Just like the seasons change our skincare routine may also need a change. You should always pay attention to your skin's needs not just seasonally but all year round. The colder months bring low temperatures and rough winds which can bring about dry air and dry skin. 

 The weather’s starting to heat up, but before you grab your bikini and your sunnies and head to the beach, are you perhaps forgetting something? Maybe SPF?

While we all love to soak in the sun’s feel-good rays, (okay fine, and you can’t beat a sexy bronzed glow either!) it’s important to take all the necessary precautions to protect your skin. Too much sun exposure won’t only accelerate aging, it can lead to other frustrating issues such as sunspots.

So before hitting the sand, keep on reading to find out our top natural ways to treat and prevent sunspots.

What are Sunspots?

Before we dive into this article, let’s first clear up what exactly sunspots are. Sunspots are a type of hyperpigmentation that may be up to two shades darker than your natural skin tone. These harmless spots may be flat or raised, and even have the appearance of a wart. They are also more likely to occur in areas that are most often exposed to the sun, such as the face, neck, ears, arms and back of the hands. 

They are a result of prolonged, unprotected sun exposure, when the body over-produces melanin.

5 Ways To Treat, Prevent And Visibly Remove Sunspots

1.  Avoid Prolonged Sun Exposure

Since sunspots are caused by too much time in the sun, the most logical first step in preventing them would be to limit your sun exposure. You may think that avoiding the beach or sunbathing sessions poolside will ensure that your skin stays free from sunspots, however just a few minutes of unprotected exposure everyday builds up over time and can cause these pesky spots. Limit sun exposure when possible and be sure sure to cover up with a hat or sunglasses when you are out in the sun.

2.  Always Wear Sunscreen

We cannot stress this enough! Don’t ever leave your house without it, even on cloudy days! Apply an SPF of at least 30 or higher to areas that will be exposed to the sun. Choose a titanium sunblock rather than a chemical sunscreen that contains harmful chemicals that could put your health at risk. 

3.  Rely on Natural Skin Brightening Ingredients

Natural ingredients such as Vitamin C and aloe are excellent for soothing, brightening and rejuvenating sun-damaged skin, as well as promoting the formation of collagen to help ensure your skin stays youthful and plump. Here, at Apple Rose, you’ll find these ingredients along with other powerful antioxidants and nutrients to feed your skin with love and nourishment in our acclaimed Bloom Beautifully Vitamin C Super Serum as well as our Nourish Naturally Moisturizing Treatment. 

4.  Avoid Tanning Beds Completely

There’s not much to say here, except stay away from tanning beds. They drastically increase your risk of cancer, and no tan is worth putting your health at risk!

5.  Try an At-Home DIY Recipe

Of course you can’t go wrong with a DIY recipe, made with all natural ingredients from your kitchen.

Apple Cider and Lemon DIY Toner to Lighten Sunspots

Lemon juice contains citric acid and Vitamin C and apple cider contains alpha hydroxy acids to naturally lighten hyperpigmentation.

Simply combine one tsp of lemon juice and one tsp of apple cider vinegar in a small bowl. Soak a cotton pad in the mixture and apply evenly all over your skin, or just on sunspots if your skin is sensitive. A tingling or burning sensation is normal, however you could add a little water to dilute the mixture if necessary. Use this mixture at night. You can leave it on the skin while you sleep.

We hope these steps help you to be more aware of your skin, and the damage the sun can cause. As long as you follow these tips, you can enjoy a sun-soaked summer all while ensuring your skin stays healthy.

As originally published on Cure Joy under "6 foods that speed up aging"

Some unhealthy eating habits do worse than make you add pounds and feel tired – they age you from the inside out. Do you know that certain foods you eat wreak havoc not just with your health but also with how youthful you look and how well you age in every way? The old adage ‘You are what you eat” is true. It is nutrition, not our chronological age, that determines how youthful we look and feel.

