Skin Care

Skin Care –  I began studying skin care in my teens. I was interested in how to treat my
teenage acne and the science of skin care. In my early twenties I read about a
company called Redken, and though their products were not available widely I
liked what they had to say about maintaining the PH of the skin and not
stripping it of it’s natural oils. At that time there was very little info on
the science of skin care, even less on how to care for our skin naturally.

Redken came out in the early 70’s with their PH  balanced mild bar of soap
for your face. Their advice to help not strip our skin of it’s natural oils was
to rinse our face in the water we had washed with, as it contained oils from our
skin. This did not make sense to me, I wanted my facial skin clean, not rinsed
in washing water. SO I began studying skin care, looking for mild products that
were effective. I tried Kiss My Face soap, it was too strong, made my face tight
and dry. And even though my skin was oily it made it oilier. I tried and
couldn’t find anything I was happy with. I ended up using Clinique and Lancôme
for a while, and while they were effective I didn’t like all of the chemicals.
My sister gave  e a book on making my own beauty products and I was off to the
races!  I learned to make soap, I made them with olive oil and used Apple Cider
vinegar as a toner. Still just ok. Slowly more and more products were coming out
that were organic. Skin care, along with makeup, that was available in health
food stores were clean, but not very good. They were too oily, too heavy. I
discovered it when I was pregnant with my daughter, Rachel and used it
exclusively while I was pregnant. It was the first mineral make-up I ever found.

Skip forward to 1996 and my daughter Rachel was going to school to become an
esthetician. We saw the first articles about the link between breast cancer and
Parabans. Even the health food store brands had this ingredients and they began
scrambling to reformulate. I could not find a cleanser that didn’t have it. At
this point I had been using Cetaphil cleanser for a long time because it was
very mild. But it wasn’t strong enough to remove makeup well. SO I decided to
formulate a cleanser myself. For months I studied formulating (it’s not such a
stretch form being a Chef!) I started by studying ingredients. This was the
cleanser I made and I have been using it ever since. It has honey as it’s main
ingredient, with baking soda as an exfoliator, a very small amount of Dr.
Bonner’s soap, almond oil, geranium oil, evening primrose oil and water.  I
still used it until last year, when it became a little strong for me, so I
reformulated it without the baking soda. I have been using Retin-A since I was
forty years old and found as I aged my skin was more sensitive and was dryer.

This new blog topic is going to cover the science of skin care, with a focus
on organic products, and I mean truly natural and organic…not the stuff full of
silicones that are out there today claiming to be all natural. I will review and cover makeup as well as skin care products and I will share my skin care regimen as well as the makeup I use. We will talk about why silicone sand glycerin are horrible for our skin, and the right was to cleanse,
exfoliate, moisturize and nourish as well as how to protect our skin.

It is imperative to not just cleanse our skin with clean ingredients but to
truly nourish our skin. Of course the best thing we can do for our skin is be
healthy, active and well nourished. We will cover what foods to avoid for great
skin, how to combat the things that ages our skin, and how to care for it as we
age.

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