Skin Looking and Feeling a Little Sluggish? Try Putting it on an Ingredient Diet!

According to researchers, 45 percent of Americans make New Year’s resolutions. They’re a January 1st phenomenon as common as midnight kisses, bowl games and hangovers.  This is logical, after a holiday season of indulging in late nights, rich food and maybe more wine and eggnog than are completely healthy, you may wake up on New Year’s Day not looking and feeling your best.  Understandably then the common reaction is to resolve to reduce alcohol intake, cut out junk food and quit smoking. 

These are all great ideas but I would suggest adding one more thing to a January to-do list: reduce your interactions with unnecessary and often unhelpful skin care ingredients.  Typical skincare products can contain 20-30 ingredients and some even go as high as 40, 50 or even 60.  And the truth is that most of these additives are not beneficial to our skin.  Waxes and emulsifiers, found in almost all creams and lotions, may keep products stable but they provide no benefits and can cause allergic reactions.  Oils can oxidize, accelerating skin aging.  Fragrances may smell nice but they can be toxins and allergens, while preservatives kill all cells: bacterial, fungal and unfortunately human ones too.  And the combination of these chemicals manifested on a laundry list of impossible to pronounce ingredients can be a witch’s brew of chemistry that with chronic use cannot possibly do anyone’s skin any good.  

That’s why the kindest skincare will contain only a handful of focused, functional ingredients. My Truth Treatments, for example, have just 9 or fewer ingredients, including potent doses of our signature skin-soothing, collagen-boosting fat soluble Vitamin C.  There are no preservatives, dyes, waxes, fragrances emulsifiers, oils, silicon, parabens, petrochemicals, phthalates or formaldehyde. 

We all know that the skin is an organ. It’s alive with cell activity and constantly dynamic and this livingness mandates great care.  We need to treat it gently and judiciously and we should always be aware of what we’re putting on it.  Doesn’t a topical ingredient diet sound like resolution you might want to try out this year?

Thanks,
Ben