Skin Care for Different Skin Types

⊙ Dry Skin

Dry skin is easy to have keratin (dead layered skin on your skin) due to lack of sebum excretion. The most sophisticated skin care with minimum irritation is required for this type of skin. Basic skin care should be provided more carefully due to the skin's sensitivity.

For dry skin, excessive exfoliation will make the skin even drier. Look for the exfoliating product that has minimal irritation to your skin. People with dry skin will have benefits using cleansing cream and cleansing foams that provide sufficient hydration to your skin.

Since it is easier for dry skin to be lack of both moisture and oil in skin especially during fall season when air is the most dry throughout the year, you should strive to keep the balance of oil and moisture in order to prevent your skin from dryness.

Tips for dry skin:
1. Facial massages using convenient facial mask sheets that provide sufficient moisture to your skin. Recommended to use 3 times a week.
2. Use exfoliating products only once a week. Gently massage while applying.
3. Drink a lot of water to keep your body moisturized.
4. Eat cucumbers every day.

⊙ Combination Skin

If you have a combination skin, your skin is healthy and well balanced with moderate amount of sweat and sebum excretions. Since you rarely notice severe skin problems, it is easy to be negligent in skin care for this type.

Be diligent in your daily skin care since people with combination skin can maintain clean and clear skin just with a basic care. But be cautious about your skin during changing seasons because the balance of your skin can be broken during those times. As I mentioned for dry skin, combination skin can be drier during fall. Thus, pay more attention to provide enough moisture to your skin during this time.

Use double cleansing method for washing your face.

Tips for combination skin:
1. Deep cleansing
2. Facial mask sheets recommended to keep your skin moisture. 2 times a week
3. Essence massage using facial masks
4. Homemade facial recipes - cucumber, yogurt etc

⊙ Oily Skin

The most troubled skin type. Oily skin is easy to have skin problems such as breakouts, acne, blackheads and large pores etc due to excessive sweat and sebum secretion. Due to excessive sebum secretion, this type of skin is easy to accumulate impurities and wastes in pores unless thick keratin is removed by exfoliation. Furthermore, if thick keratin blocks the entrance of pores, this will cause acne and pimples. For oily skin, pay extra attention to exfoliating and use the proper cleansing methods. It is very important to manage your pores using oil free cleansing products, foam cleanser and effective exfoliating products to remove keratin. Use a steamed towel to cover your face in order to open up the pores. Then, apply exfoliating products to remove wastes blocking your pores. Carefully manage around the T-zone area where larger pores exist and even more excessive sebum secretion occurs. Make sure to avoid accumulation of thick keratin around the area.

Tips for oily skin:
1. Exfoliating your skin - Remove keratin and maintain clean pores
2. Deep cleansing
3. Facial masks strongly recommended - Helps maintain balance of your skin and keep your skin moisturized.
4. Homemade facial recipes - carrot, egg white etc.

Oily skin, Sebum and Skin Care

Our skin glows with red and becomes slippery even for the short period of outing under the strong UV rays. For every 34 degree F (1℃) increase, sebum secretion increases by 10%. When the amount of sebum secretion increases, the probability of our skin to be exposed to skin problems increases as well. Therefore, we need a systematic know hows to keep skin clean and smooth during summer season.

Why should we pay attention to sebum skin care?

Strong UV rays of July requires not just sunscreen products. We need to resolve excessive sebum secretion that bothers our face throughout the summer. No matter how we carefully put makeup every morning, due to continuously produced sebum mixed with sweats, pores completely filled with sebum are openly revealed sooner. Furthermore, unclear identities that can be acne or pimples appear on different areas of our face and pores look just as ugly as if toothpicks poked our face. In order to resolve all of these seasonal problems, we must devote to thorough cleansing, diligent skin care and post makeup skin care.

Q1 What happens to this slippery face?

As I mentioned above, as the temperature goes up, the amount of sebum secretion increases. Our pores are sensitive to temperature change so for every 34 degree F (1℃) increase, sebum secretion increases by 10%. When sebum is combined with dirt or pollutant in the air, it is oxidized, blocks pores and causes skin troubles. We can always prevent pimples caused by blocked pores if we know how to do sebum skin care.

Sebum and sweats combined skin has a weak resistance against external environment. During summer, pollutants are easily accumulated on our skin and due to increased sebum secretion, our face is sticky and makeup is smudged easily. In addition, our skin is skewed toward alkalinity from sweats, our skin becomes an easy environment for germs to multiply easily. Consequently, diminished resistance ability of our skin cause more skin troubles.

Although the surface of our skin is humid and sticky, inside our skin is dry and rustling. Due to high humidity, sweats and excessive sebum secretion during summer, our skin surface is humid. However, if you are working in an office environment, an air conditioner will evaporate your sweats and take moisture inside your skin so ultimately your skin will become drier and have less elasticity.

Q2 What should we do then?

Point 1: Oil-moisture balanced skin care

If you can keep oil-moisture balanced basic skin care, your sebum management is half successful already. Generally, people with excessive sebum secretion tend to be absorbed in removing sebum. But the prior thing to do is to adjust moisture-oil balance. If your skin lacks moisture, it will produce sebum in order to maintain gloss on your skin so skin surface becomes slippery but inside your skin is dry. First of all, reduce the gap of indoor and outdoor temperatures and lowered indoor temperature by air conditioner should be adjusted. In addition, sweats, frequent cleansing, artificially lowered temperature all makes our skin drier and lower resistance ability. Therefore, provide enough moisture to your skin using toning lotions with moisturizing essence days and nights. Regular use of facial mask sheets is recommended. If you are the person who cannot stand stickiness and use oil papers all the time, this can only break the oil-moisture balance and your skin condition can be worse.

