Why Stress, Poor Sleep, and Lifestyle Show Up on Your Face

Speaker A: 00:00:02

Welcome to your Face Story podcast. I am Yolanda Russo, your host, holistic skincare expert and well being advocate. I believe your face is a billboard.

Of what's happening on the inside. Every wrinkle, sagging area. Dark circle reflects your lifestyle, diet, stress levels and of course self care habits.

Let's explore how we can address those signs naturally. Yes, I do skin care and I offer facials at my location. But I also coach.

So I decided my pad to stage my podcast as a chronicles of the conversations or coaching that I have with my clients, real people. So today I decided to bring you an easy subject and it's probably experienced but by most of us. Is dark.

Circles and the nasolabial folds. So let's hear what sue, my client is asking me. How is she asking me questions and how do I answer them?

And hopefully this will help you to figure out the best approach to your problems. Okay, so, so sue is 39, she's almost 40.

And I forgot to mention that when I see a skin of any client really, I would first ask their age to figure out are they before premenopausal or they are postmenopausal. To me it doesn't really matter if you have dry skin, oily skin or sensitive skin. It matters are you pre menopausal or you're postmenopausal.

Their premenopausal skin is resilient. It's able to change within hours.

With the right treatment of course, and the right skincare products, postmenopausal skin is a little bit more challenging. It is still possible to rejuvenate that skin, but it will take a little longer. So this is why I generalize the skin this way.

Sue is 39, 40, so she's premenopausal. She's still ways ahead. She has about, I don't know, maybe 10 years before menopause.

So if she starts doing the right things with her skin right now, she won't be neglecting the skin and of course herself in inside because one goes along with each other. I don't believe that I can do the best facial for you.

And if you are stressing on the facial table, if you are holding on to the phone and can't wait until the facial is over, you will never benefit from the best facial. So I always ask clients, please just give yourself that break, just put the phone away if you can and let's just breathe.

As I'm putting the products on your skin, as I'm giving you the energy, you will be able to absorb this much deeper and process and let the skin cells process this properly.

If your skin is stressed, it will never absorb the best nutrients that I'm applying to your skin because the skin is going to develop this protective mechanism and nothing will really go through. I will just be working on the surface. And how do I know that?

I've been observing my clients who are, like I mentioned, very stressed or on the edge or they just want to get done and go and do their life. When I put the mask on, usually it's a cream mask that I'm talking about, the mask that should absorb.

When I put the mask on after the facial is done, of course, through this whole hour, they were supposed to relax. And at the end when I put the mask on and come back to the room after about five minutes to see what the outcome is, guess what?

The mask on people who are on the edge never got anywhere. It's still sitting on the surface. This is how I know that your nervous system is protecting you from anything to enter.

You are on alert, high alert, and that is not a healthy state. So I, I just want to encourage you when you do go for a facial or a massage, leave your phone in the car. Yes, or somewhere else.

Okay, so let's get back to Sue. So she came in and she shared.

With me that she's noticing changes on her skin and she doesn't like that. And she's scared. She doesn't know exactly what to do. She does have skincare products at home, but they're not really doing anything. That's what she says. Okay, so the first thing that she's pointing to is her dark circles. Okay. So I look at her and her.

Dark circles are really deep.

I ask sue, how many hours of sleep did she get last night? And of course she squeamishly says, well, it was a bad night. I said, okay, so how many hours of sleep did you get night before and night before?

She says, yes, I stay up late and can't go to sleep, so I watch TV and then I fall asleep with the TV on.

And that's such a big mistake because the blue light from the TV screen, even if you're not looking at it, it's going to keep you awake because your melatonin is not being released as it's supposed to when it's darkened room. When night comes along, the melatonin is just being released to make you drowsy and let you go to sleep.

And this is exactly what happens when you are in facing the tv or maybe you're facing your phone slide. You're, you're keeping yourself awake because the melatonin is not being produced.

So that's one thing that gives you the difficulties of falling asleep. So it's not really your sleep, it's what you do to yourself. Okay? So no problem.

So as long as you go ahead and adjust the lifestyle that we just described, you're gonna be fine because you will get back into the habit of falling asleep on time, sleeping as long as you need, because sometimes you don't need to sleep eight hours.

But just, just so you know that the best sleep is at around the best sleep, the most restorative sleep is from 11pm to about 2pm so if you are sleeping between these hours, your body is going to self repair. And this is why your body requires that dream stage that you are going to be self repairing and doing the things that you need.

Okay, so let's get back to Sue. So we did take care of the dark circles.

And the way I help my clients with dark circles is through my signature facial treatment, which is face massage.

I have a European training and any facial that I do, mostly it is focused on stimulation of the circulation in the skin, in the muscles, and lymphatic drainage. In case of sue, she needed lymphatic drainage under the eyes. So there is a pot.

There is one episode of in this podcast where I talk about dark circles. Maybe you can find it and you can just listen to it. So I won't repeat this again. I just want to move on. But if you need me to repeat.

