a cream to seal in that moisture and reduce water loss. When washing hands, use natural oil based soaps and immediately moisturise, again sealing and protecting hands. Field Fresh Skincare’s Summer Garden Hand Cream gives rich food for your hands. A blend of broccoli seed and hemp oil sinks quickly into your skin giving protection without greasiness and the added vitamin E and hyaluronic acid help to keep your hands looking youthful. It’s infused with flowers gathered at midsummer – elderflower, chamomile, marshmallow and limeflower – bringing a hopeful burst of sunshine into the darkest of winter days.
Exfoliate
Your skin is continually renewing itself from the inside out, creating fresh cells in its inner layers while shedding old, dry cells from the outermost layer. It’s a natural process that keeps our skin refreshed and renewed, ensuring we have strong, fresh skin cells to provide protective resistance against the elements. So much of our skin is cossetted and wrapped up in clothing during winter the natural shedding process can get a bit stunted. Hence dull, lifeless skin that looks a bit lacklustre. Get the shine back by helping your skin shed its old cells and make way for the fresh new ones. Just gentle exfoliation, with a muslin cloth, for example, can help; or you can use grainy exfoliating products or make use of chemical exfoliating ingredients that break down the glue that the dead skin cells are held on by. Here are some recipes for very quick to make Blend-It-Yourself exfoliators.
Go product free
Just as tearing down the Christmas decorations and enjoying the minimalist, bare space can be a relief making us feel fresher and more straight-forward, so going a few days with minimal or no products can give our skin a chance to breath and restore natural balance. If you can, spend a few days without make-up, think about the products you’re using in the bath or shower (is there a simpler, natural alternative you could try?), and leave your hair to manage itself for a little while. Just to see what it feels like to do things a bit differently. You could invest some time in looking through your skincare products and starting to familiarise yourself with the ingredients in them and thinking about which parts of your normal routine you could make more natural. For more about the experience and benefits of going natural, and tips on how to do it, read this.
