Your skin is your body’s largest organ, so it should come as no surprise that it’s significantly influenced by your lifestyle habits. From diet to sleep to stress, read on as Introstem explains exactly how your lifestyle affects your skin.
Diet
As you know, the food that you eat feeds every part of your body, and this includes your skin. The proteins that you consume help to build and repair your skin’s tissues, the omega fatty acids in your meals maintain your skin’s lipid barrier, and antioxidants, along with minerals, contribute to everything from cellular function to the prevention of free radical damage.
Eat the wrong foods, however, and your skin will quickly start to deteriorate. Sugar-rich foods and refined carbohydrates trigger inflammation and oil production. Processed and fatty foods can do the same, leading to skin stress. This can then lead to breakouts, as well as accelerated skin aging. Meanwhile, missing out on key nutrients, whether this may be vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, or anything else, will mean that your skin cells will end up lacking vital components. This can result in dullness, dryness, inflammation, and a variety of other issues.
Improving Your Diet
So, what can you do to improve your diet and avoid all of the skin issues associated with a poor diet? The first step is to always prioritize whole foods over processed foods. While this will mean putting more effort into your meals, the outcome will be positive for both your skin and your body. Seek out fresh fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats to ensure that you’re meeting your skin’s nutritional requirements. It goes without saying that you should also be drinking plenty of water. Every cell in your body, including all of those in your skin, needs moisture to function properly.
Some people may find that certain foods trigger problems with their skin. From dairy products to spicy foods, figuring out what your triggers are will enable you to avoid them and keep your skin calm.
Sleep
Some people assume that when they sleep at night, their skin cells do the same. In reality, however, the opposite happens. Once you fall asleep at night, your skin cells switch from defense mode, which is needed during the day, to repair mode. Regeneration becomes their focus. Cell reproduction accelerates, so that damaged cells can be replaced with fresh new ones. At the same time, protein production peaks, and your skin cells also put more effort into re-strengthening the skin’s natural protective barrier.
If you don’t get enough quality sleep each night, this all starts to fall apart. Without having enough time to dedicate to repair, pretty much every aspect of your skin’s health will begin to decline. You may think that just a few nights of sleep deprivation isn’t going to have much of an effect, but research shows that it only takes two nights of this to cause reduced elasticity, increased moisture loss, decreased brightness/radiance, and a prevalence of dark circles under the eyes. Regular sleep deprivation takes this further, worsening all of those effects and leading to severe skin stress.
Improving Your Sleep Quality
The first step to take if you want to improve the quality of your sleep is to establish good bedtime habits. Your sleep and wake times should be the same each day of the week, even on weekends, and your bedtime routine should be one that calms both your mind and body. Optimize your bedroom with dim lighting, comfortable bedding, and a cool temperature to encourage your body to enter sleep mode at the right time each evening.
Having a solid nighttime skincare routine can help to keep your skin cells supported as they go about their repairative processes while you snooze. Start with a gentle cleanser, follow up with an antioxidant-rich serum, and finish off with a good night cream. An overnight face mask, such as the Introstem PrismaStem Midnight Recovery Mask, will give your complexion an extra boost while you’re asleep.
Stress
Stress is a given part of modern-day lifestyles, yet how much stress people experience on a daily basis can vary significantly. Some people only go through short bouts of occasional stress, which is completely normal. Others, however, experience chronic stress, which is where the problems begin. Those consistently elevated stress levels can really take a toll on your skin.
Whenever you feel stressed, your body releases a hormone called cortisol. This impacts your skin in many ways. It triggers inflammation, inhibits cell regeneration, accelerates the skin aging process, contributes to hyperpigmentation, and more. From dryness to acne, a variety of skin concerns commonly manifest during times of stress. This often only adds to the stress that a person feels, which then exacerbates any skin problems, creating a vicious cycle that’s hard to break out of.
Reducing Your Stress Levels
The first step to tackling your skin stress woes is to start working on lowering your stress levels. There are so many techniques out there that have been scientifically proven to work, although they won’t all be effective for you personally. You’ll need to try out various methods to see which you respond to best. Whether this be practicing mindfulness and deep breathing exercises, connecting with other people, engaging in some physical activity, or writing in a journal, having a few go-to stress busters could really save you from skin stress.
