6 Habits of People with Great Skin

Achieving great skin starts with your at home care. In fact, it can be as easy as developing a habit. For those wondering, scientists say forming a habit can take as little as 21 days (of course, the harder the habit, the longer it takes and… well… like our skin, everyone is different). Luckily for you, we’ve compiled a list of 6 of common habits of those people you envy – the ones with the perfect skin.

1. Eating Whole Foods and Lots of Fruit and Veggies

Mom was right when she said to eat your veggies. Like most of your body, your skin uses the building blocks of vitamins and nutrients that fruits, vegetables, and whole foods provide. Things like carotenoids in orange and green foods boost your skin’s glow. Other foods containing antioxidants, vitamin E and vitamin A also go a long way for improving your skin’s health. Eating whole foods, fruits and veggies also helps you cut back on excess sugar.

2. Cut Down Excess Sugar

Excess sugar (refined sugar/simple carbs) can wreak havoc on the body from weight gain, high cholesterol, elevated blood sugar and inflammation to name a few. With a laundry list of internal ailments that are affected by excess sugar consumption, it isn’t a stretch to realize it effects the surface of the skin as well. Bad bacteria love to feed off sugar so by limiting your intake it will restore balance to the pH, clearing up blemishes and redness while as reducing chronic ailments like psoriasis and eczema.

3. Drinking your Daily Recommended Water Intake

Water works in mysterious and wonderful ways when it comes to skin. It seems that everyone agrees drinking lots of water is key to great skin, but why remains a mystery. It might plump the skin up and fill out wrinkles and lines, or help collagen, a building protein in skin, work effectively. Being hydrated also balances your skin’s oil/water concentration, so you can kiss goodbye to oily acne.

4. Always Wear Sunscreen & Limit Direct Exposure to the Sun

Besides skin cancer, constant sun exposure has been shown to lead to dull, rough and wrinkled skin with an uneven skin tone also known as sun spots. Protecting your skin from the sun is an easy and crucial step to keeping it healthy and flawless. This doesn’t mean you need to live indoors with the blinds shut so that your skin will stay safe. It just means that unnecessary exposure to the sun is a nemesis of skin health. Put on sunscreen SPF30-50, a hat and wear UV sunglasses, and avoid long tanning sessions on the beach (or a tanning bed) to limit excessive sun exposure.

5. Don’t Smoke or Do Drugs

There are a lot of side effects that go hand-in-hand with smoking – ruining your skin is one of them. Smoking diverts crucial vitamins away from your skin because there is now a pile of toxins running wild in your system to deal with. Without certain vitamins, skin cells are poorly made. It’s like half the production crew went on vacation at once. Certain drugs also reduce blood flow and oxygenation and can cause breakouts.

6. Have a Morning and Night Skin Care Routine

Your skin care routine doesn’t have to be complicated but it does need to be consistent. You can bet, though, that people with great skin do something for it every single day. It could be as easy as cleanse, hydrate and SPF in the morning, and in the evening cleanse, exfoliate and hydrate or use your Retinol. At night, our skin repairs itself and the pores open as our body temp rises so if you haven’t washed off the day all the environmental pollution, sweat and makeup will clog the pores.

So, if you treat your skin well, it will do the same for you by glowing radiantly in its flawlessness. All it takes are a few healthy habits.