How long should you keep your makeup?

Mascara has the shortest shelf life of all cosmetics, and should ideally be replaced every three months or so, to minimise any risk of infection to the eyes. Don’t try and revive dried out mascara: recycle the packaging, and treat yourself to a new one. I suggest Dr Hauschka Plum Volume mascara, as it is a little subtler than black but still gives you gorgeous longer, thicker lashes, which is sort of the point, non? It contains lovely conditioning ingredients and I think has improved my eyelashes since I started using it. Always put the top on tightly and don’t pump air into the tube. Write the date on it with Tip-Ex when you open it and bin it three months later. Your eyes are worth it! If you ever have an eye infection, you should bin all your eye make-up and start again.

Kajal/Kohl/Eye pencils can last for a couple of years. You should be able to smell if it is going off, as it might seem rancid. Sharpen regularly to keep them clean and pointy. Keep the lids on please! (And don’t share, though if you really must, make sure you re-sharpen between users.)

Eye shadow powders generally keep for ages. Opinions vary from 2 years, but if they are kept clean, they might be okay for longer. Again keep them clean. A quick wipe with a cosmetic tissue and if you really feel the need, some alcohol would do the trick nicely.

Lipsticks also last about two years. You might find that the smell changes after this and they are rancid. The more natural the ingredients, and the lower the amount of preservatives, the less time they may last. But, this is a GOOD thing, as you don’t really want to be licking your lips and swallowing toxic chemicals, do you? Lip pencils last about two years too, and do keep them sharp or they are fairly useless. DON’T share them with anyone, unless you think you would really would like to get cold sores.

Blushers and bronzers are good for a couple of years. Again, trust your nose! Clean them periodically by wiping off with a tissue, or alcohol, like powder shadow. If you use a clean brush, they stay cleaner too. Wash your brushes! 

Foundations can last 12 to 18 months. Put the date on when you open them, and trust your sense of smell; if the smell changes, bin them. You might also want to check that the colour still suits you seasonally, as most people's skin darkens in the summer and gets lighter in the winter. Try to get one similar to your skin tone, unless you really like the Tango/Essex look?

Finally, your brushes: clean them regularly and gently and leave to air dry - not on a radiator, unless you really want to wreck them. If you can slant them downwards slightly so that water doesn't run into the wooden handle and ferrule, they will last better. Good quality brushes are worth investing in and taking care of. 

Finally, I know there is some gorgeous makeup out there, but consider the planet and your own health. Why not use a natural makeup, one that hasn't been tested on animals? There are lots of Organic, natural and ethical brands available nowadays, so why not try one? I love Dr Hauschka, obviously, but BWC lipsticks are also great. Which ones have you tried?

I stock all the Dr Hauschka Make up which is organic, ethically produced and good for the skin: www.theorganicbeautician.com

Spring cleaning

According to Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." 

Being middle aged and not a man, (though a Mann!), mine turns, rather more prosaically, to spring cleaning. (Then I have a little lie down, with a bad book, until the feeling passes.) When everything starts greening and chirruping, and nature looks as though it has had a face-lift, it is quite natural to want to do something ourselves, hence the trend for detoxing and dieting after Christmas and the New Year festivities have passed. For skin it can be a challenging time, as there is still central heating to contend with, as well as spending time outside and getting chilled, before warming up again. So, it is a good time to nurture and deep cleanse skin too. It is also possible that if dieting/detoxing is going on, the skin might respond by being spottier or more irritated, as toxins leave the system, which is not a desirable look.

Obviously the best thing to do is to book a wonderfully restorative Dr Hauschka treatment, which will put you and your skin back on top form, but this can be helped at home too, by a weekly routine of steaming and applying a clay mask. Generally, once a week is great, but if you are particularly greasy and spotty, twice a week is even better! Using a treatment mask such Dr Hauschka Revitalising or Firming mask afterwards, for 20 minutes, will give your skin a super boost that will be noticeable. Even husbands have been known to comment!

For the body, the wonderful lemon scent in Lemon/Lemongrass body moisturiser, Lemon bath and the aptly named Vitalising body wash, can really help awaken sluggish lymph and lift the spirits! The Lemon bath can be used in your face washing water, as well as in the bath, and can be a useful aid, if you really don't feel like getting up, as the scent is so uplifting.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I do Skype consultations, but am also happy to chat on the phone, or in person. You can find your local Dr Hauschka Esthetician here:  http://www.drhauschkatreatment.co.uk/

Here's to spring and a wonderful quote from Carl Friedrich Gauss:

Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.

Should I have made a New Year's resolution?

