What are some ingenious and effective methods to achieve healthy and glowing skin?
Who doesn’t want attractive skin? Seriously. Beautiful skin is sexy. It’s erotic. It’s eye-catching. It’s sensuous. It feels great and it looks fantastic.
Great skin is a billboard to the world of your vitality, virility, and beauty.
It’s been said that having beautiful, glowing skin is near the top of most people’s priority list. (Well, people that care about how they look and feel, anyway.)
Desmond Morris, the author of “The Naked Ape” said:
“Flawless skin is the most universally desired human feature.” I have to agree and it’s a main reason I now find myself in the cosmetics arena.
So, what are some clever, and effective ways to improve our skin health and beauty? (Note that these ideas are in addition to the primary factors of diet/supplements, hydration, sleep, gut health, exfoliation, topical products, etc.)
Remember that skincare is a holistic endeavor that requires commitment. You may not be aware of the powerful benefits of some of these ideas, so here we go!
1 Resistance Training
Can this be true? Resistance training makes you look younger.
(Resistance training exercises increase muscular endurance and strength. The muscles are stressed using some form of resistance. It could be bodyweight, bands, or weightlifting. Pushups and pull-ups are resistance training exercises, for example.)
A recent, June 2023 detailed study in Japan compares Aerobic Training vs. Resistance Training.
The results clarify that resistance training causes significant improvements in skin elasticity & dermal thickness.
The loss of skin elasticity is a primary factor in skin aging and looking younger.
"Resistance training rejuvenates aging skin by reducing circulating inflammatory factors and enhancing dermal extracellular matrices"
“In this study, we showed that [Resistance Training] counteracts skin aging such as deteriorations in skin elasticity, upper dermal structure and dermal thickness…”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10290068/
(See also: "Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle" https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000465)
This isn’t rocket science. People that engage in physical exercise look and feel better. It’s not always fun or easy, but consistently hitting the weights and getting in motion keeps you looking great, especially over time.
2 Sauna/sweating
Sweating is great for our skin and overall health. Sweating profusely gets a bad rap at times, but everyone looks and feels better from exercise and sweating. After a good sweat, our skin has that certain attractive glow.
BUT, don’t forget to rinse afterwards. Otherwise all those nasty waste products and toxins are getting re-absorbed back into the skin.
Sweating is proven to eliminate toxins and toxic chemicals from the skin like these that we’re always exposed to:
- Pesticides
- Flame retardant chemicals
- Phthalates
- Heavy metals
- PCBs, PFCs, BPA, and others.
Sauna is sometimes known as “sauna bathing” or “heat therapy.” It confers many health benefits in addition to skin purification and overall health. Sauna has been shown to:
- Reduce injury recovery time and pain
- Increase insulin sensitivity
- Maintain muscle mass, strength, and muscle hypertrophy with no exercise
- Boost immune system health
- Boost cardiovascular health
- Acts as a neuroprotective and boosts brain and mental health.
“Sauna use as a lifestyle practice to extend healthspan.”
“In recent decades, sauna bathing has emerged as a probable means to extend healthspan, based on compelling data from observational, interventional, and mechanistic studies…”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34363927/
3 Grounding (aka “Earthing”)
The incredible benefits of grounding are just coming to light. Who would have thought that simply standing in bare feet on the Earth (or laying down on it) had so many health benefits? When you break it down, it makes perfect sense.
- Grounding is highly anti-inflammatory;
- It heals wounds;
- Improves blood flow;
- De-stresses;
- And many other benefits.
The Earth always provides. Skin contact with the Earth has potent anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties.
These anti-inflammatory properties will improve skin health and beauty.
Check this study out:
“Grounding the Human Body Improves Facial Blood Flow Regulation…”
“Facial blood flow regulation clearly improved among grounded—but not sham-grounded—subjects. The results demonstrate, for the first time, that even one-hour contact with the earth restores blood flow regulation to the face suggesting enhanced skin tissue repair and improved facial appearance…”
https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JCDSA_2014111211461709.pdf
“Grounding – The universal anti-inflammatory remedy.”
“Grounding or earthing could be the anti-inflammatory antidote for modern man. It is one of the greatest kept secrets when it comes to our health and aliveness…”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10105021/
(Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi)
4 Fasting
Intermittent fasting (“IF”) helps you look younger. Who would have thought that simply not eating for certain periods of time confers many health benefits? Obviously, it’s all in the timing, hence the “intermittent.”
