We're Sharing Nature's Secrets for a Healthy Summer ~ Inside & Out

Here Comes the Sun

The sunshine, warmer temperatures, and our skin ~ we may want the summer glow but at what cost? We want to nourish our skin but don't want to compromise our health because of harmful ingredients. 

There is a strong body and skin connection. Let's get ready for summer and see how we can get healthy on the inside, which shows in our healthy skin on the outside. 

It's Right Under Our Noses

and all around on our faces! :)

For many years, researchers and scientists have been coming up with ways for us to get healthy skin. Stop the madness! There's no need to look any further. The secret for long-lasting, healthy skin has been right under our noses this whole time ... and all around our noses, too. 

 What's this secret? It's really no secret at all. It's in the microbes of our skin's microbiome. This is a topic that we've been asked about more and more, we're seeing it out there in fancy marketing, and it's time to shine some real light on it.  

How do we Improve our Skin's Microbiome?

Let's start with something at the surface ~ cleansing the skin.

Over cleansing is a real problem for many. For those with oily skin, it's often over-stripped leaving the surface dry and vulnerable, which coaxes the skin to produce more oil leading to potentially clogging the pores with excess oil and too much oil on the surface. Dry skin may become drier from many of the typical sudsing or lathering, milky cleansers. 

It's why we stick to our cleansing oils. The very first award we received in 2014 was for our cleansing oil for oily prone skin (Balancing Cleansing Oil with Thyme) and our cleansing oils have been a game changer for many ever since. Easily removed with a wet washcloth, paper towel, and cotton ball, what's left behind are no impurities... just soft and cleansed skin with its healthy surface still intact. 

For those that like the makeup wipes or cleansing wipes, this is the one-up from them. Makeup, sweat, and impurities are removed with a wet washcloth, or even a disposable paper towel or wet cotton pad. Rinsed your washcloth or pad with water and remove, repeat as necessary. What you have left on the skin is only a healthy surface, without any residual ingredients or impurities. If you've read the ingredients on many of those makeup removers, you'll find that you really don't want those ingredients left on the skin. The cleansing oil is the perfect clean start ~ then you're ready to hydrate and moisturize. 

Using only limited ingredients to hydrate and moisturize our skin, avoiding alcohol extracts, silicones, glycols, false fragrances and other synthetics, and exfoliating properly and gently on a regular basis, will not only nudge our collagen to keep it flourishing, but it allows the serums and beneficial antioxidants to penetrate and do their job at the surface and below. 

How do We Improve our Internal Microbiome?

Here are some quick tips:

1. Limit the amount of over washing to the skin and limit using antibacterial products on the hands.
2. Avoid processed foods and artificial sweeteners like sucralose, saccharin, and aspartame. These can be upsetting to our natural metabolism and gut health.
3. Live, healthy microbes live in fermented foods and are wonderful for gut health. Raw sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, and kombucha are teeming with live microbes.
4. Foods with natural antioxidants fuel the healthy microbes. Nuts, olive oil, seeds, berries, coffee, and especially green tea are high in polyphenols, which are the antioxidants that feed the healthy gut and skin microbiome.
5. Vegetables high in fiber that also contain inulin improve the microbiome. Inulin is natural prebiotic ~ leeks, onions, garlic, and artichokes are examples of these vegetables.
6. The more fiber, the better. Eating seasonally and a variety of vegetables and fruit that are in season support different microbes and can help quell the boredom of food.
7. Using antibiotics not only destroys the bad microbes, but it harms the good microbes. It can take weeks to recover, so try to use them only when absolutely necessary.

We're all unique, and so are our microbes. Our gut microbes are an important part of our internal health, which we know has a direct connection to our skin health. It's no coincidence that our immunity comes from our gut and our skin is our largest organ.

With the numbers of processed foods becoming available, and the number of steroids and prescriptive medications for eczema, psoriasis, Rosacea and other skin conditions arise, it's important to know that our gut and our skin are more closely related that we know. Treat them both carefully and with respect. Our body (and skin!) is fueled by what we feed it ~ make every forkful and dropper count. 

Image: A neighboring garden's blooming artichoke. Delish!

The Zoom Groom ~ Natural Product Favorites for Him

Is Laughter the Best SKIN Medicine?

We mentioned in last month's blog that the best things are life are sometimes free ~ free of synthetics, free of harmful ingredients, and free of the 'fluff' and cheap additives in our everyday care products. In previous blogs, we've shared about the benefits of exercise and the right foods for healthy skin. 

Here's another healthy skin tip, it's free and it's no joke.

It's LAUGHTER!

Kids are laughing experts. In an average day, children laugh about 120 times a day. How much laughing do us adults do? An average of only 4-6 times per day. No kidding! 

Laughter is a booster to our immune system. The side effects? Healthier hair, brighter skin, clear eyes, and being able to fight sickness, according to this research. 