Did you make a New Year’s Resolution? I am afraid that I didn’t, as I don’t like being forced into things, but it did make me think about the way we all talk to ourselves and how being kinder when we do that helps us so much. In fact, we probably wouldn’t need to make “resolutions” if we were kinder to ourselves, I think. Notice how I used that word would there? I am totally convinced that we should eliminate Modal verbs from our inner dialogues, because they are some of the ones which cause the most aggro: “I should diet/ I must drink less/ I would exercise more/I ought to work harder but…”  why do they so often get juxtaposed with but, do you think? Probably because we are still rebelling against the “should/would/could/must” that we heard from our tiniest moments: “you must clean your room/you should work harder/ you could have won that/you would have succeeded if you had done x, y or z”. We are naturally questioning and thinking people, so we questioned those statements, and when we hear them again we still question them as the emotions return subconsciously 

Modal verbs generally express theoretical possibility, likelihood, obligation and permission, all of which can be great things, but not if they are imposed on us against our wills. This also means that when we use them, we are not necessarily committing to a course of action and thus they can be delaying tactics. Not a particularly useful attribute for a resolution, I feel.  Interestingly, these verbs are defined as not “inflective” but “defective”, and I don’t think we should be using defective* words against ourselves, or anyone else!

I prefer to hear people say: “I enjoy eating healthily”,” I choose to exercise and enjoy it” “I am happy drinking less” (alcohol, not water!) ”I am enjoying taking care of my skin”.  Positive affirmations like these are easier for the brain - which is a very literal being - to process and cope with. Modal verbs cause confusion and might mess up your resolutions. Perhaps, if we stopped using them, to ourselves and others, life would be easier and more pleasant. Maybe we should?

*For sticklers: actually this just means that they don’t have an infinitive form, but I thought it was significant anyway. 

A Skin Care fairy story...

Once upon a time there was a queen who sat sewing by a black ebony window.  She looked at the black of the window frame, the white of the snow lying on the sill and then as she pricked her finger, the drops of red blood that spattered the snow, and said

“Oh how I wish I could have a child with hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood!”

Sometime later, the queen was delivered of a baby girl, who had hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood, whom she called Snow White, but soon after that she died (probably from a chill caught by sewing at wintery windows and bleeding on them). The king, being a bloke, soon remarried.

The new queen was very beautiful; she used Dr Hauschka skin care and looked quite a lot like Angelina Jolie, so let’s call her Magnificent, as that’s her name. She had a magic mirror, which could speak when spoken to, and being a little vain she would ask it:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who is the fairest of them all?”

To which the mirror would reply:

“Yo queen! Lookin’ good!

You da the fairest in da hood!”

 (The mirror fancied itself as a bit of a rapper, but being a magic mirror it was also self-dusting which is even handier.)

For some years everything went well, the king spent a lot of time shooting, pheasants and peasants (generally by mistake), the queen got rather bored discussing game recipes with the cook, and Snow White grew up, but though she still (mostly) had hair as black as ebony and lips as red as Blood (MAC’s Dsquared2- Blood Red) her skin was as orange as tango, thanks to her spray tan addiction.  The queen was still looking pretty gorgeous, as she was using Dr Hauschka Regenerating range and practiced her Dr Hauschka facial exercises assiduously. Then one day, as she was doing some de-cluttering, the queen found the magic mirror and asked it:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who is the fairest of them all?” And the mirror replied:

“Yo queen, lookin’ good!

You da the fairest in da hood!

But Princess Snowy would be top totty

 If she wasn’t quite so spotty!”

“Oh really?” said the queen, a sudden glint in her eye (which might have alarmed the king had he been there to see it, rather than out decimating the local wildlife). So the queen gathered together some magic potions and an Apple and went to have a look at her step-daughter.

With her potions and the Apple, she arrived at Snow White’s room, which was a fug of cheap scent, hairspray and vanilla-scented lip balm. Making her way carefully across the floor, which resembled a jumble sale, awash with abandoned clothes, stray shoes, empty spray tan tins and half full coffee cups (which would have excited Alexander Fleming no end, had he been there to see them), she found Snow White “doing her homework” (aka chatting to frogs on Snapchat, buying shoes on eBay, and posting selfies on Instagram).

