10 part beauty blog by Jenn Kotowictz HHP, RAc; facial rejuvination acupuncturist.

I am going to blog about 10 habits over then next couple of weeks or so that can help you toward healthier skin and a healthier you! There are a lot of authorities and magic 10 step diets out there for weight-loss, skin care, health or longevity.  This is not one of them. Few really help you examine and become more responsive to how what YOU do affects you in the short and longer terms. These habits I will offer represent lifestyle intelligences that you can further develop. These are not rules, but common sense ideas to get you thinking and observing how your lifestyle may be making your health – and skin – better or worse.

Whether you in are a teenager or in your fertility prime, pregnant or menopausal, hormones can throw your complexion for a loop!  Are we limited to accepting this hormonal inconvenience as an affliction to our vanity?  Is our only active option to counter-attack with cosmetics, drugs or hormones?

Well, yes and no. Regardless of whether you consume western medicine or natural solutions, its depends on your priorities and capacity to observe what makes your complexion better or worse.  You must be willing to do things to promote your basic health from the inside out.

Acne is not just caused by hormonal imbalances, and when they are, the hormonal imbalance may be influenced by many factors that have to do with lifestyle and diet. You helps to get to know yourself better. Acne is reflecting what is going on inside your body, imbalances causing a response in your skin.

Often we are tempted to treat the symptom first.  Topical treatments to the skin can be helpful, but do not get at the problem in a lasting way.  Most preventative and holistic strategies address the root -the rest are just superficial or temporary solutions.

An appropriate and first response then, when these blemishes “raise there ugly heads”, would be to try and address the root causes of the problem. Ok, so many of us understand this in one way or another, if not even just intuitively. This doesn’t stop us from being lured by those quick fix, all–in-one treatments. It is almost magical to think that your skin problem could go away with one special potion and a lot more inconvenient to address and examine the lifestyle factors that could be having an affect. 

I struggle to work with these dilemmas myself, as a woman aging into my 30s, a holistic acupuncturist helping women and men face many health problems, and as a mother and mentor of two daughters. I give you here my best thoughts so far from living my life and working in our therapeutic team at The Acupuncture Turning Point.  This is also the wisdom of many other clients I have learned from. 

We give people diet/lifestyles/symptom observation tracking sheets at our clinic (come and get one – no charge), alternatively, you can contact us at www.acupunctureturningpoint.ca/contact.html and we’ll email you one so you can print it and put it up on your fridge to fill in once per day reflectively.  It will help you monitor and better understand how your diet and lifestyle and other choices affect your health, your skin, your moods, etc.  Once you see patterns that make your health better or worse, we encourage you to experiment wisely and safely. 

Well, here is the first habit.  I will post one a day for the next 10 days.  You can follow our blog here (link….).

1. Know you cosmetics and medications.  Learn about what you are putting on your skin or taking internally. Read the label and investigate. Find out what those long confusing words in the ingredients list mean. The things that you are putting on your skin may have been shown to irritate the skin you are trying to treat. Medications you are taking internally for skin problems may be covering up underlying issues, and may not be without risks themselves.  Birth control pills are often used for controlling acne, and in some cases they are the cause of acne!  Just be informed so you can make the best choices based on your priorities and values.  But more importantly, discover and understand how your creams or medications affect you, regardless of how it affects others

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Essential oils are high in antioxidants and have the benefit of aromatherapy as well. However as a general rule you do not want to be using them directly on the skin. They are very potent at full strength and can irritate or burn your skin. Rose, lavender, and cedarwood are good oils to use on the skin you could dilute them in a carrier oil like olive or jojoba. Another option is to purchase them already blended ready to go. 

Tomorrow is about diet…