How do you get your glow back after the holiday season?
For many of us, the holidays are stressful, and you may be noticing the effects of that stress on your skin.
More fine lines and wrinkles have cropped up, or maybe your skin looks dry. If you have rosacea or eczema, you may have suffered more flare-ups than usual.
When skin is stressed, it often reacts with inflammation, which can lead to acne breakouts, eczema breakouts, thinning of skin, textural changes, slower healing, and overall dry, dull, and aged looking skin.
Now you’ve got New Year’s celebrations ahead of you, say nothing of the New Year itself. You don’t want to start out looking less than radiant, right?
We’ve got some ideas to help transform your skin back to healthy radiance.
How to Get Your Glow Back: 6 Helpful Tips
1. Wash your face with a soft cleansing brush.
Over the holidays, it’s easy to get lazy about washing your face. By the time you turn in, you may have been too tired to do a thorough job. If you have been overusing makeup wipes as a substitute for true cleansing, that could be why your skin is looking a little dull now.
Makeup wipes can take off some surface makeup, but they often leave behind not only dirt and grime, but alcohols, fragrance chemicals, and other ingredients in the wipe itself that aren’t good for your skin, especially sensitive, fragile skin.
Instead, choose a soft cleansing brush or loofah and a gentle cleansing cream, and give your face a good scrub. Try doing this for several days in a row and your skin is likely to look a lot better.
2. Use a gentle exfoliating product.
Usually after a holiday vacation, your skin may look dull because of a buildup of dead skin cells. Particularly if you struggled to keep up with your regular skincare routine, you may notice a lack of radiance and a generally older appearance.
Exfoliating can help slough off those dead cells from the surface of the skin, revealing fresh, glowing skin underneath. Avoid harsh exfoliating products that contain grains, nuts, and crystals, as they can create microtears in the skin that cause inflammation and breakouts. Choose a product with gentle acids in it (lactic, malic, glycolic, salicylic), and use it once or twice a week.
Don’t forget your lips! If they are chapped and dry, they need to be exfoliated too. Choose a gentle sugar scrub and use twice a week, followed by our Restorative Skin Balm for soft, smooth lips.
3. Follow cleansing with a quality toner.
Have you been skipping toner lately? You may want to rethink that. A quality toner helps balance your skin’s pH levels and prepares it to accept your moisturizer. Without it, your skin may look parched and dry.
Our Rescue + Relief Spray has multiple benefits. With a hydrating and healing action that helps skin recover from stress and breakouts, it provides powerful anti-inflammatories that can help tame redness and irritation. Spritz a little on your face and pat it in, then follow with moisturizer to achieve a clear, lit-from-within radiance.
4. Moisturize well.
Lifestyle stressors like a lack of sleep, poor diet, travel stress, and winter weather can all contribute to visible signs of aging. Your skin is going to need a little extra pampering to bounce back.
Just any moisturizer won’t do at this point. Your skin needs help! If you choose a department-store brand that is made up of petrolatum products, alcohols, and fragrances, you won’t be doing much to help your skin. If you have compromised or sensitive skin, it’s even more important that you look for a quality moisturizer.
Try our award-winning Calming Moisture. It’s full of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and healing ingredients like aloe vera, beta glucan (which helps promote collagen production), oat extract to reduce irritation and itch, natural oils for hydration, and shea butter for deep moisturization. Apply morning and night after cleansing and toning to replenish and rebuild your skin barrier.
5. Enjoy some me-time with a mask.
If your skin is very dry, stressed, and in need of extra care, masking can help provide skin recovery.
Look at your skin. If it is dull and dry, exfoliate first, then use a hydrating mask. Our Restorative Skin Balm works wonders as a mask. It helps heal damaged, stressed skin, provides moisture for severely dry skin, and safeguards the skin barrier, providing protection from harsh weather and other damaging aggressors.
6. Take care of yourself from the inside out.
After a period of indulgence, it’s important to get back to smart self-care. That means drinking more water (and fewer if any sugary drinks), eating a healthy diet, exercising daily, and getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night.
It’s also important to choose a daily activity that can help you relieve stress. Good options include exercise (walking is great), meditation, yoga or tai chi, journaling, and deep breathing. Stress takes a toll on your skin, so the more you can manage that stress, the better your skin will look and feel.
Here’s to happy, healthy radiant and youthful looking skin!
How do you get your glow back after the holidays?
Featured image courtesy of Kevin Malid via Pexels.
