Anti-aging: 5 Nutrition Tips for Younger Looking Skin
Tip 2. Eat Superfoods.
Tip 3. Consider Food Combining.
Tip 2. Eat Superfoods.
Tip 3. Consider Food Combining.
Meditation is one of the most ancient forms of spiritual practice. Buddhists have used it to connect with self-awareness and as a form of prayer. In the modern world, meditation has become one of the most popular ways to combat stress, anxiety and depression. Recent research has even revealed that meditation can be used to prevent premature aging. Medical research shows that consistent meditation balances the body’s hormones and helps the brain maintain proper function. Over time, this can translate into a more youthful vigor that shines through for many years to come. Below we have listed the most powerful anti-aging benefits of meditation that you can except from your practice.
It Strengthens the Pre-frontal Cortex
The pre-frontal cortex is responsible for planning our life and focusing our attention on important areas of it. As we age, the lining of the pre-frontal cortex becomes thinner and affects our ability to think and focus. However, Sara Lazar, PhD at Harvard’s psychiatry department revealed that the pre-frontal cortex of meditators was thicker than that of non-meditators. This means that meditation helps you stay youthful from the inside out!
It Increases Melatonin
Melatonin regulates the sleep cycle and hormones throughout our body. It has also been proven to slow down the aging process, amp up the immune system, and help prevent cell damage. Increased amounts of Melatonin correspond to better sleep patterns and more energy, which also contribute to anti-aging throughout the body. During meditation, vast amounts of this hormone are released, providing all of the benefits listed above.
It Reduces Stress
Modern medicine has revealed that stress is just as bad for our health and aging as obesity and smoking. Meditation helps us counteract the stress we all face on a daily basis. By cleansing the mind and letting go of thoughts and feelings that don’t serve us, meditation helps us reduce stress and all of its negative effects. This in turn prevents fine lines and premature cell damage.
It Helps Eliminates Wear & Tear on the Body
By spending just an hour a day (or even just 20 minutes) in a meditative state, you can effectively prevent the premature aging of your body. We spend so much of our time in a hyperactive stress out state that we often forget that it isn’t our natural state. Relaxation through meditation gives us a chance to reconnect with our calmer self, and helps us ward off unnecessary after-effects of stress, which ultimately put a strain on our bodies.
It Helps with Anxiety
The neural pathways of the brain are tightened and weakened when we suffer from persistent anxiety. This causes us to think unclearly and illogically. This in turn increases anxiety and causes us to age much more quickly than we would otherwise. Meditation reverses this trend. It loosens the neural pathways and increases our brain’s ability to make rational connections. As your brain and body align in near perfect balance, it begins to relax and age much more slowly than it would otherwise. By taking up a relaxing and consistent meditation, you can turn back the clock and reconnect your body’s ability to fight off cell damage caused by stressors and environmental factors.
The best part of meditation is that anyone can practice it right from their very own home! Start your meditation practice today and reap the numerous anti-aging benefits in the future. Follow the link for more information on how to practice meditation, mindfulness or creative visualization.
Facial serums are great for adding some much-needed moisture in the skin, as well as for applying regularly to usual problem areas such as directly on frown and smile lines, around the eyes, or when your skin just needs a little extra care. The best facial serums are completely natural and made from ingredients that can be understood and pronounced, meaning no chemicals or other harmful ingredients should be in your facial serum. Facial serums can be made from many different types of essential oils such as sandalwood, lavender or geranium added to a carrier oil or base oil. It truly is your choice what type of oil works best on your skin, since each of our skin make ups is different.
Add a few drops of one essential oil into a glass bottle with a dropper containing a base oil such as sweet almond, jojoba or rose hip oil. Feel free to add a few drops of another essential oil. It is your choice and your customized facial serum, so create it according to your specific skincare needs and desires or you can try some of the following recipes:
Serum for oily skin
Serum for dry skin
Mix all the ingredients in a glass amber bottle and shake well before use. Massage well into cleansed skin using upward motions. The oil blends will keep for a number of weeks. In summer it is best to keep them in the refrigerator.
The Benefits of Facial Massage
Applying your facial oil or serum is the perfect opportunity to give you skin an anti-aging massage.
After cleansing, apply a light layer of oil to your face and neck. You can use one of the serum recipes above or a light oil such as rose hip, argan or jojoba oil. Refer to the arrows in the image above for the directions you should follow for the facial massage.
Use the pads of your fingers or the palms of your hands and start smoothing the oil upwards over your neck and across your jaw. Repeat this about 10 to 15 times. Then perform sweeping motions along your jawline and upwards towards your temples. Repeat about 10 to 15 times. Next, gently use your finger tips to smooth the area around the eyes and nose, repeating these motions for about a minute. And finally, with slightly firmer pressure, smooth the forehead with upward strokes using the pads of your fingers or the palms of your hands. Focus on this area for about a minute.
