We all love and crave good skin!

There have been times when we all ran to our mother to ask her to help cover up that nasty pimple!

Raise your hand if your introduction to skin care was your mum’s kitchen.

From applying raw tomatoes and lemon juice on your face to making concoctions of orange peels and gram flour as a natural exfoliant, if you’ve grown up in an Indian household, you’ve seen it all. But even though we wrinkled our noses at our mothers’ effort to give us healthy skin, we now know that she really did know best.

In honour of our great kitchen warriors who also help fix every other aspect of our life, we’re revisiting the top 10 natural, home-grown ingredients that go into our skin care products to give us naturally glowing, healthy skin. 

Top 10 natural ingredients for healthy skin

Benefits of Ginger for the Skin

Ginger promotes warmth by increasing circulation and acts as an anti-inflammatory to soothe the skin. It also scavenges free radicals while reducing edema.

Benefits of Camphor for the Skin

Camphor is a cooling and antiseptic extract, which works well on sensitive skin, with firming and toning properties as well.

Benefits of Cucumber for the Skin

Cucumber has long been known for its cooling and hydration properties. It helps keep the skin smooth and refreshed, soothes irritated skin, helps provide deep hydration and acts as a cooling, healing agent for sensitised skin.

Benefits of Clove for the Skin

Clove is a regular Indian household ingredient that works for multiple concerns. Most commonly, it is known to be a homeopathic analgesic used to control pain and discomfort and also acts as an antiseptic.

Benefits of Sandalwood for the Skin

With soothing, healing properties, sandalwood is often used as an antiseptic oil, specifically effective for infections. For the skin, it works well to calm irritations and breakouts, and repair the skin.

Benefits of Eucalyptus for the Skin

Also known for its healing, antiseptic properties, eucalyptus is the liquid derived from the leaves of the Eucalyptus tree.

Benefits of Rose Flower Oil for the Skin

Rich in natural Vitamin C, rose flower oil moisturises and hydrates the skin. It also helps protect the skin from capillary damage, and firms and tones the tissues, giving you smooth, healthy skin.

Benefits of Licorice for the Skin

Licorice is a potent antioxidant that provides calming and soothing benefits to the skin, especially skin that is sensitised and prone to breakouts.

Benefits of Aloe Vera for the Skin

Aloe Barbadensis leaf juice, more commonly known as aloe vera, has soothing, softening and healing properties, and has been used in skin care since time immemorial.

Benefits of Coconut Oil for the Skin

Coconut oil has multiple benefits, whether topical or on consumption. For the skin, it acts as a rich, super conditioning agent that is lightweight and absorbs easily.

At Vivaan Skin Care, we respect mother nature as well as mother’s and nature! And hence, many of our products are based off these amazing naturally occurring ingredients that are great for your skin.

Adult Acne vs Teen Acne: all you need to know

Acne is no fun – at any age. But knowing how it arises in your teen vs. adult years can help you stay in the clear.

Teen acne

Teens typically break out on the face, chest and back. Such breakouts often arise because androgens, the “male” hormones that both guys and girls have, surge during adolescence, causing excess production of sebum (oil).

The good news is that teens have faster cell turnover and more resilient skin than adults, which means they recover faster from breakouts. After the teenage years, acne tends to improve because teen hormonal changes have leveled off and no longer fuel breakouts.

How to Treat Teen Acne

• Focus on learning and maintaining good skin care habits because you will be more prone to acne in the future.
• Avoid products that contain harsh, inexpensive and comedogenic (pore-clogging) ingredients. Stripping ingredients such as Alcohol – commonly found in astringent toners – can cause skin to produce more oil, fueling even more breakouts. Artificial fragrances and colors can also further irritate breakout-prone skin.
• Look for ingredients like Salicylic Acid and Benzoyl Peroxide to keep dead skin cells and bacteria from accumulating.
• Moisturize daily – even if your skin seems oily (use an oil-free moisturizer) – to help balance sebum production.

Adult acne

Thought you could outgrow acne? If only. Chronic stress and the varied hormonal changes of adulthood can throw adrenal glands into overdrive, which in turn can boost sebum production, setting the stage for acne development.

Adults also tend to have more inflammatory acne, with lesions predominantly located around the mouth, chin and jaw line. Treating adult acne can be challenging because adults also tend to face skin dryness, sensitivity and signs of aging.

How to Treat Teen Acne

• Focus on spot treatment and balancing the skin, as well as making sure your other skin care needs are met.
• Avoid “picking” or “squeezing” breakouts at home, which can result in more breakouts, scarring or redness. Instead, see a professional skin therapist for an extraction.
• Skin can lose its ability to retain moisture with age. Avoid over-drying skin by choosing products that contain non-drying ingredients such as Salicylic Acid or Glycolic Acid to help remove dead skin cells, excess oil and dirt, as well as Colloidal Silver to control bacteria.
• If you’re combatting signs of skin aging, Retinol – a wrinkle-smoothing ingredient – can also work well to help prevent acne breakouts.

Need More Advice?

Visit a Dermatologist near you for professional advice on what might be causing your breakouts and how to achieve clear skin.