Age shall not wither her...

Kohl - the Eye-liner of
the Ancient Egyptians.

The legendary beauty Cleopatra took an interesting approach to her skin care and beauty routine. From bathing in donkeys' milk to Dead Sea salt and clay masks, lipsticks made of tallow and ochre, and, of course Kohl - the ubiquitous eye-liner of Egypt, she tried most things. She was even said to sleep in a mask made of gold as well as using a clay one regularly, to deep cleanse her skin. Of course, she had little time for age to bother her, as she committed suicide at the age of 39. Other cultures have used stranger things than gold, such as the nightingale dropping and snail slime favoured by the Japanese. But are any as strange as our current ideas of injecting toxins and fillers and cutting the skin to tighten it? It seems that many women – and growing numbers of men – will try almost anything to retain their youthful looks.

I am not sure how healthy this obsession our culture has with youth really is, but it seems that beauty is linked with youth, especially for women. One woman told me that she became invisible once she was 50, but her husband remained distinguished looking and attractive! It seems that our culture, for all the forward strides that have been made in the area of women’s rights, still only recognises the value of women’s looks when they are below a certain age. I’m not so sure that the French think this way; older women there have always been chic, often more so than their gauche juniors. This seems to be something else we have acquired from America, so it becomes easy for advertisers and Beauty sellers to trade on the insecurity of ageing women and offer them the Elixir of Youth in the form of various potions and unguents which promise the earth and take your money, generally with limited results. It seems unlikely that there is a true Elixir of Youth, or there would be no-one having plastic surgery in Hollywood and elsewhere. I also wonder how healthy it is to worrying about our “ageing” faces to the degree that we would put almost anything on them, or in them, though I’m pretty sure that the Nightingale droppings and Snail slime would be safer than some of the products on offer.

GENTLE CLEANSING

Rhythmic Night Conditioner

There is really no need to wither, though!  I think that the best way forward is to relax a little about ageing, and look at the rôle models appearing: I don’t think Dame Helen Mirren suddenly became invisible at 50!  If you haven’t already done so, it is time to develop a really good and gentle skin care routine – ideally the Dr Hauschka cleansing method, as that actually supports your skin rather than stressing it by exfoliating aggressively.* Using a water-based product like Rhythmic Night Conditioner to support the skin at night will allow the skin to regenerate and cleanse itself far more efficiently than using a heavy night cream, as the skin is free to respire and detoxify. This will help to slow ageing of the skin.

CLEAN EATING

Keeping your diet clean and healthy and choosing your vices (as few as possible!) with care, will do more to keep your skin and your body looking good. Ask me for my Radiant skin eating plan, for a week of attention to foods which feed your skin. (Most people lose a little weight as well, which can be a bonus!) Foods which feed your skin tend to be great for the rest of you as well, particularly the brain.

Facial exercises slow signs of ageing

EXPERT CARE

It always pays to get advice from an expert. A Dr Hauschka Esthetician will treat your skin, show you how to get the best results at home and advise you on which products are best for you currently. You shouldn’t still be using the products you started with at 16, yet many women are.  Many of them can also teach you the brilliant Dr Hauschka facial exercises, which keep your skin nicely plumped, soften lines and tone drooping contours. This is a brilliant way of ageing slowly, rather than freezing your face into a taut Botox parody of youth.

FACIAL EXERCISE

The true Elixir of Youth is probably a potent cocktail of good skin care practice, clean eating and exercise, particularly facial exercise. For a truly rejuvenating effect that even husbands notice (!) a focussed regime of Dr Hauschka Facial Firming treatments and Facial exercise sessions is quite unbeatable. Add a course of RNC and you’ll be looking as great as Dame Helen!

Dame Helen - agelessly beautiful

*All these people who tell us to exfoliate, do you think they consider the telomeres+ shortening? It is a distinct possibility that over-stimulation via cell removal leads more rapidly to the “Hayflick limit” where the telomeres have reached their limit and the skin becomes sluggish and less able to regenerate. 

+The spell checker thinks that I should change "telomere" to "omelette"! Intriguing. 

  http://www.theorganicbeautician.com/treatments/facial-firming-treatment

Are you more "Kate Middleton" or "Katie Price"?

The beauty industry at the moment can sometimes seem to be more Katie Price than Kate Middleton, with all the falseness on offer. There are fake tans, fake nails, false eyelashes, hair extensions, cosmetic surgery,fake breasts, and invasive fillers which give one fake lips, amongst many other things. I am not intending to condemn either Katie Price or anyone else who feels the need to go to extremes with their appearance, or just fancies a little nip and tuck, but I often wonder what it says about us as a society that we seem to value the artificial over the authentic? As I said, no criticism of KP is intended in this post, as she seems to have made a great success of doing what she wants to do, but I sometimes find myself hankering after a more delicate, perhaps modest, approach to female beauty, which seems to be so brilliantly personified by the glamorous and ladylike Princess Catherine, who always looks beautiful and poised, with skin which seems to glow with natural health and 
vitality.

Healthy skin is gorgeous skin and luckily, many women are happy to step off the beauty bandwagon and think for themselves: the Dr Hauschka treatment is ideal for them. Relaxing, reparatory and revitalising, it allows one to relax fully into peacefulness, and reawaken feeling rejuvenated. Of course, the radiant complexion that is a side-effect of it is a wonderful bonus! 

This may not be for you if you prefer your face resurfaced with a diamond-tipped drill bit, or you like to have collagen injected into your dermis, but if you would like to enjoy a little pampering and have gorgeous skin, with a positive impact on the planet, the Dr Hauschka treatment should suit you to a T!

#WhyILoveDrHauschka

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.