Daily Archives: July 15, 2017

While celebrities – artistes and media personalities with a high public profile – have beauty professionals to ensure they always look stunning, many of them also have their own personal routine. From eating cooked tomatoes to drinking spearmint tea and snacking on starfruit, you’d be surprised at just how ordinary their daily vanity must-dos can be. Do you know why wetting your lips to keep them moisturized is not just wrong but bad? What’s the link between lack of sleep and acne? You’ll find the answer in Ceramiracle’s founder Eugene He’s Five Commandments Of Good Skin! Plus, watch makeup maestro Clarence Lee – who has dolled up stars such as Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi – share his mantras for healthy skin.

In broad terms, biohacking is the practice of using science, biology, and self-experimentation to achieve an optimum state of self mentally, physically and even aesthetically. For example, skincare experts believe that we can biohack the skin to change its type, slow down the aging process and achieve healthy and younger-looking skin – all without surgery. They say that the key to skin renaissance and ultimately skin perfection “lies within – it just needs to be activated.” How? By utilizing the body’s natural ability to correct and heal itself through the infusion of organic and potent functional compounds that have been combined and clinically studied to work synergistically for improving skin conditions.

When a baby is born, she is blessed with beautiful and smooth skin because of vernix caseosa – a thick, white and wax-like substance often hailed as a baby’s “first beauty product”. This natural moisturizer and protectant covers, moisturizes and protects a baby’s delicate skin and develops on a baby’s skin while in the womb and stays on throughout until birth. The vernix also protects baby from infections: according to a publication in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, it contains antimicrobial proteins that are active against group B strep, E. coli and other common perinatal pathogens.Without the vernix’s protection, a newborn’s skin would be like a wrinkled prune – just think of your fingers developing wrinkles after swimming or taking a long bath.

The traditional way of managing any skin problem is to go topical using creams, cleansers, moisturizers and other cosmetics as external skincare is the quickest method to deliver active ingredients to the skin. In the late 1980s, Swedish biochemist Ake Dahlgren pioneered the concept of skincare from within. Known as the Father of “Internal Skincare”, Dahlgren states that skin cells are capable of absorbing nutrients (bioavailability) – thus improving skin’s appearance. For example, phytoceramides capsules are now increasingly popular as an anti-aging supplement for preserving youthful skin. And the next big thing? Synthesized skincare or “bi-directional beauty” that combines ingestible supplements and topical applications into a 360-degree holistic system.

According to media reports, consumers spent billions of dollars on supplements annually with multivitamins, calcium and Vitamin C pills being the most popular ones. Skincare supplements are also becoming more popular as more people embrace the concept of nurturing beauty from within. If you’re not into pill-popping yet, should you jump on and start taking them too?For example, through our diet, we consume on average 0.3mg of ceramides daily. To achieve clinically proven skin moisturization activities from ceramides at 30mg a day, we will have to eat ten times the volume of food, which is not a practical solution.

Man’s early relationship with the sun was defined by awe, wonder and reverence. In the last few decades, however, the affable affiliation has been replaced by alarmist sentiments with the harmful effects of ultraviolet (UV) rays causing skin cancer dominating the narrative. The immanent abundance of the sun’s life-giving benefits is often overlooked and sometimes forgotten. We are told that ‘A’ is for aging and ‘B’ is for burn: UVA is responsible for photo-aging while UVB causes sunburn.

At zero degrees Celsius, the cold sucks out moisture from the skin making it more sensitive. Further drops in temperature will cause the skin to be dry, red and rough. Conversely, the rise in UV Index to level 6 during summer can cause sunburn in half an hour if you have fair skin and have not put on sunscreen. Seasons change – and so should our skincare regimen to keep the largest organ of our body healthy and youthful. “Just as you change your clothes with changing temperatures you should do the same with your skincare,” says dermatologist Dr Nick Lowe.

For centuries, gynostemmapentaphyllum (gynostemma in short, also known as jiaogulan) has been a famed herb acclaimed for its efficacy in remedying various ailments from treating hematuria to combating obesity to promoting longevity. A member of the cucumber family that grows mainly in Vietnam, Korea, China and Japan, it is also widely used in the skin and beauty care due to its powerful antioxidant properties and anti-aging effects on the skin. From a folk remedy to promoting longevity to an elixir of beauty, gynostemma does it all!

Have you ever been on a long flight and dreaded the way you looked when you landed? Indeed, air travel tends to take its toll on the skin because of the dry pressurized cabin air which causes the skin to be dull and rough. Explaining the science of it, aesthetician Renée Rouleau says that low humidity leads air to replenish moisture “by pulling it from anything nearby — your skin included.” Thus dry complexions get worse while oily skin becomes greasier to make up for the loss of moisture. The good thing is that putting up a good skincare strategy when you’re flying high in the sky is quite easy!