In this article:
How can you tell if you have healthy skin?
What skin care routine will give you healthy skin?
What ingredients are good for healthy skin?
What are tips to achieve healthy skin?
How long does it take to get healthy skin?
Healthy skin that glows is something just about everyone wants (1). Getting there depends greatly on following a daily skin care routine with products whose ingredients set skin up for success.
The secret? Understanding why skin becomes unhealthy and how you can reverse this course to see that fresh, beautiful skin you might want.
How can you tell if you have healthy skin?
If your skin looks and acts “normal,” chances are it’s healthy. But unless you’re taking steps to protect it from environmental damage (something everyone’s skin is vulnerable to), it’s not likely to stay that way. Maintaining healthy skin is a constant process, much like maintaining overall health.
If you have unhealthy skin, it will present this in obvious ways: you’ll see blemishes, feel an uncomfortable tightness, tingling or burning, skin’s texture may be rough or flaky and its tone might appear uneven. You may also notice skin looks dull, as if a switch were flipped, turning off skin’s lit-from-within glow (2).
What skin care routine will give you healthy skin?
The most encouraging part in the quest to achieve healthy skin is that you don’t need to follow a strict routine with no variations to get the results you want. More important is seeking out products that fit within certain guidelines. Here are a few pointers to get you started:
- Use a gentle cleanser with calming, skin-restoring ingredients twice daily
- Apply products containing a variety of antioxidants, like vitamin C and niacinamide
- Use a leave-on exfoliant to get rid of dulling dead surface layers of skin and unclog pores
- Use products whose ingredients help maintain skin’s microbiome and help restore + replenish skin’s barrier (more on that in a moment)
One absolutely critical factor: during the day, finish with a broad-spectrum sunscreen. At night, your routine can wrap up after moisturiser application or you can finish with an eye-area product.
What ingredients are good for healthy skin?
More good news! There's a variety of ingredients to help shore up skin’s defences and return it to a healthy state. Here are some major ones to consider – and this is just scratching the surface.
- Antioxidants. Keep in mind there isn't a single best antioxidant (despite what you might read or hear elsewhere); rather, it’s important to seek out products containing a blend of them. Antioxidants are important because they actively thwart daily environmental damage (such as exposure to pollution) that progressively hurts skin’s health (3).
- Use products with barrier-replenishing and strengthening ingredients such as ceramides, niacinamide, ectoin, and omega fatty acids. When skin’s barrier (its surface) is intact, your skin will be smoother, softer, more radiant and even (8)—sounds healthy, doesn’t it?
- If your skin is compromised to the point of redness and sensitivity, use of a biotic-containing healthy skin moisturiser helps your skin naturally maintain its microbiome. By keeping the population of bacteria and other flora equalised, you can achieve skin wellness (and might just have people ask what you’ve been doing to look so refreshed!) (5).
What are tips to achieve healthy skin?
In addition to incorporating these ingredients into your daily skin care routine, here are some more tips to help improve skin health:
- Make sure you use a soap-free, gentle cleanser that leaves skin refreshed and soft, not tight or dry. It should rinse easily, with no skin-dulling residue (6).
- Avoiding fragranced products, including those with fragrant essential oils, is a key part of keeping skin healthy. Fragrance in all forms poses a risk of irritating skin, and anything that irritates skin is going to compromise its health.
- Keep away from harsh, abrasive face scrubs that can damage skin, as well as drying types of alcohol, like denatured alcohol, that strip skin of its essential moisture.
- Diet—as in what you eat each day—matters, too! Research has clearly proven the link between skin health, unprotected environmental exposure and the food choices we make (7).
- Consider techniques to manage stress. There isn’t one universal best way to do this, but it’s worth the time it takes to find ways to process stress more effectively – since research shows there can be a connection between stress and skin problems.
How long does it take to get healthy skin?
The length of time it takes to get healthy skin varies (we know, that’s not what you want to hear). Consider that the issues skin is experiencing might be the result of months or years of cumulative damage. Thankfully, it doesn’t take that long to repair it.
In most cases, with adherence to the advice listed above, you’ll start to see improvements within a month. If it takes longer than that – hang in there! With time, you will see the renewed, healthy, glowing skin you’ve been missing.
Learn more about healthy skin products.
References for this information:
1. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, June 2011, pages 1,638-1,659
2. Annals of the Brazilian Society of Dermatology, May-June 2017, pages 367-374
3. The Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology, April 2019, pages 46-53
4. The Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology, April 2016, Supplement 1, pages S2-S8
5. Seminars in Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery, June 2014, pages 98-103
6. Dermatology Research and Practice, August 2012, ePublication
7. Reviews in Endocrine & Metabolic Disorders, September 2016, pages 443-448
