Sleeping (and) Beauty

I recently blogged about face care at night and I have seriously seen a difference. Don't underestimate the power of sleep to rejuvenate your skin as well. Our skin breathes and rests at night which is important to regenerate.

What should you do before bed?
1) Cleanse - by stimulating circulation in your face it oxygenates the cells and keep skin more youthful. So massage that face.
2) Moisturize - to lock moisture into the skin. Adding a serums under your moisturizer can provide extra hydration for those of us with mature and dry skin. Some with oily skin may use a serum in place of a moisturizer. Some prefer to let the skin breathe at night without a heavy moisturizer, but let your climate be your guide. Dry or cold climates may call for extra moisture.
3) Eyes - take a little extra TLC. The skin around the eyes are thin so if you do nothing else, put a little extra moisture under and around your eyes... no crows feet for you.

Once you have taken care of the face, reach down to those feet and give them some love. I personally love Skin's Peppermint Foot Rub for it's tingly sensation. But whatever you chose to coat on those feet will work wonders during the night. I sleep with socks on for a while to give my feet that extra love. So when you want to play footsie with your partner, your feet won't feel like sandpaper.

Sleep does wonders for your spirit, mind and body. So get plenty of rest. The inner and outer beauty within you will shine.

Don't Skip the Night Routine!

Genetics are on my side. My mother and grandmother have beautiful skin and they rarely wash their faces at night to remove the days’ grime and makeup. So that is what I practiced….until now. Despite not washing my face at night for 40 plus years, I have considerably good skin and even better since I switched to our natural and chemical-free products. But as the years march on, I can’t count on luck any more. How I treat my skin does matter.

I tell you all this because I have discovered that by washing my face at night and applying my serums and moisturizers as needed, my face looks and feels even that much better when I wake up. The nighttime is truly a time for the body, as well as the skin, to rest, revive, and restore itself. In the morning, there is a noticeable difference in my skin... fewer wrinkles, creamier skin, and less dry.

As co-founder of Caren, I like to think that I know a lot about skin and skin care. However, the moral of the story here is don’t skip the night routine. If you can take 5 or 10 years off the appearance of your face, then spending a few minutes at night removing makeup and applying products is time well spent. I don’t know about you, but when I turn 50, I am planning on appearing 40-something for as long as I can!

If I had known in my pre-40’s days what I know now, I might have erased even more years from my face! A little time invested today can pay big dividends in the future. Ummm, now off to invest some time at the gym to firm up these arms before they fly away!

Variations in Natural Products

We often get questions about products looking cloudy or smelling slightly different. While natural products can go bad and we encourage you to use them up quickly, most of the time it is simply, well, natural (pardon the pun) for things to vary a little.

Hydrosols, for example, are one of those ingredients that often vary in looks and scent from batch to batch. Just as grapes grown on the same hillside each year produce wine that varies in taste each year, botanicals vary too. Weather and soil conditions, as well as the timing of the harvest, can all play a role in a plants development. Hydrosols, or floral waters, are the distillation of plants and can contain trace amounts of essential oils. These trace amounts (typically .02%), along with any addition essential oils added to a product, can make them appear cloudy.

Colors can also vary. Natural plant oils often range in colors from light yellow to deep amber or light green to dark green depending on the oil. Scents can also vary slightly with each harvest. All of these various changes are perfectly normal and let you know you are dealing with a natural product. Of course, The best ingredients come from the most reliable growers, distillers and suppliers and it is up to the manufacturer to use the best quality ingredients available. And it's our job to make sure we pick the best manufacturers for you--naturally!

Top Ten Genetically Engineered Food Crops

Genetically modified foods are a threat to our organically grown produce. The health implications are stealth-like and we have yet to fully understand how their introduction more than a decade ago has made us more unhealthy as a nation. Here is a great list from Healthy Child Healthy World of foods to watch out for:

