Tips to keep your skin looking its best this Summer

At this time of year, everyone wants to look their best, with healthy, glowing skin.

It is important that you take care of it, particularly during the summer, when the sun’s rays can cause severe damage. According to the National Institute on Aging, sunlight is a significant cause of wrinkles, dryness, and aging skin. This requires blocking harmful rays to prevent overexposure to the sun. A word of caution, sun rays can penetrate clouds, mist, and fog, causing harm that can accumulate over time.

This summer if you’re at the pool, on the golf course, playing tennis, or having a backyard picnic, we identified some tips on how you can protect yourself from the sun’s harmful rays and slow down the aging process.

We also identified ways you can preserve your collagen and even boost its production by the foods you eat. We list a few of these foods that are great sources for summer skin defense. We wrap up our recommended tips, by identifying some cosmetic treatments that won’t get in the way of your beach time, while also repairing and refreshing your skin to keep it looking it’s very best this summer.

Avoid Burning:

The first of our summer skin care tips is to keep your skin protected from the sun – here are a few of our suggestions. To begin, apply sunscreen to your skin every day. Dermatologists recommend wearing SPF-30-50 sun protection to slow down the aging process and maintain your skin’s health over time.

Sunscreen

Don’t be fooled. A broad-spectrum sunscreen of SPF 30 to 50 is sufficient protection, but you should never go more than two hours without reapplying, especially if you’ve been swimming or working up a sweat while exercising.

An interesting fact, beginning in 2012, the FDA issued new rules regulating sunscreen labels, stating that they could no longer be labeled “waterproof” and must now be labeled “water resistant,” claiming there is no such thing as a completely waterproof sunscreen.

Sun-protective clothing

Equally important as sunscreen, is one of the simplest ways to stay safe and unlike sunscreen, it never needs to be reapplied! The UV Protection Factor (UPF) is a calculation of how much UV radiation a fabric lets through. A UPF 50 shirt or hat, for example, blocks 98 percent of the sun’s rays while allowing just two percent to pass through. Keep protective clothing top of mind to help reduce the sun’s harmful rays.

The Food You Eat:

Our second tip is about the foods you eat. Consider making the skin’s defenses stronger from the inside out. A healthy diet maintains your skin’s ability to protect itself against the aging effects of free radicals. Diets low in inflammation will also help you age more slowly. At the same time strengthening the skin’s resistance to sunburn.

We identified these foods as excellent sources of summer skin defense.

• Eggs are rich in zinc, which is important for healthy skin, it also controls the oil production in the skin.
• Strawberries are packed full of Vitamin C which keeps your skin revitalized, vitamin C can also be found in broccoli and oranges too.
• Tomatoes are an excellent source for helping prevent premature fine lines and wrinkles because they contain lycopene, which can help protect the skin from sun damage.
• Food sources high in collagen include fish, chicken egg whites, berries, and red and yellow vegetables.

H20 – The Water You Drink:

Staying hydrated is our third tip. Hydration is important in any weather, but it is especially important in hot and humid weather because we lose a lot of body fluid through sweat. Low-calorie sports drinks, coconut water, or plain old water are good options to replenish sodium and potassium.

Summer heat will dehydrate you by 48-64 ounces per hour, by sweating. Drinking 125 ounces of fluids for men and 91 ounces of fluids for women each day is needed to replenish lost water. Chronic dehydration, according to Harvard Medical School, can cause headaches, loss of concentration, muscle cramps, and dry skin. This summer, be sure to stay fully hydrated by drinking enough water.

Cosmetic Treatments – Options that Won’t Cut Into Your Beach Time:

Cosmetic treatments our fourth tip, will leave you looking refreshed and revitalized while allowing you to spend more time at the beach. Collagen and elastin fibers break down as a result of photoaging, causing the skin to lose flexibility and become thinner, accelerating fine lines and wrinkles. If you want to learn more about what can be done to restore a younger, more refreshed consult a dermatologist to decide the best treatment option.

Unlike some cosmetic procedures, we found the following three had no negative effects when exposed to the sun during the summer.

Dermal Fillers – dermal fillers when exposed to sun do not have any effect on the treatment. These popular products help to increase volume while reducing fine lines. Radiesse, Juvederm, and Restylane are some of the most widely used dermal filler brands. You can resume your summer activities right away because dermal filler procedures are simple and don’t require any downtime.

Botox -Botox, a brand name for the generic medication botulinum toxin, is another choice for wrinkle reduction along with the brand Dysport they both work by paralyzing facial muscles for a short period of time. There is no downtime for this treatment, and it is unaffected by the sun.

Looking for a Bit More Impact?

Sofwave™ is one of the newest non-invasive wrinkle treatments, and it’s a good choice if you want something that revitalizes your face like  Botox or fillers, but without the needles, lasts and continues to improve over time. A Sofwave™ treatment uses ultrasound energy to remodel collagen, your fine lines and wrinkles can greatly improve, giving you a younger look. Sofwave is a non-invasive procedure, it’s perfect for those who don’t want to undergo surgery and who want a fast 30-45 minute treatment that won’t interfere with their beach time.

So, there you have it – We hope you’ve learned something new and find some of these skin care tips helpful as you tweak your skincare products and regiment summer ready.