Lifestyle Choices

It’s a fact: healthy living means healthy-looking skin. Not surprisingly, habits that are bad for the rest of your body can also be bad for your looks. Drugs, smoking, too little sleep, and too much stress can cause breakouts, premature aging, and dull, lifeless skin.

Smoking and Your Skin

Most people know that smoking is bad for your lungs and heart. But did you know that the nicotine in cigarettes can make your skin look dull? Nicotine causes the blood vessels in the face to constrict (get smaller), limiting the amount of oxygen that reaches the skin. The reduced blood circulation from smoking can lead to puffiness under the eyes and early wrinkling.

Smoking can also rob your body of vitamins C and B, both important for your skin. The best way to avoid the bad effects of smoking on your skin is either to quit smoking or never start.

Drugs and Alcohol Are Dangerous

Using drugs—marijuana, amphetamines, narcotics, cocaine—will severely hurt your body and your mind in many ways. Drugs can also hurt your skin, causing poor color and tone. Drugs can depress your appetite so you don’t get proper nutrients.

And drugs can lead to sleeplessness, which can cause blemishes. In addition to ruining general health and appearance, many drugs will threaten life. Injecting certain drugs, for example, greatly increases the risk of AIDS, hepatitis, and other dangerous diseases.

Using alcohol can also affect the way your skin looks. Excessive alcohol use can lead to broken capillaries (blood vessels) in the skin, making it look red. Alcohol can also rob your body of important vitamins and minerals and can dehydrate your skin.

Sleep, Stress, and Your Skin

Not everyone requires the same amount of sleep. But getting enough sleep can be a big factor in your skin’s appearance. When you are tired, the blood in your body is directed toward your muscles and organs and away from your face making it looktired. Bags under the eyes, puffiness, and lackluster tone can also appear. Additionally, not getting enough sleep can trigger breakouts and make dry skin drier. Teenagers should try to get at least seven hours of sleep each night—it can make a big difference in how you look.

Stress and not getting enough sleep often go together. Both can hurt your complexion. Stress can make you look tired, and can even cause premature aging.

Everyone experiences stress at times. Working out ways to handle stress can make a positive difference in your life—and in your complexion!

To handle stress, try making lists of the things that are causing the stress in your life. Number them according to their importance. Next, make a list of things that you can do to deal with the stress.

Make an effort to try to relax when you are tense—close your eyes and imagine a beautiful place, a great song, or a good friend. Take a warm bath or a hot shower to relax tensed-up muscles. Sit down and take slow, deep breaths for ten or fifteen minutes.

Exercise is another positive way of dealing with stress that can also improve your skin. Exercise can improve energy, allowing you to handle stress better. And regularly working out by playing sports, doing aerobics, running, walking, dancing, or swimming improves circulation, which gives the skin a rosy glow.

Sun: Friend or Foe?

Beginning good habits for great skin as early as possible will affect how your skin looks now, and in the future. Studies show that sunburns during teenage years can result in wrinkling during the years ahead. Plan to have beautiful skin for your entire life by taking precautions against sun damage now.

Many dermatologists recommend wearing sunscreen every day, applying it in the morning as you would moisturizer. The only effective, long-term way to combat wrinkles is to prevent them from forming. Starting early can be your best defense for the future.

In the past, people believed that tanning could help acne. However, experts now believe that tanning merely provides a camouflage for blemish- prone skin. While exposure to the sun dries out the top layer of skin, it can also encourage the production of more oil, and can worsen skin problems. In addition, prolonged exposure to the sun can cause other problems for people taking some anti-acne medications. Talk with a dermatologist about how much time you should spend in the sun if you have acne.

Shaving

For most people, shaving irritates the skin. Because men and women traditionally shave different parts of their bodies, different areas becomeirritated for men and women. Here are several general tips on shaving with a blade:

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