• Corn: Our number-one agricultural commodity. In 2000, 79.5 million acres of harvested cropland in the U.S. were corn, 25% of which was genetically engineered. This includes Bt and Roundup Ready corn varieties.
• Soy: The number-two U.S. agricultural commodity. Sixty percent of processed foods contain soy ingredients, and 82% of edible fats and oils consumed in the U.S. are soy-based. In 2000, 54% of the 74.5 million acres of soybeans grown in the U.S. was Roundup Ready soy.
• Potato: Currently, the only GE potato is a Burbank Russet variety, marketed under the name NewLeaf. This Bt-producing plant is lethal to the Colorado potato beetle – and possibly to beneficial insects.
• Tomato: The first GE tomato, the Flavr Savr, was introduced commercially in 1994, but flopped because it proved tasteless. Since then, other varieties, including a cherry tomato, have been genetically engineered to delay ripening and extend shelf life.
• Canola: Of the 15 million acres of canola grown in the U.S. and Canada annually, 35% is GE, mostly for herbicide-resistance.
• Cottonseed Oil: In 2000, 61% of the 15.5 million acres of cotton grown in the U.S. was genetically engineered. Every year, half a million tons of cottonseed oil makes its way into salad dressings, baked goods and snack foods. About 1.4 million tons of cottonseed meal is fed to livestock annually.
• Papaya: More than one third of Hawaiian papayas have been genetically engineered to withstand the papaya ringspot virus. Organic papaya growers in Hawaii worry that the pollen from GE papaya trees will contaminate their crops.
• Radicchio: Currently one variety of radicchio, called Seed Link, has been genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide glufosinate.
• Squash: Several varieties of summer squash have been genetically engineered to resist mosaic viruses. Some scientists are concerned that resistance to the virus may spread to weedy relatives, such as gourds, found in the U.S., creating invasive superweeds.
• Salmon: A company called Aqua Bounty has engineered a salmon with genes from two different fish species so that it grows much more quickly than non-GE salmon. The company now seeks FDA approval to market this fish for human consumption. Escaped into the environment, (which is inevitable on fish farms), the GE fish may be larger and more aggressive, eat more food, and mate more often, though their offspring are less fit to survive in the wild, raising the possibility of wild species extinction. Human health effects are also relatively unknown. Currently, research on transgenic strains of 35 fish species world-wide is underway.

Proper Facial Cleansing Makes All the Difference

We often receive questions about a product's performance and/or how to use it.
Cleansers are no exception and sometimes it leads us into a discussion about the proper way to clean your face. Here are a few questions we've had lately:

• Which cleanser is best for me?
• Do I need a toner for getting rid of makeup left behind after cleansing?
• Is holding a hot wash cloth to my face the best way to open up the pores?
• Should I use a wash cloth when cleansing my face?

Whether you choose a castile-based cleanser or a non-soap cleanser is often more a matter of personal choice. Natural castile soap-based cleansers, made mainly of saponified olive oil, are very gentle, natural cleansers that, as long as the glycerin has not been stripped out of it, are non-drying as well. Natural, non-soap cleansers can be either mild detergent-based (usually derived from coconut oil) or an emulsified creamy cleanser. All work well at removing surface dirt and excess oil from the skin when used properly, but finding the right one for your skin takes some trial and error.

Take the time and get it right! Testing a new cleanser may mean giving it a full week to ten days before deciding if it is right for you. Don't make any other changes to your skin care routine at this time so you can judge the cleanser on its own. If you are new to natural, organic and chemical-free products, it may take up to 30 days (time for a complete surface-cell changeover) for you to really see a difference. If shopping somewhere other than CarenOnline.com, be sure to read ingredients well and question anything that sounds synthetic--it probably is and may irritate your skin.

A toner can pick up any trace of dirt left over by the cleanser, but this is not the recommended use for toner. Instead, be sure to aid your cleanser by first rinsing your face thoroughly before applying your cleanser. Work in gentle, circular motions using only your fingertips and be sure to get all areas of the face, especially the hair line. Rinse, rinse and rinse again. Your face should now be clean enough to soak in the botanical benefits that a natural toner or hydrosol provides.

The skin is not like a pair of white socks and does not need to washed in hot water. Your face will be perfectly clean with cool to tepid water. Hot water, and especially hot washcloths, will dilate capillaries, make the skin ruddy and excessively dry it out. Rinse, wash and rinse again with nothing more than lukewarm water. (FYI - Steamy hot showers feel great in the winter, but will also leave your body dry, irritated and itchy. Stick with cooler showers and you'll also save water by shortening your shower time!)

Properly cleansed skin should feel soft and supple. As we always say, no amount of toner, serum or moisturizer will make up for poorly cleansed skin, so make sure this is your most important step in your daily routine. While still slightly damp, this is the best time to follow up with a spray of hydrosol or swipe of toner and your favorite moisturizer.

And for the last time, pores do not open and close like little sea creatures on a coral reef! When you hear someone speak of "opening your pores", they should be speaking about unclogging them of hardened sebum and dirt only. Your pores are your pores and those with oily skin will tend to have larger pore sizes than those with mythical normal skin. (Yes, there are some with normal skin but they are rare so don't feel as though you aren't "normal" just because your skin is oily, dry or a combination.) Keep your pores clear by cleansing properly and exfoliating regularly.

Now, did we answer all your questions on cleansing? Let us know if we missed something!