It’s not just our faces that need a good skin care cream to keep them looking young and healthy, our hands suffer the same kind of exposure as our faces, but with the added punishment of being washed with harsh soaps regularly and being immersed in washing up bowls full of hot water and powerful detergent. It’s no wonder that our hands can be one of the biggest giveaways of age, and also no surprise that they can age and look very uncared for very quickly.
Hand cream has become something that many women can’t do without, it is almost a ritual to apply hand cream after every visit to the bathroom, or after doing washing up. It’s also a great excuse to take a break from whatever you are doing to rub some hand cream on, and it’s quite therapeutic to just stop and massage your hands for a few seconds.
There are some wonderful skin care creams for hands available, some of them sound almost good enough to eat! Like face creams, they come in different levels of intensity so you can choose which one suits you best. There is nothing worse than having slimy, greasy feeling hands after applying hand cream, and finding you are leaving greasy fingerprints on everything you touch. While hands do need a good quality cream to help keep them moisturised, they don’t need to be slathered in overly-rich cream all the time, there is just no point. You just need to keep the balance of the skin on your hands right, so they don’t feel tight and dry and like the skin is going to crack if you clench your fist. You might find you need a stronger moisturiser in the winter when hands get cold and skin tends to dry out quicker.
A little bonus of using hand cream is that your nails get nourished at the same time, some creams are marketed as hand and nail creams, as they contain some extra nutrients to help keep your nails strong and healthy, after all nails suffer just as much as skin when it comes to detergents. While hand cream isn’t to everyone’s taste, giving a little thought to the condition of your hands can’t go amiss, even if you only apply cream once or twice a day, the skin on your hands will be grateful for it and you will see the benefits.
Our skin, especially the skin on our faces, is exposed to the elements on a daily basis. Wind, sun, rain maybe even snow and of course pollution. central heating and air-conditioning bombard our facial skin non-stop. If we don’t offer our skin a helping hand in the fight against these things with some TLC and a good skin care cream then the aging process will more than likely happen at an accelerated rate, leaving us looking older than our years.
There are other factors that can add to us having a less than rosy complexion, such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, dehydration and lack of sleep. All these things attack our skin not just from the outside but the inside too. Dehydrated skin is going to look thin and dull, and this can’t be cured with any kind of miracle cream, drinking water is essential to the health of our skin.
If you are making sure you have a good diet and are drinking plenty of water then your skin is going to be in good condition on the inside, you can then focus on helping your skin look it’s best by giving it some extra care on the outside. Many creams contain vitamins and anti-oxidants that can help smooth the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles and can boost the appearance of your complexion, or if you feel your skin needs a little more help there are some brilliant skin oils that can give dry skin a much needed boost.
It is important to understand there is a difference between dehydrated skin and dry skin. Dehydrated skin cannot be made better with any kind of cream or oil as it needs moisture from the inside, it it the actual cells that form the structure of your skin that are in need of moisture which can only come from inside i.e. drink water. Dry skin is skin that has suffered at the hands of the elements and pollution and can be helped with skin care creams as it is the outside of the skin that needs help.
Using a good skin care cream that matches your skins needs is a great step towards helping slow the aging process, making sure you look and feel great about your skin and how it is representing you – after all your face is one of the first things people see when they interact with you.
While there is an amazing range of face creams and serums available these days, a lot of people are becoming increasingly aware of the amount of chemicals that are contained in these creams. These chemicals are vital to the results that these creams promise to deliver, and a lot of them are just synthetic versions of anti-oxidants and vitamins that can be found in many natural products such as fruit and vegetables.
If you are just looking for a simple moisturiser then it is worth looking for something that is either very low or completely free of chemicals. Using blended oils can be wonderful for your skin, for instance sweet almond oil with tea tree oil for skin prone to spots. You could also use a specialist oil such as Bio-Oil which is designed to hydrate and nourish skin while improving the appearance of blemishes, mixing this with a little tea tree oil for problem skin or a little lavender oil for sensitive skin will give you a lovely natural moisturiser. It is important not to use neat aromatherapy oils on your skin as they can be too harsh, so always blend them with a carrier oil, even olive oil can be used.
It is also worth considering making your own face scrubs and masks, these can easily be rustled up using some basic ingredients from your kitchen such as honey & milk for a moisturising mask, or mixing some ground almonds with a little milk and honey for a gentle face scrub. The possibilities are endless, and using such natural products gives your skin a break from artificial cleansers and moisturisers. It is also a really good way to save some money!
Many companies are cottoning on to the fact that people are shying away from chemically loaded products and more and more products are appearing on the shelves that are advertising the fact they are free from things such as parabens, and use organic ingredients as far as is possible. It is always worth looking at baby care ranges for products that contain minimal amounts of chemicals as they are designed for much more sensitive skin, there are some wonderful creams that are made things such as olive oil, lavender oil and chamomile, designed for soothing babies bottoms that also work wonders on faces!
