Every woman wants beautiful skin. What can you do to help your skin look the best it can?

Gently Wash Your Face Every Day

The first thing you should do is wash your face twice a day - but no more - with anti-bacterial soap. Don’t scrub at it; just wash it gently. Scrubbing and over-washing will stimulate the pores and make them produce more oil, and pushing on your skin will encourage wrinkles. So wash your face gently.

Use an SPF moisturizer after each wash, even if your face is oily. Make sure it does not contain oil. An oil-free moisturizer evens out your skin tone and achieves balance; it will not clog your pores, either.

If you do have pimples, don’t squeeze them. This will cause scarring, bruising and spread germs. The pimples will take longer to heal if you squeeze them.

Eat Healthy Foods

Eating plenty of fresh fruit and drinking lots of water will help keep your skin looking clear and fresh. Sleep is very important, too. When you have lots of late nights and are always tired, the first thing to suffer is your skin, which will often look muddy and wrinkled.

Dry and itching skin is helped by extra Vitamin A, which helps to repair damaged skin tissue and restores elasticity.

Weight Loss Should be Gradual

Crash dieting can cause fine lines and wrinkles to appear in your skin. If you are overweight, gradual loss over time will be better for your skin.

Clean Your Skin After Swimming

If you swim much, take a shower after you leave the pool to wash the salt or chlorine off your skin. Use loads of moisturizer to prevent the skin from becoming dry and flaky.

Limit Your Time in the Sun

Limit your tanning time as tanning really ages skin. Sun protection for skin and lips is needed both summer and winter.

Use Skin Moisturizers in Winter and Summer

In the winter, dry, cold winds and artificial heat can produce dry, chapped skin, so it’s important to keep up the moisturizer in the winter too. Winter clothing often rubs the skin on your arms dry, so even though you are not exposed to the elements, you’ll probably find a moisturizer beneficial in the winter.

Consider Waxing Your Legs Instead of Shaving

Shaving your legs in the summer is required more often to look good in those shorts, but you may find that waxing causes less dryness and only needs to be repeated fortnightly rather than every second day.

If you follow these skin care tips your skin will look better and be healthier than if you didn’t.

Perhaps the best way to fight aging is to keep your cells healthy. Free radicals are attacking your healthy cells right now. Antioxidants attack and destroy those free radicals. This is one very important reason that antioxidants must be in your diet.

Of the list of antioxidant foods recently released by the USDA, small red beans and wild blueberries are among the top. The list of antioxidant foods contains the many fruits and vegetables which have the highest concentrations of disease-fighting antioxidant compounds, providing anti-aging benefits to your system.

But what are antioxidants?

Many families find the list of antioxidant foods a household term. Anyone who has ever been encouraged by their mothers to eat their greens could attest to that. Yet, the how and why this list of antioxidant foods works in our immune system remain a mystery for most.

As the name itself suggests, the list of antioxidant foods primarily acts against the effects of oxygen in our system. It’s true that oxygen is the source of life and that we need it to breathe. But even an essential element of life can have a negative ripple effect on the body. One such element is oxygen.

How Oxygen forms Damaging By-products

When our body undergoes normal metabolism, oxygen forms by-products called free radicals which can be damaging to our system.

These free radicals are molecules with an odd number of electrons, making them highly reactive. Because of their unequal number of electrons, free radicals seek out another electron from their neighboring molecules, usually healthy ones, thereby disrupting their normal functioning. In so doing, the free radicals turn these molecules into free radicals like themselves.

The result therefore is a chain reaction which when accumulated can cause massive cell damage, tissue damage, and eventually lead to degenerative diseases.

How the List of Antioxidant Foods stop Free Radicals

The list of antioxidant foods contains a high level of antioxidants whose function among others is to seek out free radicals and neutralize them.

The list of antioxidant foods fights by binding the free radicals before they can cause damage (oxidative stress) to the body. The list of antioxidant foods also repair any damage that might have already been rendered.