IF is a pattern where food consumption is limited to certain hours of the day. The fasted state is typically 14 to 18 hours per day. 24 hour fasts a couple times per week are also popular. (Some people also do much LONGER fasts.)
The key is to stay fasted long enough so a mechanism called “AUTOPHAGY” activates.
Autophagy is when your body is in a fasted state, cells look for food by feasting on toxins already in the cells. It's an amazing detox process that we're born with, encoded into our DNA.
The person that discovered this concept is Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi.
Dr Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for discovering this self-repair mechanism in 2016.
(A NOTE OF CAUTION: There are different types of fasting to induce the amazing mechanism of autophagy, but be sure to study how to perform your intermittent and longer fasting sessions. There are many resources to ensure you are doing it in a healthy manner that will not cause harm.)
Here’s a detailed study on the mechanism of autophagy induced by fasting:
“Autophagic Control of Skin Aging”
“Recent experimental evidence suggests that autophagy is critically involved in skin homeostasis and skin aging is associated with and partially caused by defects of autophagy.”
“Several of the aging processes are triggered or enhanced by the presence of damaged molecules and organelles within cells, and their turnover is controlled partly by autophagy.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6682604/
5 Donate Blood
So, let’s get this straight: The ancient healing remedy of “bloodletting” that was later considered Barbaric actually IS a great health benefit to us.
This may be the most surprising one on this list, but it makes sense.
Using molecular gene analysis, the main mechanisms of donating blood that confer health benefits seem to be decreased expression of genes responsible for inflammation and increased expression of genes associated with collagen and collagen production.
Also key is the reduction of iron deposits. All of these promote collagen re-synthesis and therefore improve the visible signs of skin aging.
Study:
"Blood donation improves skin aging through reduction of iron deposits..."
"Blood donation reduces the signs of skin aging."
"Blood donation leads to increased collagen synthesis & decreased collagen degradation”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047637422000690
(Image: Getty Images)
6 Ice facials/Skin icing
This is a great tip for an instant glow.
Let’s say you have a big event like a wedding or a TV appearance but you imbibed and stayed out way too late. Or maybe your feeling a bit funky and under the weather...
Here’s a quick and effective solution. Dunk your face in ice water. Seriously. An ice facial will surely wake you up and also:
- Reduce puffiness and inflammation
- Give your skin a healthy/rosy glow
- Tighten up your skin
- Increase circulation
- Reduce pore size
- Soothe blemishes
- Shrink under-eye bags
- Act as a mild exfoliator
(You can also find gel or ice packs or masks to keep in the freezer. It’s quite refreshing too, especially in Summer months. Or, you can simply take a few ice cubes in the shower and make it part of your routine.)
(Full-body ice water plunges and cold showers also have many benefits, but that's a topic for another day.)
And last, who can forget Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford plunging her face in a sink full of ice water in her morning routine scene from Mommie Dearest in 1981. (Apparently, Joan Crawford really would splash her face 25 times every morning with ice cubes in rose water.)
Go ahead and take the facial ice plunge, but be sure to use purified water/ice so you’re not absorbing nasty tap water chemicals and hopefully your home’s water is already filtered and purified.
7 Healthy sun exposure
HEALTHY sun exposure: I don’t know where the whole “sun is bad for you” idea began, but I believe it’s mostly nonsense.
In fact, I believe sun on our skin is essential for optimum human health. Our lives depend on the sun’s energy.
I live in the Sonoran Desert, go into the sun for a bit every day, I never burn, and never wear sunscreen. The sun controls many metabolic functions and has vast health benefits. (Of course you're aware of the importance of vitamin D...)
Many recent studies are concluding that insufficient (and healthy) sun exposure is the real health problem. Check this out:
“Studies in the past decade indicate that insufficient sun exposure may be responsible for 340,000 deaths in the United States and 480,000 deaths in Europe per year, and an increased incidence of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, asthma, type 1 diabetes and myopia…”
The older view was that increased vitamin D levels from sunshine on skin were responsible for these beneficial effects of sun exposure. NOW, other possible mechanisms “include the release of nitric oxide from the skin and direct effects of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) on peripheral blood cells.”
“Collectively, this evidence indicates it would be wise for people living outside the tropics to ensure they expose their skin sufficiently to the sun.”
It’s now clear as a sunny day. Get some healthy sun exposure in your life, but without ANY burning.
“Insufficient Sun Exposure Has Become a Real Public Health Problem”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7400257/
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Regards and many thanks for reading.
Peace, good health, and Love to everyone.
Johnny Noble, August 2023
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