New Year Resolution #3: Healthy skin
Maybe I am a little behind on this important piece of beauty advice, but sunblock is the #1 defensive measure against aging. I just thought it was good for preventing skin cancer, though that reason alone makes it important. But apparently it should be applied everyday and during every season - as much of our daily routine as flossing. So today I did a little research and got some Neutrogena sunblock. Of course I could have also gone to Sephora and invested in something very fabulous there, but I figured I need to start getting used to the frugal lifestyle of a med student, and med students do not have $40 to spare on a small tube of sunblock. That’s like, 2 weeks of groceries, or 1/4 of a textbook.
Jokes aside, this sunblock really is well-reviewed: free of fragrance, oil, and yucky chemicals, and supposedly blends well with skin, moisturizer, and make-up. Did you know that SPF only protects us from UVB, but not from UVA, which doesn’t burn us, but gives us wrinkles? In addition to a high SPF, you want a sunscreen that has zinc and titanium in its list of ingredients, which would protect against those evil UVAs!
Speaking of ingredients in skincare products, I want to share another resource that I feel like every girl should know. EWG (Environmental Working Group) has this dandy database called Skin Deep that evaluates and rates the toxicity of cosmetics based on their chemical ingredients. I became instantly obsessed when I discovered this. I looked up all my products and was appalled by how toxic some of them were. Of the brands that I use, I found that Boscia is one of the least toxic, and the Yes To Carrots line is awesome (love their face scrub!). I was disappointed to find that Clinique, the brand I trust for simple goodness, contains Paraben, which has a bad rep in the world of cosmetics for disrupting hormones. When I looked into it a bit more, it’s questionable how harmful Paraben actually is, especially in such trace amounts, though it is known to preserve your product, keeping away harmful microbes. And super natural products, while containing less ‘toxins,’ can often be less effective and smell horrible. So we have to ask ourselves what’s important and whether it is worthwhile to get caught up on the details.
I think the bigger lesson I took away from all this is that less is more. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t slab on layers of creams you might not need because nothing in excess is ever good. More than anything, our skin would probably just like to be kept hydrated and left alone, able to breathe. With that being said, I will still check Skin Deep for future purchases so I can stay away from the red-flag products. Also, I appreciate this wallet-size list of no-no ingredients put together by the website that you can take with you while shopping. It’s simple enough but your skin might just be thankful. :)




