You Can Change Your Skin

The good news is, if you have poor skin, you can rebuild it. It takes 30 to 45 days for new basal skin cells to move to the surface and become the cornified layer, which is the skin we see. Make changes to your lifestyle now, and you’ll notice the results in your skin after about a month.

When construction workers build a new house, they start at the basement, not the roof. If you want to have beautiful skin, you must start at the basal layer and provide your body with the right materials for building perfect new skin cells.

Skin cells created under poor conditions have abrasions, discoloration, and age spots. You might think that age spots and blemishes occur because of damage that happens on the surface of the skin, but usually the trouble begins when the skin cells are being formed in the basal layer.

Changing your skin begins with changing your diet and lifestyle. If your skin needs improving, begin by improving what goes into your body and give it the best ingredients for making healthy skin cells.

What Causes Poor Skin?

What is happening in the body that causes the skin cells to appear wrinkled, blemished or spotted?

1. Breaks in the Cell Walls

Skin cells that cannot hold water cause your skin to look damaged. When you provide your body with the right materials for making new cells, you will begin to produce skin cells with no breaks in the cell wall. Your skin cells will function optimally while appearing healthy and youthful looking.

2. Lack of Essential Nutrients

People usually accept poor skin as a part of aging, but your skin can look healthy at any age.

So, if you’re not giving your body the right materials to build with, the body will use skin cells to make the cells it needs. When your body uses skin cells as basic building materials for its other organs, your skin may look tight, discolored, or old as a result.

3. Poor Waste Management

Your largest organ—your skin—plays an important role in your body’s excretory system. When your colon and other excretory organs are not doing a thorough job of removing waste from your body, your skin begins to do more of the waste removal work.

Acne, pimples, and blemishes result from waste passing through the skin’s pores. Unhealthy eating and poor elimination of the body’s waste cause the skin to look unhealthy and old.

Cosmetics

Many are ignorantly injuring their health and endangering their life by using cosmetics. They are robbing the cheeks of the glow of health, and then to supply the deficiency use cosmetics (Healthful Living, 189).

You might be shocked to learn that many cosmetics use poisonous substances that go into your blood through the pores of your skin. If, while waiting for your skin to become the type of skin that doesn’t need cosmetics, you choose to use cosmetics, be sure to use products that are made of natural ingredients.

Remember, if you wouldn’t eat it, you shouldn’t put it on your skin.

Supplements

Some supplements can work wonders in promoting skin health:

• Antioxidants not only repair the skin but also slow the aging process while feeding and protecting the brain from free radical damage.

• Vitamin D3 helps the bones to build healthy blood cells but also helps to strengthen the immune system and lift the spirit during winter months. If you’re outside 15 minutes, you get 10 000 IU of Vitamin D. In winter when you don’t have enough sunshine, start supplementing. Rudy Davis, ND, recommends 10 000 units of Vitamin D3 per day.

• Silica is necessary for healthy skin and bone regeneration. It produces a matrix for calcium and magnesium deposits. Apples, raisins, cucumbers, and strawberries contain silica, and supplements are also available.

• Fiber helps keep your colon clean. Waste materials from all over the body are deposited in the transvers colon. For perfectly healthy skin, keep your bowels moving and your internal tissues clean.

Oils for Your Skin

Apply these oils to your skin for lasting benefits:

• Vitamin E oil is one of the most potent antioxidants that you can apply externally, feeding your skin from the outside in.

• Frankincense oil can prevent and reduce wrinkles:

- To remove warts, apply three times per day until the wart is gone.

- Apply undiluted to remove sun spots.

- Rub on stretch marks to repair them and new cell growth.

• Sacha inchi oil has the highest omega 3 content of any oil—54%—and can be applied topically and taken internally

• Virgin coconut oil can be applied directly on the skin to provide healthful fats that keep the skin smooth and healthy; it can also be eaten in small portions, remembering that it is a saturated fat.

Dry Skin Brushing and Washing

Whatever you put on your skin goes into your blood. You should only put on your skin what is safe to go into your mouth.

The little mouths in the skin, through which the body breathes, become clogged, thus making it impossible to eliminate impurities through that channel. This throws a double burden upon the other excretory organs, and disease is soon produced (Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 101).

Up close, skin cells look like they have little mouths. Those pores are holes that go inside your body.

Keep Your Pores Open

Your skin expels three per cent of the carbon dioxide produced by your body. And about three per cent of the oxygen used by your body enters through pores in your skin. It is very important that you keep your pores clean and open.

