As a naturopath, I’m always thinking about dietary and lifestyle recommendations to complement my organic skin care range. Drinking herbal teas has got to one of the easiest and most effective things you can do to further benefit skin. Not only do they taste great but the actives in herbs are absorbed and taken-up quicker than supplements.
Spring is the perfect time to take stock of your skincare products, reboot your beauty routine and get yourself set up for the sun to come.
Here's how: Step 1 - ‘Spring clean’ your skincare
Go through your beauty cabinet and get rid of anything you haven’t used for the last 12 months or anything that isn’t pulling its weight.
As a Naturopath I have treated many skin conditions over the years but some of them you see more than others. Eczema and dermatitis are most definitely my number one. And as the weather is cooling, now is the time when flare ups most commonly occur.
Although it can be caused by a multitude of factors, there are lots of ways to reduce eczema occurrence, and sometime eradicate it for good. Here is what I know about eczema and what you can do about it.
The quality of your skin varies according to the season, what you’re eating, the climate you’re in, your stress levels, and what you’re using on your skin.
Your skin is never one skin type but rather a living, breathing, changeable organ, and you should treat it as such. By adapting your diet and skincare, you can keep your skin happy, no matter the season.
For example, in Australia we’re mid-winter which means the weather is cool and dry. So I’ve adapted my skincare routine, some habits and my diet, to keep my skin healthy.
Given that we're heading into Winter, I thought it was a good time to talk all things immune system health. As a naturopath, I’m always looking at natural ways to boost my immune system, whether it be through my diet, herbs or lifestyle choices.
Now more than ever, we need to feed our bodies the best nutrients to ensure our immune system stays in top condition. Here are my go-to’s for keeping my immune system healthy.
I have always tried to live a low-tox life but it became paramount for me when I decided I wanted to become a parent. Falling pregnant was not a piece of cake for my husband and I, and we ended up in an IVF clinic after several years of trying to conceive naturally.
Sunscreen is something that we all know we're supposed to wear on a daily basis and it gets especially drummed into us from a beauty perspective as the best way to maintain the youthfulness of our skin. The thing that bothers me is that there is a lot of misinformation about the level of SPF required and the benefit to skin. I'm here to bust those myths!
Keeping our skin healthy shouldn’t be a difficult or complicated task. However, there are some really simple mistakes that we all make from time to time that can be detrimental to the health of our skin both short and long term. Here are the top 5 mistakes I commonly see:
1. Over cleansing
This is perhaps the most common skincare misstep. We all seem to think that squeaky clean skin is healthy skin but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Every time we cleanse our skin, we’re not only stripping it of dirt, food and make up, we also remove naturally produced oils in the skin, as well as some of the microbiome (the good bacteria, microorganisms etc) that helps maintain our skin’s barrier.
The skin on our bodies is often neglected as we tend to focus on our face and figure our bodies will just look after themselves. Big mistake!
Because our skin is our largest organ and most of what we put on it gets absorbed, choosing high-quality products for the body is so very important. They need to be 100% natural and as organic as possible, to avoid causing skin reactions, disrupting our hormones, and not adding to the toxin burden on our liver.
There are also some simple things you can do to look after your body that will reduce dryness, stop eczema from flaring up and keep it glowing.
The summer holidays are almost here and for many of us it's time to think about packing our bags for a little time away, if not a little time out. When I'm packing for our 2 week annual beach holiday it has to be simple and light-weight. I don’t have the space nor the time to spend hours on my skin and so I make sure to only include products which will keep my skin in top shape, quick smart.
