Your skin - your mirror (part 1)
If you feel cold or warm, the sea breeze or the dry summer wind, that’s because you skin feels so. Your skin is the biggest organ of your body. It is changing faster than anything else in you. By the time you read this article you have about a thousand new-born skin cells. It is so to speak a live cover of your body. Flexible, toned and waterproof it is the ideal protector and communicator. Every square inch contains an astonishing 19 million cells, packed with receptors for pressure, temperature and touch. The external part of the skin you see is actually called epidermis. The thicker layer below is dermis. It is supplying new skin cells instead of damaged ones, has most of the blood vessels and nervous endings. Your skin breaths, changes colors and texture, sweats, expands or contracts in order to adjust to the ever changing temperatures, environments and activities or even mind moods. It is the biggest communicator between you and the outer world through a non-stop inflow and outflow of data.
Your skin looks best when you’re born. Clean, soft and elastic, hydrated, with a healthy color, that’s the perfect look. It successfully eliminates toxins, disinfects and cools itself. Healthy skin means comfort and good looks, but it is often the biggest age-traitor. You might have toned muscles and a good posture, be energetic and active, but the state of you skin is telling the full story. The skin well-being and health can’t be “trained” as it reflects more the inner state of your health and balance.
• What you should not do, to your skin,
The worst for your skin is dehydration. So a balanced diet and good care is essential for a healthy skin. Drink plenty of water and eat live watery food. Sun radiation is second to dehydration in its destructive action but a moderate and gradual sun exposure is healthy.
First, avoid all external dehydrating agents in the form of cheap soaps and shampoos, over use of deodorants, synthetic clothes, chlorinated water, dust and various wide-used chemicals. All these have a direct negative effect on the skin. Dietwise, the over consumption of sugar, salt, protein, alcohol , tobacco, drugs and diuretics have a dehydrating effect on you and your skin.
• What you should do, for your skin.
Sweaty skin is prone to bacterial infection so regular warm showers and gentle scrub, are keeping you skin clean. Keep it aerated, don’t over dress yourself, let the skin breathe more and enjoy the touch of cool air. Natural clothes, linen and silk especially, is best to wear, but cotton is also good and affordable. A good massage is helping a lot. Scrub and massage eliminates dead skin cells and intensifies blood circulation. But the best is actually the cold water bathing, with warm bathing in between. Let me explain. The cold water contracts the skin like nothing else and pushes the blood from the myriads of capillaries back into the veins. Hot water on the contrary dilates them so the blood flows in again. Thus blood circulation and the skin flexibility is greatly enhanced. This procedure is integrated in the Finnish saunas and Russian bathes as sweating is another great purifying procedure used in both cultures.
And last but not the least, having so many nervous receptors the skin is the biggest supplier of non-cerebral data. And so it is a great “stress eraser”. Treating it well and taking care of it is relaxing. A hot tub or bathing in the sea is shifting so much of your life from the brain to the body. It awakes so much inside of you and puts yourself together after a long tormenting working day.
Ion Iatco