Recently, nutrition scientists working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) measured antioxidant levels of more than 100 foods contained in their list of antioxidant foods. This list of antioxidant foods includes fruits, vegetables, nuts, dried fruits, spices, and cereals.

Interestingly enough, several types of beans, berries, and nuts appear frequently at the top of the list, which led scientists to conclude that among the top antioxidant foods, berries certainly occupy the top spot in the fruit category, beans in the vegetable category, and hazelnuts and walnuts in the nut category.

The anti-aging benefits of antioxidants must not be taken lightly. If you want to provide your system what it needs to remain young looking and active, eat the foods on this list, don’t smoke, maintain a healthy weight, exercise, and get eight hours of sleep a night. No pill or surgery can replace a healthy lifestyle.

Healthy Skin

The skin is the largest organ in the body, and the most exposed. Most people don’t take proper care of their skin - either due to hectic work or due to pure ignorance.

Vitamins A, C, E, selenium, and zinc are especially important to maintain beautiful and healthy skin. Foods that are rich in these vitamins and minerals include:

• Apricots
• Cantalope
• Carrots
• Eggs
• Broccoli
• Citrus fruits
• Tomatoes
• Papaya
• Almonds
• Avocado
• Olive oil
• Walnuts
• Sunflower seeds
• Cabbage
• Chicken
• Liver
• Onions
• Seafood
• Oats
• Tuna
• Cauliflower

This is just a partial list of foods rich in the vitamins and minerals you need for healthy skin. Foods and drinks you need to reduce or eliminate include alcohol, sugar, and saturated fat. Coffee and tea should be limited to two cups a day.

Since the skin often mirrors the health of the whole body, eating a healthy diet provides you a healthy body and as an extra benefit, healthy skin.

Healthy Hair

Healthy hair depends on eating foods high in protein and certain vitamins and minerals. Inadequate protein intake over a lengthy period can force hair into the resting phase with shedding a few months later. Five amino acids are of particular relevance to hair growth - cystine, cysteine, methionine, arginine and lysine.

There a number of different specific hair vitamins and minerals that can play a major role in helping a person have a healthy head of hair. Vitamins necessary for healthy hair include vitamins A, B6, biotin, inositol, and folic acid. Minerals needed to good hair growth are magnesium, sulphur, silica and zinc.

Extra hair vitamins are likely to be needed if a person is generally unwell or is undernourished as their hair will show damage and may even stop growing. For example, brittle hair is an indication of iron deficiency while prolonged and severe hair loss can mean inefficient functioning of the liver or the thyroid.

Healthy Teeth

The health of your teeth and gums, the lack of plaque and debris, and the freshness of your breath can be a constant reminder of the status of your overall health. A healthy body generally means healthy teeth as well.

As with promoting healthy skin and healthy hair, eating healthy foods (such as lots of fresh fruits and vegetables) also helps encourage healthy teeth. These foods tend to help scrub the plaque off of our teeth before it can turn into tartar. It is tartar that can cause pockets in the gums where bacteria can take root and cause decay.

Vitamin C deficiencies can result in bleeding gums and loose teeth as well as mouth sores The Vitamin B complex is also essential to a healthy mouth as deficiencies can cause cracking and bleeding of the lips as well as open sores and lesions on both the inside and outside of the mouth.

Calcium is the super nutrient that keeps bones and teeth strong. Vitamin D is another important factor in keeping our teeth and bones healthy. Spending a total of about one hour each week in the sun will normally provide you all the vitamin D you need.

Besides causing other problems with our health, too much fluoride can cause permanent staining of our child’s teeth. It can also cause brain degeneration and certain cancers. So be very careful to rinse completely after brushing your teeth with fluoride toothpaste and after a fluoride treatment at the dentist.

Conclusion

Theres no way around it. The only way to have healthy skin, healthy hair and healthy teeth is to give your body the vitamins, minerals and protein it needs by heating a healthy and well-rounded diet.

Check out Medical Websites to find other ways a Healthy Diet can do amazing things for you. Everything from helping to prevent Acne to helpingyou fight off disease good Nutrition is essential to good health.