Point 2: Control the environment where sebum secretion is supported

The important point of summer skin care is how much skin temperature to drop. If your skin is exposed to sun for a long period of time, you'll face with increased skin temperature, increased sebum secretion and enlarged pores. The best method for skin care in this case is to open your pores with warm water and remove wastes by cleansing thoroughly with a foam cleansing product then finish with splashing cold water in order to tighten your pores. If you are outside, you can use portable mist and provide cooling effect on your face. Facial mask sheets or cooling masks kept in a refrigerator can help adjust your skin temperature.

Point 3: Pay more attention to pores around your nose where sebum is concentrated

Since blackheads cannot be completely eliminated by one-time method, consistent skin care is required. Many people use their fingers and nails to squeeze out blackheads. If you do that, ugly scars can be remained and the pore walls can be damaged so this will only lead to enlarged pores.

Remove blackheads using light peeling products or packs. When you have a severe blackhead problem, you should consult with a dermatologist. As long as you are devotional to daily thorough cleansing and 2-3 times of deep cleansing (exfoliating skin) and applying facial mask sheets a week, keratin and sebum problems can be eventually improved. I've already said this several times in previous articles. But I will repeat again. While double cleansing your face, open your pores with warm water and remove sebum and other impurities in pores using a foam cleansing product. For deep cleansing, open your pores with a steamed towel (this can soften keratin). For closing, always splash with cold water in order to tighten back opened pores and maintain skin elasticity.

5 Reasons Exercise is Good for the Skin

Part 1: 5 Benefits of Exercise to Our Skin

As I decided to shape my body, two things that I implemented into my daily habits have dramatically changed my life. Two things are, eating healthy and proper exercise. If you expected something special and unusual, I apologize. However, miracle happens from what we already know and this is so true. In this article, I would like to share the good news of exercise and how it can benefit our skin. My next article will focus on how my changed diet has affected my skin.

I tended to be extremely lazy when it comes to exercise. But I have always wanted to be in an excellent shape like a model. I was just not determined or disciplined enough to take into action. For about 10 years, I repeated I "will" start losing weight "tomorrow." You see the problem here. Tomorrow.... Tomorrow never came to me until I had a will to change my life. After 10 years of consecutive failures of bringing actions into life, I finally started on July 9th, 2009. My sole motivation was to be in a great shape with bikini. But I notice now that this new life style also changes my skin.

Today is July 30th. Three weeks passed since I started. I can already see the results of my body trimmed down progressively. (I will post my in progress pictures when I achieve my body goal, hopefully by the end of this year :) ). But I can also see the changes of my skin condition.

The image of exercise is to lose weight only. Not many people realize that a regular exercise involving weight training, cardio and stretching could improve our skin look healthy and youthful along with body change. Then, what doe exercise do to our skin? How can it improve our skin?

5 Benefits of Exercise to Our Skin

1. Benefits to Acne-prone Skin (Anti-Acne)

David Berman, MD, medical director and dermatologic/cosmetic surgeon at the Berman Skin Institute, Palo Alto, Calif., and former chief of dermatology at Santa Clara County Hospital says that "There's a lot of indirect evidence that shows that when you exercise your level of stress diminishes. So your adrenal glands are producing less of these male-type hormones that are part of any acne flare-up." Most of you have probably experienced that when you were extremely stressed out, breakouts appeared on your face. Reduced stress level tends to calm the adrenals, which contributes to acne. Controlled adrenals helps control acne.

2. Benefits to Enlarged Pores (Pore Management)

Both intensive weight training and cardio exercises makes us sweat. Sweating can unclog pores that can lower the probability of appearing breakouts. As I mentioned in the article, "5 Methods and Tips to Reduce Pores", clogged pores are the main reasons for pimples and breakouts.

3. Benefits to Aged Skin & Wrinkled Skin (Anti-Aging)

Did you know that a regular exercise can slow the process of aging of your skin? As we are aged, the fibroblasts, collagen-producing cells, become less in numbers and lazy. As a result, our skin becomes inelastic, wrinkly and saggy. Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue and makes up about 25% to 35% of the whole-body protein content and is directly related to wrinkles, aged skin and fine lines. But people with regular exercise routine have much younger looking. Why is that? Both weight training and cardio (stairs, treadmill, elliptical, cycling, hiking etc) influence natural production of collagen. Exercise also infuses skin cells with oxygen and other nutrients. This greatly promotes the production of collagen. While we haven't thought of exercise as being anti-aging effective, experts agreed that it is effective in slowing the aging of our skin.

4. Benefits to Cellulite (Reducing cellulite)

Well known benefits of weight training and cardio is to reduce cellulite around buttocks, backs of thighs, and upper arms. With less cellulite, your overall body skin will look firmer and tightened. Toning and pulling muscles with weight training and cardio are great ways to reduce cellulite. Let's have a firmer body skin with exercise!

5. Benefits to Skin with Impurities and Toxins (Cleansing Effects)

Our skin is accumulated with toxins from chemicals, dirt, impurities and wastes daily. So it's important to cleanse the proper way for different types of skin as there are far too many that still cleanse incorrectly.

Cardio (aerobic) exercises such as stair climbing, cycling, walking, jogging or elliptical promote blood circulation. Better circulation removes toxins in our skin more effectively. Furthermore, before and after your exercise, it is very important to hydrate your body. Enough water allows your body to have active blood flow, which in turn eliminates impurities and wastes on our skin. I drink 1 cup of water before, 3-4 cups during, and 2 cups of water after the exercise.

I've been exercising for over 3 weeks now. My body has already started changing, and the best part of my changed life style is my much clearer and smooth facial skin. I will get back to you with the benefits of healthy diet to our skin