While you’re working on this, it would also be a good idea to incorporate some complexion-soothing products into your skincare routine. Look for products that are designed to calm the feeling of inflammation that usually accompanies stress, just like the Introstem VitisCell Hydra Fresh Toner. Featuring extracts from aloe vera, cucumber, chamomile, and grape stem cells, this formula will quickly reduce the feeling of skin stress.
Exercise
It’s common knowledge that exercise should be a regular part of life. It’s crucial for both mental and physical health, and it makes a big difference to the health of your skin too. The boost that it gives to blood flow gives your skin cells better access to nutrients and oxygen, encourages the flushing out of toxins, and promotes collagen production.
On the flip side, living a sedentary lifestyle will leave your skin cells deprived of the nutrients they need. In the short term, the reduced blood flow will give your skin a dull finish. Over time, everything from skin aging to barrier function will suffer. There will also likely be a prevalence of various skin conditions, such as acne breakouts. This is exacerbated by how the skin’s natural detoxification process is inhibited by a sedentary lifestyle, which can cause clogged pores, inflammation, and more.
Increasing How Much Exercise You Do
The easiest way to start doing more exercise is to incorporate it into your daily routine. For instance, try walking instead of driving, or park further away from your destination so that a walk is involved. Use the stairs instead of the elevator, and spend more time doing active chores, like cleaning and heavy gardening. You could also explore some of the many physical activities out there to see which ones appeal to you. Be it dancing, cycling, horse riding, or anything else, making exercise enjoyable will give you the motivation you need to do it regularly.
While exercise brings with it several skin benefits, make sure that you’re giving your skin the care that it needs post-exercise. Cleansing is essential to remove sweat, excess sebum, and other debris. Foaming cleansers, like the Introstem VitisCell Foaming Bliss Purifier, do this well. You may also find that you need to exfoliate more often. However, keep it gentle with a formula like Introstem’s VitisCell Fresh Revive Peeling. It will exfoliate your skin while keeping your skin barrier feeling supported.
Exposure to Pollution
It’s no secret that sun exposure is harmful to the skin. If your lifestyle involves spending a large amount of time out in the sun, you’ll need to be more diligent than most when it comes to sun protection. However, exposure to pollution is something that’s often overlooked…
Like the sun’s UV rays, pollution triggers free radical damage in the skin. This causes a breakdown in collagen and elastin fibers, resulting in fine lines and wrinkles. Pollution also increases inflammation, skin stress, acne breakouts, hyperpigmentation, and so much more. Research confirms how pollution disrupts the skin in numerous ways – it can even contribute to some skin cancers.
Avoiding Pollution Damage
So, what can you do to keep your complexion safe from the damaging effects of pollution? Start by ensuring that your skincare routine contains plenty of antioxidants. These are the best ingredients out there for countering and preventing the appearance of free radical damage. Ideally, each stage of your skincare routine should contain antioxidants, which is easy when you shop at Introstem – each of our products is infused with antioxidant-rich grape stem cell extract. However, you should also incorporate an antioxidant serum into your skincare routine, such as the Introstem VitisCell Brightening Vita-C Serum. Enriched with two forms of vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin E, grape stem cells, and a blend of antioxidant-laden plant oils, this serum will definitely add plenty of antioxidant power to your skincare routine.
You’ll also need to place plenty of focus on cleansing and exfoliating your skin. After all, you don’t want any airborne pollutants to linger around and delve deeper into your pores. Adding a clay face mask to your routine can help boost your efforts even further. Give the Introstem ThermoStem Mask a try – it’s a self-heating clay mask that will rid your complexion of any deep-seated pollutants.
Summary
Your lifestyle directly impacts your skin in so many different ways. When it comes down to it, the healthier the life you live, the healthier your skin will look and feel. If you know that there are some areas of your lifestyle that could do with some improvement, start by making a few small tweaks. Once you see how happier your skin looks, you’ll be more than willing to make bigger changes.
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