Keep Vibrant, Youthful Skin

This topic came to me today after a long day custom cutting and installing siding on our house. This meant spending a lot of time in the sun, resulting in some serious color. Yes, lobster red is now a color. Thankfully, I have a powerful skin care regiment that will do wonders to my now burnt skin, which will become a glowing, bronze tan in the coming days (just in time for our Caribbean cruise next week). Proper skin care hits home on multiple fronts, as I have had my share of skin damage (burns, scarring, cuts, etc) and my step dad is currently undergoing yet another battle with cancer; this time, squamous cell skin cancer. Skin cancer is now the most common type of cancer in the U.S. Don’t let yourself become an addition to this statistic…

You MAY be experiencing beautiful, blue skies and sunny days like us down here in North Carolina. OR….You may be experiencing days and weeks of rain and cooler days, just waiting for the sky to clear up and spend hours walking and lying on the beach. Either way, summer and the outdoors are upon us and far too many of us oversee proper skin care and incur our first sun burns of the year.

So you want to protect your skin and take care of it for the long haul, as we all wish for our skin to be wrinkle-free, vibrant, and youthful for the rest of our life. Yes guys, this is for YOU too. You can’t be too manly or masculine to treat your skin well. Cancer doesn’t care about gender, nor does not care about age… SO…It’s never too late to start…Lets start right…NOW

1) Cleanse, tone, and moisturize twice a day; once in the morning (before applying makeup) and secondly before bed. Applying in the mornings will allow your skin to be happy and in good standing before dirt, makeup, and other pollutants bombard your pores. Applying before bed will allow your face to heal and ‘breathe’ rather than being suffocated by the toxins of a days work. I’ve never been much of a cream or lotion guy, until relatively recently when I did more research on the subject, put my ego and ‘manly’ mindset to the side, and found a product line that was up to my standards and met the criteria described in number 2 (and then some) that worked for me. This is the best Skin Care Regiment I have found.

2) Find Products that don’t remove beneficial oils from skin. Many people believe that oily skin is bad. Yes, maybe to an extent overly oily skin can pose problems. However, our bodies naturally produce oils over our body, and this includes the face. Many marketed products today remove these beneficial oils from the skin, leaving it even more exposed to toxins and pollutants. Be careful which products you put on your face, and if they’re actually doing more harm than good.

3) Apply Facial Masks. Personally, this was a tough one for me. Despite being a bit odd, I disregarded the ‘I’m too manly for this type of thing’ and went for it. I did do my first facial mask the other week and it actually felt quite well. It was also a good bonding experience with Carmen. There are multiple kinds of masks. For example, there are some gentle, more wet and moist masks that are designed for moisturizing dry skin. There are also peel-off masks that are designed for exfoliating and blemished skin.

4) Sun Protection. Many people want that golden tan and seek it via not applying sunscreen. You’ll definitely get this tan, although you’ll also likely get burnt and skin cancer when you’re older. Or even worse…old leathery skin…EWW. Well there’s good news folks. You can still get a beautiful, golden tan. The Skin Cancer Foundation, suggests looking for the broad range UVA/UVB sunscreen. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, you should use a sunscreen with SPF30 or greater.

5) Don’t touch your face. I know this one is super challenging. Many have nervous habits of touching their faces, while others like scratching their chin. Think about it. Your hands are ALL OVER the place and who knows what sort of dirt, bacteria, and other pollutants are getting on them, never mind wiping them on your face. This one is maybe one of the simplest to do, yet one of the most challenging. Try to wean yourself off the habit by only touching your face with the back of your hand (where less dirt and oil accumulates), then back off even more to touch your face as rarely as possible.

There are many other methods of skin care and protection. Find out what works best for you and stay consistent. Start with one or two of the above steps and gradually implement more and more until it becomes natural. Lets face it: we all want the biggest organ of our body, our skin, to last and be beautiful forever. So lets do all we can do help and protect it. Like many of you, the hardest for me is protecting it while I am outside adventuring. Here is some more information specific to outdoor skin protection