“OMG, how can you live like this? Yes, I know, I am going and, yes, it is your right to live like this but the rest of us don’t want to live with rats, as, unlike those cups, they will eventually make it to the kitchen. Anyway, I've brought you some Dr Hauschka for your skin and a shiny red Apple so you can look it up online. There’s some Cleansing Cream; it’s not a scrub, so use it very gently, you press and roll; then Intensive Cure 01, it’s wonderful, but expensive, so please don’t leave it on the floor, and tread on it and some Melissa day cream which is for the daytime only, not the night time. Also, some Steam Bath, Clay Mask and Rejuvenating Mask: use them twice a week and you’ll see some serious improvement. And by the way, it’s not just what you put on your skin that matters, you have to make some changes to what you put in it. Less cola and more water, more fruit and veg, fewer burgers and none of that coffee-flavoured hot sweet milk shake stuff in cardboard cups. Also, that spray tan is really bad for you and those wipes have got propylene glycol in, which is what they use in antifreeze, as you’d know if you’d paid any attention when you were doing GCSE science! Plus you need to get out of this toxic fog and get some exercise.”

To which Snow White replied (loudly)

 “God, you’re so mean, it’s not fair! What’s wrong with wipes anyway; everyone else uses them? And I do get exercise; I have to play hockey twice a week- they make me! Plus, I did, like, drink some water last week.”

So the queen left her to it and went to chat up a rather handsome huntsman who was hanging about the stables, but after googling Dr Hauschka for acne, on the Apple, and checking out the press and roll video on YouTube, Snow White did start using the products from her step mother, and tweeted a picture of herself in the clay mask with the hashtags #50shadesofClay #nomakeupselfie #lol #drhauschkaclaymask. In time, her skin lost that Tango glow and after one of the frogs grew up into a prince, she left home to go to university with him, and presumably lived happily ever after.

The Queen, however, put on a suit and some lippie (Dr Hauschka Rose Quartz 16), got a bank loan and opened up a phenomenally successful beauty salon called Magnificent Skin, employing the dishy huntsman as a receptionist, amongst other duties. And she too lived Hauschka-ly ever after. No idea what the king did.

What are you using on your face at the moment?

The weather has suddenly changed from blissfully warm to icy cold. I can’t believe that I was sitting beside the sea in Lyme two days ago, warming in the sun, and now I am back in tights and cardigans. All too easy to adjust one’s clothing requirements, but what about our faces, which bear the brunt of changing weather, central heating and pollution? It would seem sensible to adjust one’s skin care routine as one does one’s wardrobe, but I am constantly amazed that not only do women not do this but that many of them are still using the same products they were using ten, or even twenty, years ago! Yet, the skin is a changing organ, and how we care for it needs to change according to its current requirement; after all most of wear different clothes from what we wore when we were younger (I do still rather hanker after a Ra-Ra skirt, but would prefer to avoid the 16-61 syndrome!) The skin’s condition changes, often quite dramatically, throughout life, and its vicissitudes, and it makes sense to give it optimum care by changing how we treat it accordingly.

A client recently told me that she has been using Normalising Day Oil for the last ten or so years. Here is the official description for NDO which is now called Clarifying Day Oil (presumably for the purposes of clarity!)

“Clarifying Day Oil is a fast-absorbing daily moisturiser which balances excessive oiliness, refines the appearance of pores and reduces the appearance of blemishes, for a calm, beautiful complexion."

So while it might be suitable for a teenager with acne, it is not necessarily so great for a woman of 36, with dry patches and incipient wrinkles, who might benefit from a more hydrating cream rather than a drying one. I suggested that she tried Rose day cream for her (now) dry skin and to layer the oil on top when she went running, for extra protection, as she loves it so much. Her skin is much happier now, and looks healthy, moister and less stressed, which of course means she is happier with it and less stressed herself.

I suppose the moral of this story is to see your local Dr Hauschka Esthetician regularly, so she can have a good look at your skin; you get the maximum benefit of her expertise and treatments and your skin can look its absolute best. Unlike other facials, it is safe, and even recommended, to have a Dr Hauschka treatment before a big event, as you will not experience breakouts but just gorgeous healthy skin - the “radiant glow” - that is the trademark of Dr Hauschka devotees.

Clearing Acne with kindness?

Such a bore, skin complaints.  Usually when you need to look your best, you end up feeling self-conscious and unattractive. Not that we should be obsessed with appearances, as what is inside is of far more relevance, but sadly, we do tend to notice the externals first. Nowhere is this more self-evident than our teenage years, when we desperately want to look good, are often feeling very, very insecure and to top it all off, our complexion lets us down with a wodge of red angry spots and enough oil to power the central heating system for a week (now there’s an idea..!) Most people, faced with this situation retaliate in an ever-escalating war of attrition, using steadily stronger methods of subduing the skin, with precarious results. Doctors may offer anything from antibiotics, to ro-accutane and for the lucky girls, the contraceptive pill. These do work for some people some of the time, but are not ideal by any means, and there are often side effects, not least of which is that when the medication is stopped, the symptoms often reappear.

