March 29, 2024

This ‘inside-out’ skincare guide will give you the glowiest skin of your life

That’s exactly why I’ve grilled celebrity facialist, Ada Ooi, who is the founder of 001 Skincare and an expert on all things glow, to share a definitive, simple and effective guide to actually getting the glow – and I can assure you it requires more than eight hours’ kip.

Dubbed ‘the inside-out’ skincare guide, Ada’s solution for lit-from-within skin involves action on the inside (so focusing on your hormones, organs and anti-oxidants), as well as the outside (including facial massage, cleansing techniques and Vitamin-boosting skincare).

Everyone covets that elusive ‘lit-from-within’ glossy, dewy skin that looks juicy enough to bite but, um, how do you actually achieve it if you weren’t born with Miranda Kerr’s genes?

It’s the question I pose to every celebrity I’ve interviewed and they always reply with the same two solutions: ‘plenty of sleep and lots of water,’ which we all know is a load of c***.

Here is her step-by-step guide for getting the glow from the inside, out.

Effective stress management

Inside: Helps balance hormones and avoid over-secretion of cortisol which can contribute to excessive oil production and dull complexion. Make a to-do checklist across the week for: Things I enjoy doing, moments I feel calm and relax, people I enjoy meeting/talking to – especially during a high stress period!

Outside: Minimise tension across face to avoid habitual lines formation. Massage, massage, massage like you’re stroking a baby, patting your loved one’s back; touch on skin sends the happy hormone, dopamine, which gives a sense of reward to your brain. It makes you feel positive, relaxed and calm.

And you will be able to see real effect in the form of a pink flushed glow, a plumper and fuller texture, or more sculpted contours as more blood is circulating to the face area bringing oxygens and nutrients while activating the lymphatic system to flush away toxins.

Good water and oil balance

Inside: Drink sufficient liquid throughout the day; all your organs and body functioning need it. Dehydration can easily be shown on the face with dryness and tightness. Eat good oils or food containing good oils like avocado, salmon etc which can help fight inflammation across the body either within organs or across joints. Good oils in your diet help skin keeping supple and full.

Outside: Balance the usage of water-based and oil-based products to create a strong barrier. Humectants are widely used to help guide water molecules from the ambience environment and lower layer of the skin to the epidermis to keep skin hydrated and maintain a strong barrier.

Look for ingredients like glycerin, hyaluronic acid, lactic acid (which is both an exfoliant and a humectant), one of the biggest function of these ingredients is to create water pathways making the whole skincare regime more permeable.

I seldom recommend oil-free products because water molecules require oil molecules to create an envelope to avoid evaporation, I believe that even the oiliest skin requires a certain level of oil to build a strong barrier – and to balance the excessive oil within the skin. There are also so many natural oils you can choose from that have different consistency and comedogenic level, choose almond/apricot kernal oil if you’re oily-prone and cocoa/shea butter if your skin is on the dry side.

Anti-Oxidants

Inside: Our body constantly produces free radicals, they are waste substances produced by cells as the body processes food, alcohol, toxins, any infections caused by bacteria, fungus or virus, or overworked tissue/damage caused by intense and prolonged exercise.

There are a lot of anti-oxidant foods to choose from to replenish anti-oxidants to ensure the body doesn’t suffer from oxidate stress from the mentioned free radical waste process. Nuts like walnuts, pecans, almonds, wholegrains like oats and quinoa, fruits like berries, oranges, vegetables like broccoli and spinach, even coffee and teas have great anti-oxidant properties.

Outside: You can find free radicals from pollution, smog, dust and smoke from cigarettes, also from UV – one source that we always have a love-hate relationship with when talking about maintaining skin health. Free radicals have the ability to damage our skin’s DNA that can speed up the ageing process, leading to damaged elastin fibres and breakdown of collagen creating loose and sagginess or wrinkles.

It can also lead to changes in skin colour e. g. pigmentation, brown spots and broken blood vessels. Anti-oxidants are compounds that can give out an electron to a free radical so that the free radical doesn’t consume the electron from the skin’s atom altering the skin’s DNA. Ingredients to look for for anti-oxidant topical application will be: Vitamin A, C, E, marine algae, berries, green tea, COQ10, squalane and plant oils.

How do you incorporate all these in your daily skincare regime?
Cleanse with non drying ingredients

Either you do one or two cleanse, make sure your cleansing products are not stripping off your skin’s natural barrier, especially important if you’ve sensitive, stressed or prone to dryness – you may consider using products that don’t foam and don’t require rinsing with water, they can be cleansing oil, balm or milk without a surfectant and emulsifier.

Tone i. e. 1st Hydration Boost

The word ‘toning’ is distracting, I see this process as the first hydration injection to the skin once you’ve cleansed the skin. Using a water-based product here hydrates the skin immediately while also bring the skin to a correct pH, opening up water pathways for products to permeate better in the next skincare steps.

Serum – Water-based

Here’s where you can use a water-based serum to give the skin a cross-layer hydration boost while delivering lots of anti-oxidants to deeply replenish hydration and aid any corrections or recoveries from free radical exposures to achieve balanced and translucent complexion.

Serum – Oil-based

Remember that our skin is made of water and oil, and oil-based serum with anti-oxidants to continue control free radical actives with actives to help replenish the skin’s natural protein, balance sebum secretion and aid the reproduction of collagen is the basis for plumped and full skin texture.

Moisturise

Plump for an all-round moisturiser that has got all humectant, oils, anti-oxidants and an enticing scent to treat the skin and help relax the mind.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *