Cold Winter Skin Care

Winter often spells tragedy for your skin. It looks rough and chapped, feels tight and drawn. The winter is the season when our skin actually needs the most extra care. To help your skin to survive the brutality of the season, keep in mind the following simple winter skin care tips:

- Do not take excessive long and hot showers as this will deplete the natural skin moisturizer.

- Pamper you skin with a little coconut oil before bath to heal dryness and chaps.

- Add a few drops of oil to the water that you are using to bath. Shorten your bath time.

- Use a mild cleanser as opposed to soap, which can strip your skin of the essential oils it needs.

- Use SPF sunscreen 15 or better on face, neck and all visible parts of body.

- Continue to drink lots of water to provide the necessary hydration to your skin.

- Avoid products with high alcohol content, heavy perfumes or other additives.

- Use cosmetics and moisturizers that contain jojoba oil instead of petroleum-based products.

- Apply some good cold cream on your face before going to bed. Take proper sleep.

- Use a soothing lip balm or moisturizing lipstick, preferably with a sunscreen.

- A proper nutritious intake helps in rejuvenating the skin from within.

- Primrose syrup and olive oil in your diet also aids in softening your skin.

- A glass of hot water with lemon will help you eliminate toxins responsible for bad skin

By taking a few common sense winter skin care precautions, you can be as happy and beautiful in the winter as you are during the summer.

Understanding Sun Protection Basics

People are finally beginning to realize that although sunshine is an important component of most outdoor activities and a great mood enhancer, excessive exposure can lead to much unpleasantness. A painful sunburn is the most immediate consequence of excess exposure. Long term, excess exposure can damage the skin making it prone to wrinkling. And, finally, protection from the sun's damaging rays is important for anyone who wants to limit his or her risk of developing skin cancer.

Sun protection is important anytime you'll be outdoors between the hours of 10:00 am and 3:00 pm, when the sun is at its highest. People don't realize that they can still burn even though the sun isn't shining. Overcast days are some of the worst times for being in the sun unprotected. And because ultraviolet rays can reflect off certain surfaces, people need protection from the sun when snow covers the ground and also when in the water, when lying or playing on the sand and even when on a cement or grass surface.

Ultraviolet rays are the different wavelengths of energy that are produced by the sun. Even though harmful, the sun's energy is necessary to all human life. Fortunately, as life on earth has evolved so has the capacity to tolerate UV rays. The most important protection against the damaging ultraviolet rays is the ozone layer - a layer in the stratosphere that absorbs most of the various types of UV rays before they reach the earth's surface.

Most of this radiation or energy from the sun is invisible to the naked eye. The fact that the radiation is mostly invisible is likely the reason why the sun can be so harmful. It's hard to convince a person to protect against something that can't be seen. Of the ultraviolet rays, the two that are responsible for skin damage are UVA and UVB rays. The sun also generates UVC rays, but fortunately these extremely damaging rays cannot penetrate the ozone layer and therefore pose no threat to humans.

The longer and more prevalent of the two, UVA rays are responsible for long-term skin damage because they absorb deep into the skin. Their strength remains uniform regardless of the time of day or time of year. UVB rays are shorter and are what causes skin to tan or sunburns. Our bodies need UVB rays to produce Vitamin D, an important vitamin. Their strength varies based on time of day, time of year, altitude and also distance from the equator.

The UV Index is a scale measuring from 0 – 11 (low to extreme) and it's used to determine the intensity of the sun's radiation, particularly the likelihood that skin will or will not redden when exposed to the sun for various periods of time.

Sun Damaged Skin

The consequences of sun damage (aside from the temporary sting of sunburn) are initially invisible and are sometimes hard to comprehend. The truth is, as much as 90 percent of wrinkles, brown spots, and sagging skin what we usually think of as aging an be attributed to sun damage. What is worse, skin cancer is now the most common cancer, striking more and more people each year.

If you are still tempted to head out the door without sun protection, stop to consider what's going to happen to your skin. Melanin, the protective pigment found in the epidermis, defends the skin against sun damage by absorbing the sun's rays and dissipating the energy as heat. The more sun exposure, the more melanin the skin produces, which results in a suntan sign that ultraviolet UV rays have already damaged the skin. If sun exposure continues, the UV rays will damage cells and blood vessels in the outer layer of skin, causing the redness and painful inflammation of sunburn, actually a minor burn.

The UV rays that are not absorbed by melanin may prompt the formation of free radicals, destructive scavenger molecules. Because free radicals lack electrons, they attempt to steal electrons from other molecules, damaging the molecules in the process. Free radicals that get inside a cell can damage the cell's genetic material and cause mutations, and they may even trigger cancer.

However, the damage does not stop there. Urocranic acid, a chemical found in the epidermis, also reacts with ultraviolet light. The reaction also creates free radicals, which then break down the collagen and elastin in the skin, causing wrinkles. In addition, the sun's rays are thought to decrease immune system function within the skin, meaning that any invading organisms have a better chance of causing infection.