Radiate Natural Beauty with Organic Skin Care Products
Most of us do not readily make the connection between skin care and the environment. Truth be told, organic skin therapy goes hand in hand with eco-beauty. If you want your true personal beauty to radiate from within, consider adopting a lifestyle that embraces green living values—even in your skin care regimen.
Inner beauty, rather than being recreated from artificial cosmetics that hide your true self, originates from your own well-being, which is naturally linked to that of the planet.
Organic skin therapy will do wonders to provide your skin with the radiance that you never thought possible. What’s more it removes clutter from your lifestyle by helping you to make simpler, safer, and more holistic skin care choices. So what are the components of green skin care?
Your skin works holistically with the rest of your body to utilize or break down what you feed it. Skin cells absorb nearly everything that you apply, so in looking at a list of ingredients on a skin care product, it is worth thinking about whether you would actually eat them . . . . If the ingredients of the product come from substances that can be found in nature, chances are that the body will metabolize them effectively—just as outside of the body, they would naturally be absorbed into the environment.
Organic Skin Care Begins with a Green Diet and Lifestyle
Your body is a reflection of everything that you eat. Needless to say, optimum nutrition is the key to healthy, glowing skin. Eating a balanced diet on a regular basis will supply all of the vital nutrients needed to build your skin and other vital tissues that feed it.
The best kind of diet for skin therapy includes plenty of fresh, organic foods with minimal processing. Since this vast protective covering is predominantly made up of several protein layers, animal protein sources like free-range chicken or grass fed-beef help generate the skin tissue itself, as well as the underlying muscular tissue that supports it. Fresh fish, seeds, nuts, and grains provide essential fatty acids that help generate the skin’s own natural oils, giving it sheen and youthful vibrancy. Most vegetable sources of protein build collagen, the skin’s connective tissue, which naturally becomes slack with age. Fruits and vegetables not only provide vitamins and minerals—they also strengthen the blood and lymph, both of which directly feed the skin. Protective foods like milk, vegetable oils, yogurt, honey, and yeast help promote the skin’s longevity and suppleness. Most importantly, liberal quantities of water detoxify the blood and keep the lymphatic system hydrated and flowing.
A poor diet is one that consists of processed foods like soda, white flour, sugar, and products derived from them, as well as an over-abundant use of stimulants like tea and coffee. Eating poor quality foods will deplete the health of your skin by contributing to wrinkles, dehydration, acne, and premature aging.
Since your skin is also a reflection of how you feel, it is important to get enough rest and exercise every single day. A good night’s sleep will do wonders to rejuvenate your entire being, sustaining the natural glow of your skin. Likewise, daily exercise helps the body to sweat out accumulated toxins keeping your skin free of problems. Exercise helps you to increase your intake of oxygen, which is integral to healthy blood-flow and nutrient absorption. Healthy blood, in turn, ensures that your skin remains well-nourished and moist.
Since stress contributes to acne, pimples, roughness, dryness, and many other skin problems, it is incredibly important to do whatever you can to relax every single day, even if just for a few moments. Take some time off from your busy schedule to light up an aromatherapy candle, meditate, take a walk in the park, or a warm soak in the tub. Do whatever you can to unwind and tune into the natural rhythms of the world around you.
Use Organic Skin Care Products
Green skin care means choosing organic skin care products. Products like this are closer to nature as they contain ingredients that have undergone very little processing, if any. They maximize your own health as well as that of the environment. So what should you be thinking about as you make your product choices?
Skin care has become an industry only in the last couple of hundred years—before that, most skin therapy products were prepared at home using safe, natural ingredients that did not have side effects. You can make green living choices by continuing the age-old tradition of preparing your own products for maintaining the natural beauty of your skin as well as for targeting specific problems. Organic skin care products, prepared naturally at home, will help you to connect with food and ingredient choices around you. They will also give you a better understanding of how various ingredients impact your skin as you experiment with them over time. You can find many opportunities to share your goals for "at-home skin care" by including friends or family members in your preparations. Not only will it help others become more proactive in attending to their personal skin therapy needs, but it promotes bonding in an entirely different way. A green way at that!
If you prefer to buy commercially available skin care products, select those that do not use harsh synthetic ingredients that originate from industrial chemicals. Man-made ingredients such as emulsifiers, preservatives, plastics, dyes, fragrances, and silicones hamper the health of your skin and pollute the planet.
Your skin works holistically with the rest of your body to utilize or break down what you feed it. Skin cells absorb nearly everything that you apply, so in looking at a list of ingredients on a skin care product, it is worth thinking about whether you would actually eat them. If the answer is no, then why feed them to your body through your skin? If the ingredients of the product come from substances that can be found in nature, chances are that the body will metabolize them effectively, just as outside of the body, they would naturally be absorbed into the environment. Industrial chemicals, on the other hand, do not break down easily, leaving dangerous by-products that accumulate on our planet. In our bodies, they release toxins that damage our health over time.
The Environmental Working Group is a small non profit organization that hosts a cosmetics and personal care products safety website called Skin Deep. Skin Deep matches ingredients in nearly 25,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases, making it a very useful tool for green-conscious consumers.
Select Products with Sustainable Packaging
Truly green skin care products are sustainable and the manufacturers of these products abide by green business ethics.
They offer safe products made under clean and animal cruelty-free factory environments, with sound labor practices that do not exploit working communities in any part of the globe. Their products are also sold through honest marketing techniques that do not exploit buyers. Packaging speaks volumes about the product. Traditionally, skin care products have been packaged for mass marketing appeal because consumers have been attracted to beautiful containers and artistic bottles without considering the actual global consequences of their purchase.
Mass-produced packaging often contains harmful chemicals that react negatively with the ingredients inside. This defeats the purpose of choosing skin care products with top quality organic ingredients as they will eventually become contaminated by the packaging.
Additionally, inferior packaging pollutes the environment over the long term. Green products are those that are intentionally packaged to prevent a harmful impact to the environment. Typical green packaging uses biodegradable or recyclable materials such as glass, recycled paper, and vegetable inks. Many companies now offer consumer incentives for returning containers to the store or to the company so that they can be reused.
Sustainable packaging leads to a healthier planet, and a healthier planet produces better quality ingredients. It’s all part of the earth’s natural life-cycle.
Article Contributors: Reenita Malhotra Hora
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