A Holistic Guide To Maintaining Naturally Healthy Skin

Diet & Lifestyle

I like to look at things very holistically when it comes to most things in life. Not much exists in singularity, things are usually a part of a larger ecosystem. The human body is such a beautiful, intricate collection of systems working their hardest to keep us healthy. There is a rhetoric in western medicine to only focus on specific issues within the body, while eastern medicines tend to focus on the relationship between all the workings in and out of the body, and how they affect each other. 

Our skin is our largest organ and it plays many important roles in protecting the rest of our body. The skin has also been named our third lung because it inhales and absorbs outside particles – good and bad. By keeping our skin healthy, we are keeping our insides happier too.

Strip Back Your Skincare

Doing too much can sometimes cause adverse reactions. The skin is mostly capable of taking care of itself, but due to pollution and environmental stressors, our skin does need some assistance. By overdoing it with too many chemicals, you can disrupt your skin barrier. The skin barrier is essential to maintaining healthy, glowing, and clear skin! It is the outermost surface of the skin, that helps keep the skin hydrated and resilient. If your skin is feeling dry, red, and easily irritated you may have a compromised skin barrier. Going back to basics can be a savor for skin and more often than not, staying simple with your routine can solve quite a lot of problems.

Take a break from foaming cleansers and use a gentle oil cleanse. The Cleansing Oil by F. Miller Skincare is a great choice because it was specifically formulated to support a healthy skin barrier. It transforms from an oil to a milk when water is added, making sure there is no oil residue on the skin.

Following your cleanse, I recommend going in with a serum. The Anti-Pollution Facial Serum from Oio Lab is an essential because it’s reparative and protective, meaning while it protects from environmental stressors it is working on repairing free radical damage. It is filled with nourishing ingredients that will never irritate the skin.

To finish off, I like to go in with the 7 Wonders Smoothing Face Oil, also from Oio Lab, because it is a nutrient-rich oil that supports the skin’s regeneration process. An essential process for mending a skin barrier!

Nourish Your Body

Organic wine and coffee have both been staples for me through the now many lockdowns. However, for the sake of the skin, it is necessary to take breaks. Alcohol and coffee are majorly dehydrating to the body. Alcohol can also cause inflammation within the body, which is usually a huge cause of different skin issues.

Coffee can also be majorly dehydrating if you’re having multiple cups every day. I like to change-out coffee for organic matcha some days. The Whimsy Official matcha is delicious and gives me a boost with way more benefits than coffee. Matcha is full of antioxidants, which our skin absolutely loves! Like with most things, having too much of one thing can have negative repercussions, which is why I preach for balance in everyone’s diet. I am never restrictive; I just make sure to consume a varied diet!  

There is a general rule I like to follow when it comes to what I eat. If there isn’t enough colour in my meals, I’m probably not getting everything my body needs. Our skin really can show us when something internally isn’t happy.

Check out our Beauty Foods series for some specific ingredient suggestions:

Beauty Foods Series One 

Beauty Foods Series Two 

Beauty Foods For Mature Skin

Stress Relief

One of the main causes of skin issues like acne is stress. When we are stressed our bodies produce more of the stress hormone, cortisol, which causes our sebaceous glands to produce more oil, leading to possible breakouts and clogged pores. An increase in cortisol can also worsen psoriasis, redness, and eczema. When we are stressed, our entire body gets thrown off-kilter. Our lymphatic system can become stagnant, leading to facial and body puffiness due to lack of circulation. If you want to learn how to increase circulation, check out our lymphatic drainage piece.

So, supporting our skin sometimes means first supporting our mind. We can’t always do away with whatever is causing us stress, but there are a few tools I like to use to find moments of calm. The eye pillows by Bodha are fantastic for helping to release facial tension and calm the mind through weight, darkness, and scent. These pillows are filled with lavender, chamomile, and buckwheat for weight. I like to light my Bodha Smokeless Incense in Calm, sit for ten minutes with my eye pillow on, and meditate.

Support Your Hormones

I like to think (for the most part) that I do everything right to have clear and glowing skin. Yet I still struggle with acne on my chin and jawline, which if you follow face mapping shows that I’m breaking out due to a hormonal imbalance. Sometimes diet and lifestyle changes are not enough to have clear skin! There is a beauty in coming to peace with one’s own acne, as stressing about it can make it worse as we already discussed. 

For a lot of us, our skin can freak out once a month during PMS. It is important to support the body during this time to help avoid those hormonal breakouts. Alexis Smart’s Moon River tincture is a wonderful remedy to take leading up to one’s period. It is formulated to deal with a lot of the annoying PMS systems, but especially those pesky hormonal breakouts.

Wunder Workshop’s Golden Glow is another fantastic blend to incorporate when you can feel your skin is starting to break out due to hormonal changes. It is an organic adaptogen blend that is designed to support the skin from the inside. Golden Glow can enhance the body’s ability to adapt to hormone changes, improving our resistance to stress, depression, and brain fog. A total necessity for that time of the month!