Foods That Make You Age Faster

1. Sugar

Sugar not only causes you to gain weight easily but also creates wrinkles, sagging skin, and poor health. An interesting process called “glycation” takes place that literally renders your bodily tissues inflexible or simply damages them. Glycation is the caramelization of bodily tissue.

Think of those crispy browned potatoes on the stove – the crispy part is an example of glycation. The same process happens in your body. Collagen and elastin that keep our skin firm and youthful are the most vulnerable; once damaged, these lead to wrinkles and sagging skin.

2. Trans Fats

Trans fats exert an inflammatory effect within the body, such as creating a stiffening of the arteries or constricted blood vessels that lead to less blood flow to the skin and much more, leaving skin older, stiffer, and more wrinkled.

Trans fats can be found in highly processed foods such as fast food, junk food, pie crust, deep fried foods, margarine, canned frosting, Bisquick-type products, non-dairy creamers, and much more. The label might say zero trans fats, but food manufacturers are allowed to state zero even if they have half a gram of trans fats. A half gram of trans fats still has a mighty unhealthful impact on our health.

3. Alcohol

If you are steering clear of red wine due to the staining factor it exerts, white wine actually causes dental damage by making teeth more prone to longer-lasting stains. Alcohol in moderation exerts a healthy effect. However, excess alcohol can really speed up aging in the form of premature wrinkles, loss of collagen, elasticity, redness, dehydration, and puffiness. Nutrient depletion, liver inflammation, and dehydration are the culprits when too much alcohol is ingested.

4. Excess Carbohydrates

Just like how sugar creates a caramelization effect, refined carbs (healthy carbs stripped of all the good stuff) and excess healthy carbs have a bad impact as well. Once these carbs hit the blood stream – they behave just like sugar. Also, refined/excess carbs trigger insulin in excess and too much insulin prevents fat loss and slows or prevents lean muscle growth.

In addition, excess insulin also leaves you hungry just 30 min after eating, and this becomes a vicious cycle. The main stimulus for insulin secretion is dietary carbohydrates. Stick to complex carbs such as legumes and veggies as the fiber slows down the release of sugar; this equates to less glycation and less weight.

5. Low-Fat Foods

Everywhere you see, you find the result of decades worth of bad advice that has left the majority of people gaining weight and unknowingly aging their bodies. Remember the era of fat-free cookies? That is just a small example of a much larger problem. Fat does not make you fat. In fact, fat promotes weight loss and youthfulness. But the low-fat era is, unfortunately, still with us. Most people are more concerned with the fat grams in the nutrition labels.

A diet rich in essential and healthy fats plays a crucial role in how skin ages by reducing inflammation in the skin, encouraging hair growth and building strong cell membranes that reduce water loss in skin cells among other advantages.

Sources of healthy fats include the following:

• Walnuts
• Salmon
• Flaxseed
• Chia seeds
• Avocados
• Almonds
• Cold water fish
• Hemp seeds
• Wheat germ
• All nuts and seeds
• Dark green leafy veggies
• Omega 3-fortified eggs
• Coconut oil

6. Salt

Excess salt in the diet with foods such as chips, crackers, pretzels, bagels, cereals, bagels, cereals, canned foods, cheeses, and even cottage cheese can retain fluid in the body, creating a puffy look and paradoxically causing the cells to shrink; this creates dehydration. And this results not just in the sensation of thirst but also older, dehydrated, wrinkled skin.

Reducing or avoiding these foods is your key to a more energetic, vibrant and youthful you – inside and out.

What if you drank your facial cleanser? I am by no means advocating that you rummage through your bathroom and start downing your skin care products over ice but what we do everyday when we lather on lotion or serums affects us internally, not entirely unlike the way the food and drink we consume can affect us. Did you know that at least 60% of what we put on our skin gets absorbed into our bloodstream? According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), while there might be some chemicals that are too large to enter the bloodstream, many are small enough to penetrate. What we put on our skin does not just remain on the surface. It gets absorbed and either helps us or harms us. Think nicotine patches and birth control patches – they are designed to be placed on the surface of the skin and deliver chemicals that are absorbed by the skin into the bloodstream to have the intended effect. Just like we consume food through eating, we basically consume chemicals in personal care products through our skin.

