As temps drop, follow these tips for healthy skin

By: Daphne Becker

As fall sets in, you swap your Icee for pumpkin spice and your swim suits for sweats, but there might be something else you need to change that never occurred to you before. Your skincare routine.

Iowa weather changes rapidly, and when the weather changes, so should your skin routine.

Oil Cleansers

I can hear all the self proclaimed beauty gurus crying as I type this, but it’s actually not bad as many people may think. Normal cleansers strip all oil and dirt off your face, which in theory sounds like a good thing, but the problem with this is that it strips both the bad and the good oils.

An oil cleanser only strips off the bad oils and dirt, leaving some good oils behind so your face feels smooth and moisturized after being washed.

If you naturally have an oilier complexion, I would recommend only doing this in the morning and leave the evening for your more intensive skin routine. But for people with dry , combination or normal skin, I would suggest trying this more full time.

This would probably be more on the expensive side because most products are around $20 or more, but there are DIY versions of this that you can check out that would be a less expensive way to help your skin. The only warning I will give to people who try DIY is to really look up the products you put on your face because you want to be careful with what chemicals you are mixing and the repercussions that come with them.

SPF

Just because it isn’t summer anymore doesn’t mean you should pack up your sunscreen for the year. Wearing sun protectant is a year-long battle to help protect your skin.

Personally, my favorite reminder of this is from the show iCarly when Freddy’s mom made sure he was wearing his cloud burn screen to protect him from the light that shines through the clouds.

While the show tried to play this off as a joke, it actually is something we should all do. Just because you can’t see the sun doesn’t mean it isn’t affecting you.

A good way for just a little SPF would be wearing moisturizers during the day that have SPF already inside them. These can be found in almost any drugstore at low prices, and then it turns what normally would be two steps into one.

Moisturizers

In general you need these all year round, so I don’t want to waste a lot of time here. If you haven’t caught my theme already, in the fall we all need to work harder to keep our skin moisturized in the cold, dry weather. The easiest way would be to use moisturizer at least twice a day. I would say use more if you are somebody who has dry skin and doesn’t wear makeup.

Personally, I would recommend having two different moisturizers, one for the morning and one for the evening, but I understand that sometimes this can be unattainable for some people. The moisturizer in the morning can be a lighter formula and should have SPF in it to protect you, but in the evening go for a heavy formula with lots of vitamins to replenish your skin as you sleep. Also, obviously, SPF is useless while you are sleeping, so you can stay away from those if you want.

Serums

This is probably the most unnecessary thing I am going to put on this page, but it is something that I personally feel really is a my skin savior. Skin serums can come for a variety of  different skin needs at a variety of different prices. Some are $10 and under, and some are as expensive as my car, but if you have the money and are willing to invest, I definitely suggest this.

Water

I am going to sound like the biggest hypocrite in the world because this is something that I have a problem with, but water can really help with problematic skin. Drinking the recommended amount of water a day can help flush toxins out of your system and keep you healthy and your skin clear.

Now, because I know this might seem far fetched to some of you who can’t stand to drink that much water, try this: every time you drink one thing, before you can drink anything else, you have to have one glass of water in between. That way if you normally drink 10 sodas in one day, you have to drink 10 glasses of water. Now I don’t know anybody who can drink that much in a day, so your soda intake will go down, which is good for you, and your water intake will go up.

Pumpkin Spice

Not necessarily just pumpkin spice but almost all fall-themed foods have the tendency of not being very great for you. That combined with there is something about fall that makes you want to have 300 blankets and cuddle up in bed and never leave your house usually means some type of weight gain. Well, unless you are someone with a high metabolism and can basically eat anything with no worries, the excess fats in your body and the lack of activity usually leads to hormone levels changing. As teens, our hormones aren’t known for being the greatest anyways. Why up the ante with extra baggage?

Now I’m no fitness buff, and, honestly, I couldn’t care less if you are 130 pounds or 300 pounds, but by balancing out what you eat with what you can do, you can help level out your hormones and in turn make the face demons a little less wild.