There is definitely a mind + skin connection, and our skin can be negatively impacted by a shortage of happiness and laughter. We always say that the body listens to what the mind is thinking.

According to Dr. Malin, a psychiatry and dermatology expert explains, "A lot of nerve endings are connected to the skin, which wraps around the organs, so as emotions are played out neurologically, they can be expressed through the skin just as stress can be expressed through gastrointestinal symptoms, increased anxiety or hypertension." 

Stress cannot only cause weight gain and our mid-section to grow, but it can also cause skin upset. Laughter releases all of those healthy hormones and endorphins, which benefit so much of our internal systems, and ultimately, our skin.

So yes, laughter IS the best medicine. :)

Below: Sarah and I laughing during a quick pic of a Red Nose Day from a while back. 

Your June Special

Save on our Skin-Loving Serums in June

The sunshine, warmer temperatures, and our skin ~ we may want the summer glow, but not while compromising our internal health, or our skin's health.

With zero synthetics, zero hormone disruptors, and zero toxins meet our skin pairing for perfect hydration and moisture. We have Skin Suites formulated for different skin conditions. 

First, meet our botanical toning waters ~ three different formulas to address different needs. Next, our Day and Night Serums ~ six natural formulas to address a variety of skin conditions.

• Nothing to clog pores, nothing to harm our skin, and nothing to compromise our health or hormones.                                             
• Every condition of skin benefits from hydration and moisture, no matter how oily, dry, or sensitive.

For all practical purposes, you should know oil and water do mix. We mix them morning and night, and our skin is happy because of it.

Our botanical toning waters offer the skin hydration, they maintain the skin's proper pH, and they also aid in the penetration and application of our serums while adding a light antioxidant to the surface. Paired with our botanical serums, which offer moisture to the skin, it's a wonderful combination of wholesome care and nourishment that the skin needs and loves. 

We can't offer a special on one without having a special on the other, so this month, you can save 10% on all of our botanical toning waters, day serums, and night serums. 

Our three Skin Suites offer different formulas for various skin conditions, and mixing and matching is perfectly acceptable. 

The code READYFORSUMMER saves 10% on the following celebrity products this month:

• Balancing Toning Water with Melissa, Cucumber & Rose Geranium
• Balancing Day Serum 
• Balancing Night Serum
• Hydrating Toning Water with Lavender & Rose
• Hydrating Day Serum
• Hydrating Night Serum
• Restoring Toning Water with Immortelle, Calendula & Lavender
• Restoring Day Serum
• Restoring Night Serum

Why do we love our serums so much ~ and why is our skin so healthy become of them?

Oh, how we love thee... let us count thy ways. 

Our skin is finicky ~ it can be like an independent cat or a stubborn toddler... what can be wonderful one day maybe not as cooperative the next.

Our skin, along with the weather, stress levels, eating patterns, and our hormones can change in the blink of an eye. So with that change, may come the need to tweak the daily routine. 

Our three Skin Suites (Balancing, Hydrating, Restoring) typically can address all kinds of skin conditions. We're all different, and we just learned that so is our microbiome ~ each is unique to us. 

• All of our serums are pH balanced, are formulated for sensitive skin, and no matter how oily or how dry the complexion is, all skin benefits from the right kind of hydration and moisture. Mixing our botanical waters and serums together not only addresses both of these needs, but we love the waters to be the last water on our skin. The pH is perfect for our skin, they help the serums penetration and application, and they provide a light antioxidant - very different from our sink or drinking water. 
• We use zero alcohol or other extracts, we focus on the true plant ingredients, and we use zero false fragrances or artificial ingredients. That being said, from time to time, colors, natural aromas, and even density of our treatments can change. We LOVE this because synthetics never change, but natural ingredients do. 
• We also believe in celebrating each ingredient and allowing it to work for us. Rather than having dozens and dozens of tiny amounts of extracts or elements, we'd prefer to have fewer actives that are allowed to stand up and perform in each treatment. 
• Our day serums all have natural UVA and UVB protective oils, such as carrot, raspberry, and cranberry. These are different than applying sunblock on top of the skin as they act as free-radical fighters by fighting those premature aging rays in an oil and as a light veil on the skin. Our night serums do not contain these oils and are richer to benefit our skin and cellular turnover while we rest.

Our new Purely Cranberry Serum Boost is a wonderful addition of elemental protection each morning with the day serum ~ it's already an ingredient in many of our serums, and now we have it as a stand-alone serum boost. It's like adding a Vitamin A & C serum to an already well-rounded serum meal that you're getting from the various actives in your day or night serum.

If you're looking for a clean sunscreen to go over your serum, we recommend exploring EWG Healthy Living app, or go directly to their website at EWG.org and click on the sunscreen database. Very informative and safe, too!

If you're ultra sensitive like me and have a hard time with even the safest sunscreens, keeping a big hat on hand does the trick, and I never go without an application of Day Serum on my skin. 

Image: A beach day for me... and my hat. :)

Let's Be Water