How to Detox Your Skin & Keep It Looking Beautiful
Life happens at a rapid pace. One day you look in the mirror and see a youthful, radiant appearance, and the next, you see a reflection that looks tired, dull, pale and aged.
It happens to all of us, but when you have that woke moment of realizing your skin looks less than healthy, either you can do something about it, or ignore it.
Your skin can be dull and sickly in appearance because the effects of external stressors overload it. Poor skincare routines, pollutants, your diet -- these stressors affect your skin negatively and, over time, take a significant toll on your skin.
The solution is detoxing your skin, changing your skincare routine, and making a few lifestyle adjustments. We’ll tell you how to do it, why you need to do it, and how you can adjust your skincare routine to keep your skin looking beautiful.
Why Do You Need a Skin Detox?
Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and it is the organ that is most exposed to your everyday life. From the makeup you wear and products you use to the smoke and pollutants you face when you leave your home, your skin takes it all in.
Not convinced there’s anything to detox out of your skin? Here’s how some of your everyday activities could be building up in your skin and causing it to look dull, uneven, and unhealthy.
Free Radical Damage
You’ve probably heard the phrase “free radical damage,” but if you don’t quite understand it, that’s okay.
Here’s a little Free Radical Damage 101:
- Everything is made up of molecules. Most molecules are balanced, which means they have two electrons.
- Free radicals are unbalanced molecules. They only have one electron.
- Because free radicals are unbalanced, they are constantly searching for a second electron to become balanced.
- Free radicals seek out balanced, healthy molecules and rob them of one of their electrons. When this happens, the healthy molecule is damaged, and the cell where the molecule lives is also damaged.
Free radical damage happens daily. Some of it occurs naturally in your own body. Significant sources of free radicals are ultraviolet rays from the sun, cigarette smoke (from your own or someone else’s cigarette), pollution like smog and factory smoke, and even some household cleaning chemicals.
What exactly does free radical damage look like on your skin?
- Fine lines and wrinkles
- Loss of skin elasticity; skin sagging
- Areas of uneven skin tone and hyperpigmentation
- Loss of volume under the eyes, in the cheeks, and chin
Free radical damage can make you look older than you are. Chemicals and toxins in your environment can build up in your skin, causing damage that keeps your skin looking and feeling unhealthy.
Unhealthy Diets
We all know that a vending machine snack doesn’t make a good lunch, but we’re all guilty of eating on the go and not consuming enough of the right foods. An unhealthy diet doesn’t just keep us feeling tired and sluggish; it also affects our skin.
Toxic Beauty
Every product you use on your skin contains ingredients that either work synergistically with your skin or ingredients that are irritating and potentially toxic to your skin. Toxic beauty, or products that contain harsh, questionable chemicals, can keep your skin from looking its best.
Thankfully, the clean beauty movement has shown a spotlight on the underregulated beauty industry, exposing products that contain ingredients that aren’t just bad for our skin but bad for our bodies as well.
When your skin is exposed to these types of harmful ingredients repeatedly and frequently (in the form of cleansers, moisturizers, and cosmetics), your skin is trapped in a loop of never being able to fully detox itself from the toxins in the products.
Skin Impurities
Your skin is constantly in the process of making new skin. Old, dead skin cells are routinely pushed to the surface of your skin.
If the process works seamlessly, dead skin cells travel up the hair follicle with sebum (your skin’s natural oil) and are excreted through pores onto the surface of your skin, where they are eventually sloughed away.
Because our bodies aren’t perfect, this process can sometimes run into speed bumps. Too many dead skin cells can clog hair follicles, causing blemishes. Dead skin cells can collect on the surface of your skin, causing irritation, redness, and bumps.
Removing your skin’s impurities is also essential in keeping your skin looking and feeling as healthy as possible.
What is a Skin Detox?
All these external stressors and chemicals weigh your skin down, trapped inside your pores and in your very skin cells. The result is skin that doesn’t look healthy and has little chance of becoming healthy unless you’re proactive in your skincare routine.
How do you become more proactive in the fight? By doing a skin detox.
A skin detox means you’ll spend time (usually around a week) actively removing toxins and impurities from your skin and becoming more intentional with your diet and skincare products. This process requires a little patience, but once your skin is fully detoxed, you’ll gain:
- Improved skin texture
- More even skin tone
- Glowing, radiant skin
- Clear, clarified skin and clean pores
- Brighter, healthier complexion.
It’s worth the ounce of perseverance to do a thorough skin detox for the long-term benefits you’ll gain from the process.
How To Detox Your Skin & Keep It Looking Beautiful
When you’re ready to detox your skin, you’ll need a positive attitude and a willingness to make a change.
Here are four ways to do a skin detox at home, with zero specialist equipment or expensive dermatologist or aesthetician treatments required:
1. Start With Your Diet
You don’t need to go low-carb, eliminate all fat, or sip on water spiked with lemon and cayenne pepper. You do need to be more intentional with your food choices.
Resist the urge to make it complicated and simply opt for fruit instead of sweets, a serving of protein and vegetables at every meal, and healthy carbohydrates.
Make sure your water intake is high enough for your level of activity. You don’t have to guzzle 64 ounces a day, just enough to keep your urine clear.
2. Load Up on Antioxidants
Free radical damage is unavoidable in some cases, but you can fight back with the use of antioxidants. Antioxidants work like a shield protecting your skin against free radical damage by offering up one of their electrons and thereby protecting the healthy molecule and your skin cells.
Antioxidants can be found naturally in products that contain all-natural, clean ingredients. Marine algae, for example, is an abundant source of antioxidants and contains vital nutrients and minerals that are great for your skin.
3. Switch to Clean Beauty
One of the most effective ways to detox your skin is by eliminating toxic beauty products from your shelves. One by one, eliminating products with questionable ingredients and replacing them with clean, natural, clinically proven products.
Clean beauty products don’t contain toxins or skin irritants that can build up in your skin and leave it looking dull. Clean beauty works along with your skin’s natural functions to help keep it healthy and radiant.
4. Exfoliate and Remove Impurities
To remove dead skin cells, dirt, oil, and impurities from the surface of your skin, you need to exfoliate. Using a clean beauty exfoliant helps slough away dead skin cells keeping your skin radiant and helping support new skin growth.
Using a deep, pore cleansing mask helps dig deep into pores and clean out the impurities beneath the visible layer of your skin. Masks contain ingredients that naturally draw out toxins so they can be washed away.
You can exfoliate and deep clean with One Ocean Beauty’s Blue Algae Exfoliating + Detox Mask. Formulated with clean and clinically proven marine ingredients, our mask removes the top layer of dead skin cells, dirt, and oil and dives deep into pores to keep your skin clean and rid it of toxins.
Final Thoughts
A thorough skin detox takes at least a week, and it isn’t uncommon for you to experience a few breakouts along the way. As your skin pulls toxins from deeper layers and brings them to the surface, bumps may form, but they disappear quickly, revealing healthy, more radiant skin.
One Ocean Beauty can help you improve your skin’s health and total wellness. Our line of cleanical (clean and clinically proven) products is formulated to improve skin health and avoid the buildup of toxins.
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