Skin herbs - Peppermint

Peppermint is thought to restore elasticity, tone your skin, minimize pores, and reduce swelling and redness. While peppermint is used topically because it cools, refreshes, stimulates, and revitalizes, it's just as beneficial when taken internally, where its many nutrients energize your skin from the inside out.

Peppermint contains manganese, vitamins A and C, fight the damaging effects of inflammation that you notice in the skin as redness. For this reason, peppermint reduces swelling and thereby improves the skin's complexion.

If you are looking for a refreshing way to jazz up your green tea, look no further. The green tea in this tasty drink increases the skin's elasticity and contains the powerful antioxidant EGCG, which prevents inflammation that causes puffy, red, and wrinkled skin.

Iced Minted Green Tea

Ingredients

200 g sugar (see note)

235 ml water 

1 bunch fresh mint 

950 ml boiling water

5 green tea bags 

Additional mint for garnish, optional

1. To prepare the sugar syrup, combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring as the sugar dissolves. Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes, then remove the pan from the heat.

2. Rinse and dry the mint. Gather the mint sprigs in your hand and crush and bruise them. Add the mint to the syrup, and let the mixture cool to room temperature. Strain through a sieve to remove the mint and pour the syrup into a jar or bottle. Discard the mint.

3. To make the iced tea, place the tea bags in a large pot or pitcher. Cover with the boiling water and let them steep for 4 or 5 minutes.

4. Remove the tea bags and let the tea cool to room temperature.

5. To serve, add enough of the mint syrup to sweeten and flavor the tea to your taste. (Leftover simple syrup can be stored at room temperature indefinitely and used to sweeten cold or iced drinks.) Pour the tea over ice cubes in large glasses and garnish with a leaf or two of fresh mint, if desired.

Yield: 4 servings

Note: In place of sugar, use stevia or honey to sweeten the tea - your skin will thank you for it. Stevia and honey are much sweeter than sugar, so you'll need less. Use about half as much honey as you would sugar, or just a few teaspoons of stevia.

Recipe adapted from Feed your skin, starve your wrinkles : eat your way to firmer, more beautiful skin with the 100 best anti-aging foods / Allison Tannis

Skin food - Onions

Onions may bring a tear to your eye and pungency to your breath, but they will also bring beauty to your skin. They contain vitamin C and quercetin, great antioxidants that can protect your skin from the wrinkle-forming damage caused by free radicals, which form in the presence of inflammation and sunlight.

Acne Warriors
There is yet another way that onions support beautiful skin. In one cup (160 g) of onions, you get 20 percent of your recommended daily intake of chronium, which is important in the battle against acne. Chronium helps to reduce skin bacterial infections and thus helps battle acne.

Avocado, Grapefruit, Pomegranate, and Red Onion Salad

This delightful, fruity salad is bursting with flavor and nutrients to help your skin look its best. Avocados moisturize, grapefruit fights acne and psoriasis, onions prevent wrinkles, and pomegranate rids your skin of redness and puffiness. This perfect lunch or light dinner will awaken your taste buds and enhance your skin.  

Ingredients:
1 pomegranate
2 medium or 1 large grapefruit (pink or red)
1 ripe Haas avocado
90 g baby spinach leaves, well-rinsed and dried
1/2 red onion, peeled, sliced thin and separated into rings

1. Cut the pomegranate in half, pull back the tough outer peel, and pull out the segments of seeds. Continue cutting as necessary to expose all the seeds. Break the seeds up and remove any membrane. Set seeds aside in a small bowl.

2. Peel the grapefruit by cutting away the skin and pith. Cut the grapefruit into slices or sections. Set aside in a medium bowl.

3. Peel the avocado and remove the pit. Cut the avocado into 1.25 cm slices and fold them into grapefruit (the juice from the grapefruit will help keep the avocado from turning brown).

4. Divide spinach among four plates; top each with the avocado and grapefruit mixture, then with  rings of red onion and pomegranate seeds.

Yield: 4 servings

*Note: If you have trouble removing the seeds from your pomegranate, try this easy trick. Cut off the crown of the pomegranate and slice the fruit into sections. Place the sections in a bowl of water and gently roll out the seeds with your fingers. The seeds will sink to the bottom and the membrane will float to the top.

Nutritional analysis
Each serving provides: 55 calories; 0.3 g total fat; 0 g saturated fat; 2 g proteins; 13 g carbohydrate; 2 g dietary fiber; 0 mg cholesterol.