The FDA does not currently test or approve cosmetic products and many contain toxic ingredients that have been known to have negative health consequences – things like hormone disruption, cancer and severe allergic reactions. Since we don't have much federal oversight, it's up to those of us who are interested in consuming ingredients that are beneficial and healthy for our skin, to do our own due diligence to make sure that we protect ourselves and our families.

Click here for a natural, gentle cleanser, we recommend, that's great for all skin types.

We are all on this journey to making more Sustainable, Healthy and Ethical (SHE) choices together. Kudos for SHE choices! Seeking perfection can be overwhelming and paralyzing so I want to make it easy for you. I would like to arm you with some practical tools you can use to begin making steps towards choosing healthier skin care products.

There are two things to consider as we make the shift to healthier skin care. The first is what level of exposure we have to the personal care product every day and the second is which chemicals have the potential to harm us most. By exposure I mean what products do we use the most often and which ones cover the largest surface area of the skin for the longest period of time. For example a hand wash that you use to clean only your hands and then quickly wash off constitutes less exposure than a body lotion that you baste all over your body and leave on for the entire day. It's more effective to begin by focusing on making shifts in products we have higher levels of exposure to. Identify lotions, moisturizers and serums that you use on your face and body every day that remain on the skin for long periods of time and consider replacing those with healthier options.

Once we identify which products we would like to replace, the second focus is to identify the most harmful chemicals to stay away from.

Here are my top five:

1. Parabens

Parabens are preservatives found in many personal care products. They include methylparaben propylparaben and ethylparaben among others. Studies have shown that parabens mimic estrogen and can act as potential hormone (endocrine) system disruptors. Estrogen exposure has been linked to breast cancer development and progression. While there is disagreement about whether the levels of Parabens found in skin care products is enough to cause cancer, I recommend that we err on the side of caution and avoid these altogether.

2. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS)

Sodium Lauryl Sufate is a surfactant used in thousands of cosmetics products. It's the ingredient that makes many of them foam. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) SLS has shown links to irritation of the skin and eyes, organ and reproductive toxicity and possible mutations and cancer.

3. Phthalates

The state of California and other authoritative bodies has classified phthalates like dibutyl phthalate (DBP) as a reproductive and developmental toxicant, and the European Union has banned the use of this ingredient in cosmetics and personal care products. Phthalates are sometimes not listed on the label but may be hidden in ingredients like “fragrances”. It's important to look for products that explicitly say they do not contain Phthalates.

4. Diethanolamine (DEA)

DEA is another ingredient used in personal care products to provide lather. The World Health Organization has found it to show limited evidence of carcinogenicity.

5. Fragrance

Fragrance may seem like an odd ingredient to include in my list of harmful ingredients. I am specifically referring to synthetic fragrances here or “fragrance” ingredients that are not listed as natural. The term fragrance can be used to mask a combination of toxic chemicals, some including the ones I've listed above.

No guide is complete with only a list of don'ts. Let's get to the fun part of safe and effective ingredients and SHE choices for skin care.

Do use products with the following:
1. Essential Oils & ingredients derived from natural sources
2. Wildcrafted ingredients – these are ingredients that have been grown in the wild without human intervention
3. Organic ingredients – these are ingredients that have been certified organic by the USDA

I hope you feel empowered and excited to begin a journey of wholesome personal care and skin care. If you've already begun the journey, I hope you feel inspired to kick the SHE shifts up a notch. What has been your perception or experience with natural skin care?

Click here for a natural, gentle cleanser, we recommend, that's great for all skin types.


Sources:
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18811683
2. http://www.ewg.org

This blog was originally published as a contribution to SHE Changes Everything - a site focused on Sustainable Healthy and Ethical choices. You should check them out.