So, what can we do? If you don’t want to go to the extremes of having your face skin sanded off with steel brushes, or burnt off with 88% Phenolic acid, which is actually strong enough to kill you if it gets into your bloodstream too quickly, there aren’t too many options left. However, there are a few things you can do which can make your skin texture look more youthful and give you back some of that lost glow.

The most important thing, when it comes to youthful glow, is to find an exfoliator that is gentle enough to use daily. It should contain no apricot seeds or other abrasive substances, since these will damage your healthy skincells in addition to scrubbing away your dead cells, and that only ends up as inflamed and irritated skin, which is no good. Instead, find a scrub that contains oatmeal, cornmeal, crushed rose petals, or even white sugar. Think of it more like a polish than a scrub. If your scrub is gentle enough and you use it daily, it will give your skin a very smooth texture, and that in itself makes you look younger, even though your lines and wrinkles are still there.

The second culprit is your cleanser – stay away from soapy cleansers. Healthy skin is NOT supposed to feel “squeeky clean.” That only means that all your natural oils have been stripped away. Besides, soapy cleansers don’t remove makeup as well as creamy non-soapy cleansers, and when they strip the oils from your skin, they also change the natural acidic pH of the skin to alkaline, which is no good. Anytime the pH is off, bacteria can invade hair follicles and you’ll end up with pimples and boils. So, when it comes to cleansers, think creamy, non-soap, preferably pH balanced.

The toner should be alcohol free, of course! Alcohol dries out the skin, and who needs that? There are some astringents that don’t dry out the skin, such as citric acid, and in addition, it should also contain soothing agents, such as chamomile, marshmallow root and comfrey, and it must be pH balanced!

The moisturizer should be thin, like a serum, even for dry skin. Why? Because thick, heavy creams tend to sit on top of the skin, and even though they prevent water from evaporating from the surface, they don’t moisturize the deeper layers of skin and can therefore actually keep the skin dry. A serum can easier penetrate the skin and moisturize the deeper layers.

The most important ingredient in moisturizers is hyaluronic acid, which should be vegan and paraben free. Hyaluronic acid is a natural component of the skin that can hold its own weight in water 1000 times, and it also helps increase the penetration of other skincare ingredients, since it increases the moisture levels in the deeper layers of the skin. This substance will even plump up your skin enough that fine lines and wrinkles look less obvious. So if you don’t want the nasty side effect of using Retin-A, hyaluronic acid is a good alternative. It will make your skin look plump and young, and it is a totally harmless ingredient as well! According to the cosmetic database, hyaluronic acid is rated green, which is basically harmless.

And last, but not least, don’t forget to add a good sunscreen before you go out. Not only does it protect the skin from sundamage, but it can also prevent those nasty brown aging spots to occur.
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Then my friend started telling me how Barbara Streisand had to have a face lift. She told me that Barbara used to perform when she was younger with her facial skin pulled back with tape that was hidden under her hair. But when she couldn’t get away with doing that anymore, she had to go under the knife. And she said to me that I had to understand the pressure those famous people are under. They HAVE to look good, no matter what their age is. And she said that a person couldn’t possibly perform onstage looking old and wrinkled.

It blew my mind! Why not??? A woman with a voice like an angel couldn’t perform if she had crowsfeet or lines on her forehead??? Does she sing with her skin??? What exactly did the audience mean by “we love you” then? Does even love only go skin deep? Are we really that superficial in our judgment of eachother? I hope not!

This perception, that everybody has to look like teenagers, really has to change. Yes, we need to take care of our outer packaging, our skins, but at the same time, we have to also learn to value the person who lives in the skin. We have to learn to value the quality of the being inside, below the surface of the skin. We have to learn to see beyond lines and wrinkles, or even better, we have to learn to honor wrinkles as an expression of life itself. Instead of trying to stay young forever, we need to learn to accept and honor the natural cycles of life.

I believe that if we live, fully and totally, while expressing ourselves in any way that our talents allow, our lives will be filled with joy and meaning, and when a being is full of joy, who cares about a few lines? If you wake up every morning, excited about going through another day, who has the time to get old? Oldness is simply a perception that has to do with a stuck mind and a life unlived.

Is there life after death? Who cares? The real question is, is there life after birth? That is what we are here to find out. Right here, right now, living life is what matters. Life is prescious, and each moment is a gift that shouldn’t be wasted on trivial nonsense. Besides, if there were no mirrors, who would care about wrinkles? It would be a very different world…
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What is Retin-A?
Retin-A is a medication used to treat acne and unwanted lines and wrinkles on the skin. It is supposed to be one of the only products that can effectively make a difference when it comes to removal of wrinkles, but the question is, at what price?

How does it work?
It actually does a few nasty things to your skin – like suppress your sebum production (oil production) as well as the production of keratin cells (surface cells on the skin), and this is why it is a very popular method for treating acne.

Acne is caused by the effect of hormones on the hair follicles and sebaceous glands (oil producing glands). When the glands produce too much oil, the follicles can be plugged through a combination of sticky oil and lose skincells, and if you add bacterias to that, you end up with acne. So the idea is to use Retin-A to suppress the production of sebum as well as the production of keratin cells, because that will solve two of the problems that cause acne in one go. In addition, it was also found that Retin-A stimulates the cell turnover in the walls of the hair follicles, which will basically push out the sebum and skincells that are clogging the opening, and when that happens, your acne will magically disappear.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? But something is very wrong with this kind of thinking – this is what I call allopathic thinking. For anyone who doesn’t know, I am a homeopathic practitioner by trade, so tomorrow, I will share with you the homeopathic view on the problem of acne.
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Life moves in cycles, and every cycle has its own beauty. In this society, it seems that we can only see the beauty of the maiden (teenage girl), and we have become obsessed about keeping our looks in that stage, no matter what stage we are actually in.

What about the beauty of the mother, with all her roundness and softness? What about the beauty of the crone with her life experiences etched into her face? We can see how much she smiled, we can see what hardship she had to endure, we can see the effect of the cold, the wind and the sun, and we can look into her eyes and see the wisdom from many lessons learned. How can you live your life totally and come out the other end with your packaging unscratched? And, why would you?

It is definitely time for all of this to change, but this time, we need to consciously create the change we want.
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