Review: Clinique's anti-blemish solutions clinical clearing gel

I have been using this since March 8 2015 till now. Half the bottle (15 ml) was already used by me. It's my first time using Clinique anti-blemish products and I have to say, this works so much better than Neo-Medrol! 

I have been using Neo-Medrol for a few years and gone through many bottles because I had too many huge acne. But it never dries the pimple fast enough. This clearing gel works faster and it doesn't dry the pimple so I didn't have dry patches of skin on my pimple. My acne after using this clearing gel are less inflamed within a night or two, considering I only use it on a nightly basis. (I just don't have the habit of applying acne-only gel/cream in the day. In its place, I use sunblock.) 

And it won't leave color on your face!

I apply this gel on red bumps (immature acne) and normally it heals even before it becomes developed. But on some cases, those acne are persistent! So, even if I diligently apply the gel on them every night, it still develops FULLY. It takes around 2.5 weeks (nightly application) to reduce the acne to a flat brown pigmentation (blemish) on the face.

Skin fruits - Acai

Fruit is an important part of every healthy diet. Because fruit is packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other phytonutrients that are beneficial to your skin, it is a vital part of a diet geared toward vibrant skin.

Acai

Perhaps the best wrinkle-fighting food on earth is acai, a berry. Acai has one of the highest ORAC (antioxidant) values on earth, making it a true superfood. What's more, scientists have discovered that the antioxidants in acai may be slow-acting, meaning that they have a lasting effect in the body and can help your skin ward off wrinkle-causing free radicals for hours after you eat.

This power-packed fruit is capable of fighting free radicals, and with its anti-inflammatory abilities, it attacks another significant cause of wrinkles as well. Look for acai products that are as pure as possible, since added sugar and preservatives can limit the health benefits of this unusual fruit.

Tropical Fruit Smoothie:

Yield: 1 serving

Ingredients
38 g fresh berries (raspberries, blueberries, or blackberries)
45 g diced mango
40 g diced melon
59 ml pomegranate
30 ml acai juice or 15 ml acai pulp
14 g flaxseed meal or 15 ml flaxseed oil
Ice cubes, optional

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and blend until very creamy and smooth. (If you prefer a chunkier smoothie, blend for a shorter time. If you prefer a frostier smoothie, include the ice cubes.) Pour into a glass and serve immediately.

Nutritional analysis
Each serving provides: 238 calories; 14 g total fat; 1.5 g saturated fat; 1 g protein; 30 g carbohydrate; 3 g dietary fiber; 0 mg cholesterol

Recipe adapted from Feed your skin, starve your wrinkles : eat your way to firmer, more beautiful skin with the 100 best anti-aging foods / Allison Tannis

What's food got to do with beautiful skin?

The result of our ceaseless desire for smooth, soft, glowing skin has led to an explosion of anti-aging surgeries and cosmetics products on the market. But do you really need to go under the knife or pay hundreds of dollars for special products? Or, can food rescue your skin in the same way and help its natural beauty shine through?

The answer is YES, IT CAN! Not only that, changing your diet to include foods that support healthy skin is easier and much more cost-effective than any other method out there. I'm sure many of you out there already know such a simple fact but have never committed to such a change. Even though you know that all these actions would benefit you- that they could bring pleasure to your life- you fail to act simply because in that moment you associate more pain to doing what's necessary than missing the opportunity.

"I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures." - MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

No matter your age, eating foods to support your skin is important. Teenagers are commonly scolded for their dietary habits- with fast-food and chocolate frequently at blame for their problems with acne- yet adults actually have a greater need for skin nutrients than do adolescents. The body changes and becomes less able to digest and absorb nutrients as you age, and the result is that fewer skin-healthy nutrients from the foods you eat actually reach your skin. This means that the foods you eat need to have a greater concentration of skin-beautifying nutrients.

So, let's start with WRINKLE PREVENTERS

Healthy collagen levels give skin a smooth, plump, young, healthy appearance. So, provide the skin with vitamin C, an important cofactor required to convert collagen subunits into active collagen proteins. Because Vit C is water-soluble, it cannot build up in the body and form reserves, so consuming Vit C- rich foods frequently is important to ensure that your skin can make collagen.

As we age, elastin production decreases and this can cause the skin to lose its firmness. Because iron has been linked with increased elastin production, eating iron-rich foods like spinach and dried fruits may be the best option for boosting the amount of elastin produced in your skin.