If performed daily, facial massage is wonderful ritual for lifting and firming, encouraging blood circulation to the face and neck, helping your complexion appear more youthful and radiant. The oil will nourish and moisturize helping to minimize the appearance of lines and wrinkles. And the action of massaging in the directions indicated in the image above, encourages lymphatic drainage helping to remove toxins and reducing puffiness around the eyes.
Giving yourself a daily facial massage is a simple yet effective ritual you can perform to pamper your skin. It is also so relaxing, helping to ease stress and tension. It only takes a few minutes but the benefits are just beautiful!
People often ask me what my number one anti-aging secret is. The answer quite often surprises them. My number one anti-aging secret is to avoid sugar. By sugar I don’t mean just the sugar you put into your tea or coffee or the sugar that’s in sweets or cakes. I mean the sugar that’s in the food that most people eat these days. The sugar that’s in pasta, breads, packaged foods and drinks that flood the bloodstream with glucose which then has a negative effect on the beauty of your skin.
Well, it really isn’t a secret any more but its my number one tip. Many of you will have already heard this. Sugar launches multiple attacks on anyone who wants to keep their skin looking young and beautiful as they advance in their years. Of course some people are blessed with great genes and appear to advance into later years with an enviable youthful appearance. But no matter what your genetic inheritance is, you can increase you chances of maintaining youthful looking skin into your later years by cutting out sugar from your diet.
Skin doesn’t just age by accident or simply because the years pass by. There is a process to the aging of skin. Many things contribute to this process. But nothing is more damaging so apparently to the beauty of your skin than the constant high levels of blood sugar and insulin, which many of those eating a typically Western diet are subjecting their bodies to.
Sugar has been demonstrated, in scientific research, as being responsible for the the speeding up of the ageing process. Sugar molecules, in particular fructose, can be seen as the most aging substance as it can cause a lot of permanent damage to the body and detrimentally affect your health. The main way in which sugars display such damaging effects is through their production of
Advanced Glycation End products (AGE’s). These products are proteins or fats which have been oxidised by sugars. Proteins are found all throughout the body and so it is not a surprise that anything which affects proteins would have a large impact on your health as well as your physical appearance. The most vulnerable proteins to damage are collagen and elastin which are important in keeping the skin looking youthful and preserving its elasticity. AGE’s damage these proteins and causing your skin to look wrinkly, reducing its firmness and making it sag.
Glycation is the process where sugars and proteins uncontrollably react with each other and in turn, produces an inflammatory response in the body, causing the immune system to activate. Once the immune system is activated, it works to seek out these AGE’s to get rid of them. The downside to this process however is that although the immune system is removing these toxic end products, it causes a lot of damage to the body in the process. Plaque formation is one of these effects and these can be deposited on arteries and blood vessels, causing blockages and putting stress on the heart. Not only does sugar cause AGE’s but also creates free radicals which have the ability to bind to healthy cells and damage them.
Another way that sugar causes premature aging is through the spikes of insulin and leptin levels within the blood after eating sugar. This can produce damaging effects to the heart and lead to heart disease if these levels remain high for too long. Not only do AGE’s have these direct effects, but they also have indirect effects including making the body more susceptible and vulnerable to other harmful processes such as the damaging effects of excess UV light and cigarette smoke. And this shows up on your face and body as skin which thins, sags, wrinkles and looks older than it should. Blotches and spots appear if you genetically prone to them. You start to look tired and old and eventually you will feel as bad as you look.
I know this from experience as well. I grew up eating a very healthy diet and my skin looked fabulous into my 30s and early 40s. I looked so much younger than my years. But I then succumbed to eating fast food as I was so busy with the fast paced life I was living. At first I wondered if all that I had previously believed about a healthy diet was true as the effects were not immediately obvious. But the effects eventually came and when they did they were pretty rapid. It’s was almost as if I woke up one morning and saw a different face in the mirror. The person staring back at me looked old, tired, overweight. She had lost her spark and her radiance. I was shocked.
I quickly resolved to change the way I had been living. I am happy to state that I managed to reverse the negative effects that my busy lifestyle and poor eating habits had on my appearance. I am now slim and look younger than my years. My skin is glowing with health and radiance and I want to share what I have learnt with you. After seeing all the damaging effects that sugar can cause, it is needless to say that sugar is the most aging substance around.
We at Day Spa at Home want you to have beautiful skin. We have the best information on how you can quit sugar for good, replace this aging substance with healthier food to promote and retain younger looking skin. Join our mailing list now to receive our tips and information on how to keep your skin looking beautiful and younger for longer.