But I do promise, great skin can happen for everyone. I've been sitting in a class room for the 18th day this year. Today was all about my new Derma CIT pen, but as always, the day starts with some Biology. I sat in the class with some people who I admire, and are REALLY into skin. Like, I thought I knew skin, but these guys are on a completely different level to me. I know skin is made of cells called keratinocytes. Pretty cool word hey? THEY know there are 50 different types of keratinocyte and what each does. Bah bow Kristen. But I'm always learning....
Anyway, it got me thinking about how we're desperate for instant gratification - for everything. How we'd prefer to take a pill than adjust our lifestyle. We're always looking for the fastest solution. Well sadly, things don't often work like that, which can be frustrating. So, just like one PT session won't create your Summer body, your skin doesn't transform overnight. Let me explain, gently.
In a healthy, sub-20 year old skin, skin cells take about 28 days to reach the surface and fall off as a flake. That's a non-smoking, fit, active, balanced eating, 9 hours of sleep a night, stress-free, right-product-using healthy individual. Got it? Then as we get older, it slows down. So a 40 year old skin could be a 40 day cycle, a 50 year old a 50 day cycle and so on (as a guide). Again, we are talking about healthy skins.
If you are unwell, take medications, smoke, expose your skin to UV light, drink, don't drink enough water, don't sleep well, are highly strung, stressed.....and the list goes on, then the amount of time it takes for your skin cells to go through their cycle, increases again. Why do we care? Because it impacts how long the changes we DO make, take to come into effect.
Say you start a new skin care regime and your skin is taking 50 days in it's cycle. It could possibly take 50 days before you start seeing the changes on your skin. Or if you start taking some supplements and introducing a green smoothie? Again, 50 plus days before you see changes. And by then, you're sure nothing's even happening, so have pushed the regime to the back of the cupboard. Waste of money, loss of faith in therapist and skincare range and your skin is the same as before you started. Lose-lose all round.
I don't bang on about how much water you drink, how much you move your body and your nutrition and sleep patterns for any other reason than they directly affect your health and skin. Here is a REALLY cool vid that puts it all into perspective. Our cells perform 500 quadrillion chemical reactions a second and all they ask of us, is that we take care of ourselves. Fair call. But I know we can't all be angels. Life happens. I'm not one - for those of you that know me, know I have a pretty tumultuous relationship with chocolate. That word again, balance. I think the most important thing is that we never stop trying, that we are always learning, even if we fail. All good things take time.

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