Natural secrets for clear, healthy skin

Clear, healthy skin doesn’t have to involve fancy, expensive products and treatments. In fact, when it comes to what we put on our face, there’s a good case for going natural. That means not only choosing natural ingredients that will soothe and nourish your skin from the outside, but also making smart lifestyle choices to achieve vibrant wellbeing from the inside.

We talked to Samantha Sargent, nutritionist and natural skincare expert from AEOS, about her best advice for healthy skin.

What are your essential guidelines for a glowing, healthy complexion?

There are no shortcuts, I’m afraid! For clear and healthy skin, try to:

• Drink plenty of purified water each day.
• Base your diet on fresh seasonal organic fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
• Enjoy fresh air and sensible early morning or late afternoon sunshine each day.
• Find ways to minimise stress, whether it is meditation, yoga, walking in nature, or whatever else it is that nurtures your heart.
• Take a moment each morning and evening to care for your skin with good quality, natural and organic skin care products.

How does a healthy diet improve our skin?

Our skin is an organ, just like the heart and liver. It’s common sense that eating a salad of fresh lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and cucumber drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon, for example, is going to be better for the health and wellbeing of our organs than a frozen meal with a list of ingredients formulated in a lab that we can’t pronounce or understand.

Skin care warrants the same common sense approach. Everything we eat, drink and apply to our skin either supports the natural physiology of the body or not.

Some of my favourite foods for healthy skin include avocado, extra-virgin cold-pressed olive oil, fresh fruits, nuts and seeds.

What’s your go-to natural skin care routine?

When it comes to natural ingredients for skin care, mother nature provides an abundance of herbs, flowers and plants for us to choose from. My favourites are unadulterated, organic, unrefined, cold-pressed plant oils such as grapeseed and avocado, or organic hydrosols of rose, lavender and neroli.

You don’t need a bathroom cupboard full of products. For a good skin care routine, I recommend:

• An effective cleanser to remove makeup and environmental pollution each night
• A good quality toner or hydrating mist to balance and hydrate the skin
• A good quality serum and or moisturiser to nourish and protect the skin
• A gentle exfoliant to ‘polish’ the outer layer of the skin, encouraging the skin’s natural renewal process, while delivering hydration.

It may come as a surprise, but pore-refining skin masks and strips can actually make your skin worse. These products remove the healthy oil balance through the glue-like adhesive and can cause irritation, leading to the exacerbation of acne. Obsessively trying to remove all imperfections and oil from skin through use of these harsh products has shown skin to produce more oil as a result of the natural oil balance being disrupted.

Learn more about natural skincare at energisedorganics.com