When young woman was covered in gold paint for a movie part, after only a few hours, she had to be taken to hospital. Another young woman took her place on the movie set.

This time, a small area of skin was left unpainted just to keep her alive. Even so, she only lasted a couple of hours before she too began to get sick and had to be cleaned off. This story shows how important it is to keep your pores unclogged.

Dry Brushing

Did you know that 80% of house dust is made up of dead skin cells sloughed off by our bodies? Dead skin cells must be removed daily to keep the skin clean and the pores open.

You might think that the best way to be clean is to use lots of soap and water. But, when you put soap on your skin, the soap creates a film through which dead skin cannot slough off. Soap also causes your skin to feel tight and forms a layer of material that prevents skin from breathing.

Dry brushing is an excellent alternative to using soap, and has these benefits:

• Removes dry, dead skin cells.

• Helps to keep pores unclogged and open.

• Allows skin to breathe properly.

When you dry brush, remember the following:

• Dry brush your skin before you exercise in the morning.

• Use a softer complexion brush for your face.

• Use a good quality brush. Bernard Jensen brushes are well made and use vegetable fibre bristles, which don’t cut the skin.

Hand Baths

Upon rising in the morning, most persons would be benefited by taking a sponge or hand bath. This will remove all impurities from the skin, and keep it moist and supple, thereby aiding the circulation (Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 107).

The simplest way to wash the skin is with a hand bath. A hand bath is simply putting water on the skin with your hands and wiping it off with your hands. The skin of the hand gently cleans the skin of the body.

Showering with a Loofah Sponge

A loofah sponge is a tropical or subtropical fruit like a cucumber. Once the fruit is dried, it becomes fibrous and can be used in the shower to remove dead skin. You can buy loofahs in stores that sell natural bath products.

For best results:

• Scrub the skin toward your heart. Stroke the body from the head down toward the heart and from the arms up toward the heart. Stroking toward the heart stimulates your lymphatic system.

• Keep the water as hot as you can stand it, but at the end of your shower, turn on the cold water to further stimulate the lymphatic system.

• After showering, make a fist and tap your breast bone in double strokes, thirty times. This super-activates your immune system, stimulating the production of disease fighting blood cells.

What Skin is Made of

If you want to improve the appearance of your skin, you need to learn what skin is made of and how new skin cells are formed.

Elastin is a protein in connective tissue. Elastin helps skin to return to its original position when it is poked or pinched.

Fibrin is a long protein produced from the blood protein fibrinogen.

Collagen is mostly found in fibrous tissues, such as tendon, ligament and skin. The fibroblast is the most common cell which creates collagen. Collagen is necessary to rebuild your whole system.

Take between 5,000-10,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily in the form of calcium ascorbate or magnesium ascorbate, and your body will be able to produce eight times more collagen than it would without the vitamin C.

Massage

A massage therapist who knows the skin can help you rebuild elastin, fibrin, collagen, and the fibroblast cell.

Proper skin massage stretches the skin and provides small breaks in the elastin network. This causes the blood to produce more fibrin to build up the collagen and elastin in the massaged area. This in turn gives a younger, smoother look to the skin.

If you really want to see a dramatic change in your skin, have a good massage every second day for three months while eating the right diet.

Diet

Nutrients that enter your body are sent to the body’s internal organs. Then, if there are nutrients left over, they are sent to the skin.

The typical dietary regime of North Americans does not provide enough nutrients to rebuild the inner organs. With inadequate nutrients to feed the internal organs, nothing is left to feed the skin.

Try these skin-nourishing foods:

• Apricots maintain youthful skin and regenerate your body’s fluids. Dried apricots enable every cellular structure in your body to hold proper amounts of moisture to maintain normal cellular function.

• Nuts are a good source of fats for your skin. Eat a handful each day. Get a good variety.

• Berries are rich in antioxidants which repair the skin, help slow down the aging process, and prevent skin damage

• Goji berries are also especially rich in essential amino acids, aid muscle regeneration, and improve digestion.

• Cacao is the highest known antioxidant food. It contains tryptophan and serotonin which greatly enhances brain function.

• Freshly-squeezed vegetable and fruit juices flood your body with the extra nutrition it needs to feed your skin and organs. Drink eight to sixteen ounces. Try different combinations and remember to use more vegetable juice than fruit juice.

Healthy skin requires a nourished, active, and thoroughly clean body, inside and out.