How's your skin care regimen?

I thought that it would be a really good idea to review some basics in skin care and cleansing.  Believe it or not, some women are still in the dark ages and cleaning their faces with soap and water, ugh! In this sophisticated age of anti-aging skin care and antioxidant skin creams, healthy skin is best achieved without the soap since it drys the skin and makes you look a lot older than what you are.

Let's take some time to check out some skin care sequences and products. There are so many products on the market let's decipher the lingo.

First things first

After cleansing your skin with a non-soap cleanser (usually recommended are cleansers with vitamin C), apply a treatment serum.  Now, a treatment serum  bascically enhances the moisturizer, or  is kind of an enriched moisturizer that is packed with vitamins..   They may be water or oil based, with the water based serums designed for oily skin and the oil based serums for the dry skin types.  Serums also help the make up go on smoother, leaving the skin looking silky and soft.

After the serum, apply a moisturizer with a sunscreen with a SPF of about 30.  Drmatoligists generally agree that this is important as  roughly 90% of wrinkles come from the sun. Again, look for a moisturizer that is high in vitamins like C and E.

At night

Skin as soft as a baby's!

In the evening, after cleansing, apply a lotion containing wrinkle-reducing retinol or retinoid.  Retinols are basically vitamin A in its purest form which is easily absorbed in to the skin  Once absorbed, they stimulate collagen production, increase cell rejuvenation and decrease pore size. The moisturizer that you apply on top of that should contain antioxidants like vitamin A and C, which can help prevent collagen breakdown  Incidentally, t is not necessary to wait in between the steps for drying of these products.

Don't apply a retinoid in the morning as the sun will deactivate it.  Again, make sure that you have applied a makeup with SPF of at least 30.