 In my experience, the answer lies in being kind to your skin; not scrubbing it and stripping it of oil, but gently cleansing and nurturing it and healing it with kindness. Now before you throw your zit cream at the screen, hear me out a little longer. I recommend a simple and gentle cleansing routine which starts with warming the face up in order to increase the circulation and also open the pores, which may be blocked. When the face is warm, an application of Cleansing cream, no scrubbing! - followed by a cool compress, toning with Clarifying toner, and then - and this is the one that throws some people - a gentle application of Normalising Day Oil.

Oil on oily skin may seem a non-sequitur but think about it; what happens when you strip the oil? It rebounds with more! So, by adding some healing oil, like Dr Hauschka’s Clarifying Day Oil, we are actually calming the skin down, so it can relax and doesn’t feel the need to produce more sebum, as it can sense that there is oil already on the surface. In effect, your skin becomes more self-regulatory, and starts to find an impulse for healing itself.

I always advise gentle cleansing, because the scrubbing and exfoliating that most people do can seriously damage the acid mantle, as well as spreading infection where there are already blemishes. Cleansing with a “press and roll” movement, on the other hand, encourages the pores to be cleansed right down to the bottom, and if done correctly, from the top of the face downwards and from the centre outwards, means that the lymphatic pathways are being followed which brings into helpful action the body’s own internal cleansing. Generally, working with the body is better than working against it, and your skin will really thank you for respecting your body’s inherent wisdom. 

For more information, please click on the following link:

http://www.theorganicbeautician.com/treatments/clarifying-treatment

Love your cellulite!

It looks like we can thank Vogue magazine for introducing us to cellulite, as they first used the term in the 1920s "Like a swift migrating fish, the word cellulite has suddenly crossed the Atlantic.”

Before this point women were not generally as scantily clad in public and so would not have been thinking about how their skin looked; in fact they probably had more relevant considerations such as, how to get hold of contraception, their financial dependency and whether they were ever going to get the vote. Nowadays, however, cellulite is a multi-million pound industry, with even very young girls worrying about whether they have a thigh gap or not, and why is it dimpled? Well, medical opinion seems to err on the side of it being normality; after all, 85-90% of post-adolescent women seem to have it, so can it really be a problem? It has even been described as an "inappropriate term used by women to describe curves which they judge to be too plump and not very aesthetic”.

The presence of cellulite is thought to be dependent on sex, and race and one’s genetic bio-type; if your mother had it, you probably will, but as your mother was female, she probably did have it, as oestrogen plays a part in its development and women have more body fat than men – for good reasons, such as storing energy for a possible pregnancy. Women and men store fat differently, as we all know, not only do we have more body fat, but our bands of connective tissue are differently structured: in men, the bands are thicker, more numerous and form a crossed pattern, in women there are less of them and they are vertical, enabling fat to pucker and poke through. Well, lucky us! (Even if you are really skinny, you will probably have some layers of fat between your skin and muscles, so you will still have it.) So, really, it appears to be a natural condition to women, and nothing to get so worked up about; basically, if you have breasts, you probably have cellulite, so let’s embrace it and cosset it! Most men don’t notice it, and are not even aware of its existence on us. In fact, men are programmed, by nature, to like curves, not coat-hangers! Also, remember that our daughters see how we feel about our body and mimic it; let’s try to ensure that they grow up with healthy body images rather than “issues”!

If it is really getting you down, though, there are a few easy things you can do which will tone the skin and make it less noticeable:

·         Eating lots of vegetables (ideally raw) and drinking plenty of water will help your skin to look better in any case, and help reduce any oedema which can accentuate cellulite.

·         A light tan can make your skin look healthier, and means that you are getting some of that all-important vitamin D from the sun.

·         Having a cold shower after your regular hot one really does tone the skin up, and I speak from experience here!  Just think of it as standing under a mountain waterfall:  try to enjoy it and in time you will miss it, if you don’t do it!

·         I like to use Dr Hauschka Lemon and Lemongrass Oil on my thighs and legs, as it has a gorgeous smell and makes my legs look and feel beautiful. (Any that is left can be used on the ends of your hair, which makes it smell lovely and seems to condition it well!)

Please, treat your legs with love, rather than loathing; after all, they carry us around all day, on unsuitable shoes most of the time, and then are berated for looking like something that Rembrandt or Reubens would have loved to paint! Love your cellulite, massage it gently with the finest organic ingredients, and you will start to notice it less, and love your body more!

 www.theorganicbeautician.com