What In The World Is A Skin Exposome, And Why Should I Care?

What In The Heck Does Exposome Mean?

Exposome: The totality of exposures both internal and external from your conception to death and the impact they have on your body.

In today’s busy world, life can be complex. These complexities expose you to many stressors both internally and externally that play an adverse role in your body’s and your skin’s aging process. The study of exposome helps us understand how these factors encourage premature aging and how we can combat the effects. Let’s dive into some common exposomes that we all face daily.

Sleep or lack thereof:Do you get 7-8 hours of sleep nightly? If not, then you are gravely affecting your body’s rejuvenation processes. Our cells naturally restore and repair while we sleep. You can enhance this in the skin by using skincare products with ingredients like peptides, niacinamide and retinaldehyde vitamin to encourage skin healing and collagen building. Lack of sleep and lack of skincare support will leave you waking up looking tired, puffy with dull skin.

Here are some tips for good sleep hygiene:

• Set a consistent bed time and waking time to ensure at least 7 hours of sleep
• Sleep in a cool room
• Sleep in complete darkness. Any amount of light, even a small light on a device will interrupt the healing production of melatonin
• Leave your phone and other WiFi devices outside of the room or at least on airplane mode. These devices emit dangerous EMF radiation waves that damage cells
• Do your nighttime skin routine consistently by using our Mikel Kristi Vital A Rejuvenating Serum and our Bio Peptide Revitalizing Serum. 

Dehydration: I am constantly surprised by the lack of hydration most adults have. Using a scale to monitor hydration, you should be greater than 50% hydration. Most of my adult patients present with less than 35% hydration.

Our skin is 60% water content so if you are not hydrating it then it is going to look less than ideal.

Dry skin is a common complaint so an easy step to combat this is to drink more water.

Tips for hydration:

• As a rule of thumb, aim for 50-100% of your body weight in water daily. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, then consume 75-150 oz of water daily.
• Add electroytes like Nuun or lemon for added hydration and flavor.
• In addition, use skin hydrating ingredients like prickly pear extract, sodium hyaluronate, hyaluronic acid and retinaldehyde vitamin A to enhance your skin’s ability to produce and attract more moisture.
• Try our Vital C Rapair Serum, Vital A Rejuvenating Serum, and C Radiance Moisturizer for all of these ingredients and more. 

Stress:Living in this busy world can create a lot of stress. Stress creates elevated levels of cortisol hormones which causes inflammation in the body. Inflammation leads to increased collagen breakdown and exacerbation of skin conditions like acne, rosacea and eczema.

Tips to minimize stress:

• Don’t overbook yourself to avoid overwhelm and rushing. Schedule your day in advance to provide adequate time to complete tasks.
• Practice breathing techniques to stimulate the vagus nerve and your parasympathetic nervous system to relax and lower blood pressure. Try box breathing twice a day: Take deep breath in for 5 seconds, hold breath for 5 seconds, exhale for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds and repeat x 10 times. 

UV exposure and Pollution: The sun and environmental pollution are amongst the worst exposomes for premature aging. These stressors cause unsightly skin changes like chronic redness, broken blood vessels, dry skin, wrinkles, large pores, brown spots, saggy skin and skin cancer. If healthy, beautiful skin is your goal then protection is a must.

Tips for protection:

• Wear SPF with zinc oxide every day, even when it’s raining or cloudy.
• Wear UPF protective clothing for outdoor activities.
• Take oral Vitamin D3 supplementation as directed by your medical provider
• Apply skincare products with ingredients that help protect from UV and free radical damage. Ingredients like red algae extract, prickly pear extract, niacinamide, retinaldehyde Vitamin A, Vitamin C and peptides help prevent UV damage and act as antioxidants to protect from free radicals. Our Vital A Rejuvenating Serum and Vital C Repair Serum provide all of these great ingredients. 

Eat a healthy diet full of antioxidants: Healthy, beautiful skin can be easily achieved and maintained with these simple habits. Let us help you with our highly effective Mikel Kristi skincare products. Go to Mikelkristi.com today to get started.

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THE SKIN EXPOSOME