Lifestyle Choices

Like plants and animals, we need light to stay in optimum health. Not only the light available through the tinted windows of the cars we drive and behind our fashionable sunglasses, but the full spectrum of ultraviolet rays one gets only when naked eyes are exposed to the sun in the open air. The work of photobiologists such as Dr. John Ott, author of Light and Health (published by Devin-Adair, Old Greenwich, Connecticut) has shown that the type and quality of the light entering our eyes can affect our hormonal balance and body chemistry as a whole, influencing energy levels as well as how we feel emotionally. (more…)

Every now and then (how often depends on whether your skin tends to be dry or oily and whether you live in the polluted air of cities or the clearer, fresh air of the country) skin needs more than everyday cleaning. It needs deep cleansing, and one of the most effective ways of getting it is from a facial sauna. In fact, the only skin condition that doesn’t benefit from facial steams, or saunas, is that in which broken capillaries appear in the cheeks and nose, in which case the warm steam could aggravate the condition. (more…)

It may surprise you to see such a common thing as air listed among the important treatments for external use on skin, but in many ways it may be the most valuable of all. It is also often the most neglected by women who tend to cover their skin day and night with heavy creams.

Although most of the oxygen your skin needs comes by way of the bloodstream, the skin also helps itself to as much as 2 1/2 percent of the body’s total oxygen from the air by direct absorption. Skin also directly eliminates almost 3 percent of the body’s carbon dioxide waste. Generally, this direct oxygen intake is used only by the epidermis, where it helps to break down nutrients for cell use at the basal layer and to eliminate wastes. (more…)