5 Common Skin Care Mistakes That Are Harming Your Face (and Your Health!)

As your largest and heaviest organ, your skin speaks volumes about your health. When you don’t care for your skin properly, everyone can see it. It not only looks bad, but some skin care mistakes could actually really hurt your health. We’re talking serious stuff: not just dark circles and uneven skin tone, but poor skin care can actually result in chronic diseases.

Read on. Here are five of the most common skin care mistakes that could be doing more than wreaking havoc on your complexion.

You Sleep With Makeup On

For the love of foaming cleanser, wash the makeup off your face before you go to bed. Not only will this prevent your pillow case from being stained with mascara and foundation, but it will also help keep your skin looking younger. When you sleep is when your cells rejuvenate, and they can’t do this properly with cosmetics on your visage. The result is tired looking skin. Older looking skin. Dull looking skin. It takes precious little time and a good cleanser to wash your face. So do it!

You Don’t Drink Enough Water

You need to drink at least 2L of water a day — more if you exercise intensely, live at a higher altitude or hot climate or are pregnant or nursing. Water nourishes and hydrates every cell in your body, including the skin on your face. Proper hydration is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get more moisturised, healthier and younger looking skin.

You Don’t Tone

Toner is the unsung hero of skin care. It removes deep dirt and oil, while also removing cosmetics your cleanser may have missed. Toner will also shrink your pores, reduce the amount of ingrown hairs thanks to its ability to exfoliate and it restores your skins pH balance, thus better preparing it to absorb moisturiser.

You Drink Too Much Alcohol

Sorry party people: even drinking a glass of wine a couple times a week has been shown to drastically increase the risk of getting some types of cancer  — and the risk is greater for women. If that wasn’t bad enough, drinking alcohol has also been shown to reduce collagen stores. Collagen, which is the major structural protein found in skin, already diminishes with age, and when you compound that deterioration with boozing, you’re left with sagging, wrinkled and tired looking skin. Aging is going to happen no matter what, but you don’t have to accelerate the process.

Another collagen reducing age-accelerator? Smoking and UV exposure…and speaking of which…

You Don’t Wear Sunscreen

We need the vitamin D from sunshine to increase our immunities and bolster our spirits, but we don’t need to bake ourselves in the sun. If you’re going to be outside for more than a few minutes, slap on some sunscreen. Not only will this protect against skin cancer caused by UV damage, but it will preserve more of your body’s collagen stores, resulting in healthier, more even, firmer looking skin.

You won’t have youth on your side forever, gals. Your best defense is a good offense. Start caring for your precious epidermis now. Avoid these common skin care mistakes. Buy quality cosmetics and skin care brands that care for your skin from the inside, out (like The Beauty Chef from ActiveSkin). Growing old is a privilege, and some fine lines and wrinkles are unavoidable, but you don’t need to enter your more mature years looking like you’ve already been there for a decade or two. Take your skin care seriously, and treat it as the extension of your overall health care — cause it is!