Healthy skin helps you look fresher, younger and more energetic. By maintaining the health of your skin, you’re investing in your looks and overall health. If you’re looking for ideas on what you can do to keep your skin looking fresh, we’ve put together this list of four tips for healthier skin.
Protect Your Skin From The Sun
Although we all need (and likely enjoy) the sunshine, it can be one of the most harmful things for our skin. For this reason, it’s imperative to protect yourself from too much direct sun exposure. Wear a daily sunscreen of at least SPF15 – even if it’s not sunny out. Avoid sun tanning and tanning beds. If you need to be outdoors on sunny days, make sure to wear protective clothing such as wide-brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts.
Keep Yourself Hydrated
Regularly drinking water helps your skin stay healthy. While there are various recommendations about how many glasses or litres of water everyone should drink each day, you should calculate how much you need according to your body weight. It’s recommended that we drink about 15 to 30 ml of water for each pound we weigh. For a 150 pound person, that would be 2.25 to 4.5 litres of water a day.
Stop Smoking
If you’re a smoker and are concerned about your skin, stopping smoking can be the best thing you can do. Smoking constricts blood vessels and reduces the ability of oxygen and nutrients to reach the skin. Smoking also reduces the elasticity of your skin which can lead to wrinkles and sagginess. Smoking is not only bad for your lungs, it’s terrible for your skin.
Limit Your Alcohol Intake
Alcohol intake can lead to dehydration and inflammation – both of which are harmful to your skin. Dehydration can cause the skin to sag and wrinkle while also causing the pores to enlarge. The sugar in alcohol can cause inflammation which leads to redness and puffiness of the skin. This is due to the blood vessels becoming overly dilated and allowing an abnormal amount of blood to reach the skin’s surface. Limiting or avoiding alcohol altogether will reduce skin damage.