Welcome to The Holistic Skin Guru, where what's on the surface is

just as important as what's underneath. I'm your host, Aamena.

Let's dive deep into the world of holistic skincare. Hi

guys, and welcome to our podcast. Today, I'm

going to be speaking about simple skincare, something

that we don't hear often about because we've been sold this idea

that we need to use 10,000 products to be able to look amazing. But

before I talk about the products itself, I want to set up

the background to the skincare industry, so all

of this makes sense to you. You see, we have what's called the

cosmetic industry and the cosmeceutical industry. And

the two don't work hand in hand because

the cosmetic industry is run by large

corporations whose interests are only in

making profits on selling products, while

cosmeceutical companies are usually professional

companies that are manufacturing products for

a professional skincare environment like clinics and salons

and they spend a lot of money in research and development to

give you a product that actually does what it says that it

does as opposed to the cosmetic industry where

it's basically a promise in a jar. And

for us in the cosmocytical space, we are forever hitting

our heads against a brick wall because this giant

industry has such a huge marketing arm.

and spends so much money, billions and billions of dollars

on marketing every year, putting ads on television and

onto billboards and newspapers and even online, convincing

you to buy their products because they will do XYZ

and promising you all sorts of things and then you buy the product

and you might only spend $30 or $40 and in some cases even more and

it does nothing because the active ingredients in those

products are so minimal. They might say that they've got

hyaluronic acid in them or elastin or

Q10 or whatever, but these ingredients are

so minimal and then they masked by all of these

other synthetic ingredients that just take away from

what they say they're going to do, while a cosmeceutical product

is usually made up and composed of

ingredients that actually are actively working to change

the skin or do something within the skin, whether it's hydration or

anything like that. So that's the first thing, the cosmeceutical companies

and the cosmetic companies. So when you're coming into a clinic, when

you're coming into a salon, you are going to be presented with a

cosmeceutical product and cosmeceutical products is

what you want to be using. You don't want to be using

the cosmetic brands. They are not in the best interest

of your skin. So this brings me

to one of my favorite topics which is skincare. Within

skincare there are so many products like we've got cleansers and

we hear people speaking about toners and eye creams and

moisture protectants, SPF, serums,

retinols, there's so much that's part of

the skincare industry or skincare in

general, it sometimes makes it difficult to

see the trees from the forest. So I'm

going to start breaking this down for you now. What we need

to do is keep it really simple. My ethos in

my salon, the way I train my staff and the way I explain things

to my clients is that you need to do three

things and they are Keep it clean, keep it

hydrated and keep it out of the sun. If you're following those three

rules, everything else that's going on with your skin, we can

generally treat in salon or help you treat with

a home care regimen. So what does that mean? You need a

good cleanser to keep it clean, something that's not going to

strip or compromise the barrier function of

your skin. And something that's suited to your skin

type, whether you are on the dry side, you're

slightly aging, so you've got a drier skin, or you

are genetically predisposed to having an oilier complexion, you

need the right cleanser for your skin type.

