Natural Healing Tips for Sensitive Skin
Do you suffer from dry, itchy skin? Here are some natural healing tips to help keep your sensitive skin healthy and happy this winter.
As the cooler, drier air of fall and winter arrives, those of us with sensitive skin are often afflicted with dry, itchy, or even painful skin conditions, including eczema, rosacea, and dermatitis.
If this applies to you, you may have tried various creams and lotions with little to no result. Unfortunately, many of the harsh chemical ingredients in commercial skin care formulations only add to the problem. If you suffer from itching, redness, or rashes on a regular basis, you may need to take a more holistic approach and treat your insides as well as your outside. By healing your skin from the inside-out, you are more likely to solve the problem for real, instead of just temporarily masking it.
Here are 4 natural and holistic tips for healing your sensitive skin, from a natural dermatologist and herbalist:
1. Use single-ingredient oils.
The first thing to keep in mind when your skin is reactive is to keep things simple. The less that goes onto the face, the less likelihood there is for irritation… I recommend cleansing and moisturizing with just one ingredient: a high-quality beauty oil.
For cleansing, hemp seed oil is a great option to leave the skin feeling nourished and hydrated. Even though it’s an oil, it is still effective at removing excess sebum. As a moisturizer, I prefer argan oil, which is anti-inflammatory and absorbs nicely into the skin…
2. Look no further than your kitchen…
Staying with the theme of “keeping it simple,” single ingredients from your kitchen can also be powerful to calm and soothe the skin. Cucumbers have been used for centuries to eliminate facial redness. Simply chop up some cucumber slices, or grate a cucumber, place on the face, and keep it on as a mask for 10 to 15 minutes…
…Yogurt is another great facial cleanser… The probiotics in yogurt benefit the skin’s microbiome and leave it feeling hydrated and nourished.
3. Avoid sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS).
Sodium lauryl sulfate is an industrial detergent found everywhere from cosmetics to laundry detergents to body washes… Many find it to be an irritant to the skin, causing dryness and itching. For anyone with sensitive skin, I highly recommend having a look at the labels of all your household products and cosmetics, and ditch anything containing SLS.
4. Heal from the inside with an anti-inflammatory diet.
The root cause of skin sensitivities run a lot deeper than what we see on the skin… The best way to learn about the specific foods that will benefit (and irritate) your skin is to commit to an elimination diet for one to two months.
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Read the full article at MindBodyGreen.com…