So that's the first thing to correct is your cleanser because nine times

out of ten everybody's problem is their cleanser because

so many people are using cleansers that are laced with sulfates

and you've heard me talk about sulfates and how damaging they are

so we want to get you off those cleansers and get you onto

something that's more gentle, that's going to be keeping

the pH balance in check and just cleansing the

skin and doing its job beautifully. So that's the first thing, cleansers. The

second thing is to keep it hydrated. So

as we age, our skin starts to deplete in

its hydration and the number one factor

for aging is dehydration. So when our skin starts

to dehydrate, it starts to get crepey. And then

that crepeyness starts to present

as fine lines. And if we leave that untreated, we end

up with deeper lines and deeper lines. And then it's harder for us

to come back from that. We need to do more expensive treatments and

more treatments that are quite full on

to get us to see some results. So don't let

yourself get to that point. Start treating the crepiness when

you start to see it. You've got any type of dehydration, make

sure you grab a hyaluronic acid straight away because

that serum is gonna really help draw those water lipids

in and hydrate the skin beautifully. So keep

your skin hydrated for that reason. And then obviously the

next mantra that I always have is to keep it out

of the sun. And the reason for this is that

the skin ages us very, very quickly and

we need to protect our skin from the sun. I'm not saying

that you should never go out in the sun because we need vitamin D as

well to keep ourselves healthy. But when it comes to

our faces, we know that we can damage our skin with photo damage

is one of the biggest concerns that we have with

our client base. And that is also very expensive to

treat. So if you can start using sunscreens that

are organic and are physical blockers, and

I'll do a whole podcast on this, I promise to

explain the difference between a chemical blocker and a

physical blocker, but we want SPFs or

sunscreens that are gentle yet effective from

bouncing those UV rays off our skin, so we can protect our

skin from pigmentation and any

dark spots or sunspots that may form. So,

what are the take-homes from this? The take-homes are that we

need to keep our skin clean, hydrated, and

out of the sun. Now I'm going to talk to you about two

products that I believe do not belong in

your home, in your bathroom or

on the shelf really. And those two products are

my pet peeves, under eye cream and toners.

So in the 1970s or 80s, somewhere around there, don't

quote me on that, we had these large cosmetic companies

producing cleansers. and they were using

lots and lots of lovely sulfates. And what they

found was that people were having trouble washing

these ingredients off their skin. So in

order to get the sulfates and

these nasty ingredients off your skin, they invented toners.

Toners have obviously evolved over time. So some

products will have toners that are doing something else. So please

don't come at me. I'm just talking about traditionally what

toners used to do and why they were invented.

And the reason they were invented was to get the

residue of the cleanser off the skin. So a totally useless

product. Usually when you see toners in a

skincare range, and I'm not talking about a clinical range, I'm talking about a

cosmetic range, when you see a toner in that range, that

is your indicator that the cleanser

contains a high level of sulfates. And

that's why they've got that toner sitting there. So that's one product

that's just knock it off the shelf, fix your cleanser, get

rid of the toner, and then you've just got one product that's

gonna be washing completely off your skin just

with water, okay? The other pet

peeve is eye creams. Now, I know

a lot of you love your eye creams and that's fine. You can continue

to use it if you've got a good one. I have no issues with that. But

understand why eye creams were invented

so that you can make an informed decision when

you're switching to a new brand. So basically moisturizers

were manufactured like from the 1930s.

Women started, especially in Europe, in Paris, they were starting

to use moisture protectants on their skin to

protect their skin. And as

the large corporations and big companies picked up on this, they

started to mass produce moisturizers or moisture

protectants or moisture lotions. And as

they went through this mass production of these products, they

were not concentrating on the molecular

structure of these creams. They were more interested in

cutting their costs and making big profits. And so what

happened was they were pumping out these products that

were quite clogging to the under eye area

because we all know that the under eye area is a very

refined area of the skin. It's more refined than

other areas in our face. And for this reason,

people were getting clogged up under their eye area. And

all they needed to do was just provide a moisture protectant that

was more refined, that had ingredients that were more refined, that could

be taken in that area under your eye. And

instead of doing that, the marketers decided, let's come

up with a whole new moisture protectant just for the under

eye area, and we'll call it an eye cream. And so that

was the birth of the eye cream, and we have been programmed and

conditioned to think that this is part of our skincare regime. But

I'm here to tell you that there are enough products on the market, including

the one behind me, where our products are so

refined because they are organic and they

are clinical and they are prescriptive. You do not

need an under eye cream specifically, so you

can knock that product off your shelf, and that's one less product

to buy. So what have you got left with? You've got your cleanser, you've

got your serum based on your skin condition, you've

got your moisture protectant, and

you've got your SPF. These are your basics that

you need in your toolkit. And this is gonna save you

a lot of money because when you correct your skincare, your

skin starts to glow, you start to fix the

pH balance in your skin, you improve your hydration, so

your skin just starts looking and glowing and shining and

looking beautiful. You won't need as much makeup, so you'll save

money on that. So it's a very good idea for you to start thinking about

how your decisions about what products you

put on your skin is actually costing you money and

move forward in a way that's happy for your budget and

happy for your wallet. I hope I've given you something to think about when

it comes to a simple skincare regime, and

I'd love to catch you on our next podcast. But in the meantime, leave

your comments below. Give us a five-star rating on Apple

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