This, please post a comment under this episode and I will. Okay. So I did take care of the under eye area. Believe it or not. It's a really quick fix.

Welcome to another episode of your face story. Let's talk about the sun, your skin and sunscreen.

We are in a couple of weeks of summer here in eastern part of us and I'm noticing a lot of my clients coming back to my treatment room with hyperpigmentation. I want to address this. This is not supposed to happen to my clients because I thought I trained them well.

Okay, so Liz comes in and she's like very stressed out about her hyperpigmentation she has developed in just a couple of weeks of the summer. So I asked, what sunscreen are you using? Oh, I'm using a tinted sunscreen. Tinted sunscreen. Okay. That's the problem.

How are you thinking tinted sunscreen is going to protect you from the sun? The sunscreen's role is to shield you to screen you from the sun.

The sunscreen, when applied deliberately directly to the skin after your moisturizer will have a little tint of whitish kind of opaque ish tint. That is what people don't like to use and that's what they don't want to see.

So they keep rubbing it off or better yet they go and bite the tinted sunscreen or they protect themselves with makeup. Sunscreen with the makeup. And I want to address this. This is why you're going to get sun damaged.

Sun damage is the first, first thing that causes skin aging, skin sagging. So please hear me out. The sunscreen's role is to protect you from UV rays. It is not for you to sleep with the sunscreen on.

It is not for you to be at home with the sunscreen on. So don't exaggerate, don't, don't listen to those feeds that are telling you that you need to wear the sunscreen 24 7.

Your sunscreen should be on your skin from about 9am to 5 or 6pm after that it should be off your face. Your skin should be clean, moisturized and you can go and enjoy the sun. The sun. Sunlight is very healing. Healing.

The sun releases vitamin D that is essential for our immunity and our mood. The sunlight, the invisible rays in the morning are blue. They are energizing our body. The sunlight at night, the last hour of the day is orange.

It's winding us down to tell the brain that we are going to start releasing melatonin and we are going to go to sleep. So that's the signaling of the sunlight to our brain, what is to come. So please take advantage of the sunlight.

Without the sunscreen, the first hour of the day and the last hour of the day. During the day you must use the sunscreen, dedicated sunscreen. So it's going to be. Let's, let's, let's run through the, our routine.

What my clients are using is you cleanse your face. You apply the serum usually is ascorbic acid that we will apply during the summer to bounce off some of the sunlight. Then we apply moisturizer.

The moisturizer with peptides is the best. Peptides are collagen stimulating molecules. Then we apply sunscreen. We see the white or opaque tint on the skin. And please don't rub this off.

Breathe, give yourself a second. Don't look in the mirror, don't look at yourself because you're gonna rub this off. Once you look at the skin after about 30 seconds it's gone.

You will see your skin Normal. Then you can apply your makeup or your tinted sunscreen, tinted moisturizer, whatever you want on your skin afterwards. It's fine.

And that's the process. You will never go without the layer of the sunscreen, real sunscreen under your skin during the daytime.

The UV index anywhere above 3 is very dangerous to the skin. It shatters the collagen. It causes hyperpigmentation. Yes, we can correct the hyperpigmentation with.

With a lot of treatments that contain fruit acids. We can do microdermabrasions later in a year. But it costs a lot of money to fix this. It costs less to prevent having that problem.

By the way, never look for microdermabrasion or any other harsh or irritating service like laser or even micro needling during the summer because it exposes you to the sun damage a little bit more than your skin. Healthy skin or strong healthy skin. Yes, that's what I wanted to say. Healthy skin.

Meaning if you do microdermabrasion, you remove the layers of the skin from the surface and you need to give a two weeks to rebuild that. So please, no, no microdermabrasion in the summer until late fall, and then you can do this until the end of the year. Okay?

So going back to the protection from the sun.

So I don't want you to protect the skin in the early morning, which is first hour in a day and last hour of the day, but I want you to protect your skin during the. And apply or reapply the sunscreen every four hours if you are directly in the sun.

Liz is the client who I'm talking about and who got upset about her hyperpigmentation because she wasn't reapplying the sunscreen. She wasn't even applying the sunscreen. She was applying the tinted sunscreen. I just.

I just wish they had warning on the back of those products like the cigarettes. Anyway, so that's what I am very passionate about. I need you to protect your skin, but I need you to be understanding the differences.

Now, the sunscreen must come off from the skin as soon as you are free to do so.

Meaning if you come back from work and you are not going to be outside during the first hours of the day when it's like really high, then take off that sunscreen. A lot of sunscreen have chemicals that are not really healthy for us. So they do protect our skin from sun rays. But some of them are not so healthy.

And I don't want to go into it. You can Google that. Okay, so Liz unfortunately has to wait until the late fall for me to.

Speaker A: 00:19:26

Help her with that.

Speaker A: 00:19:27

But in the meantime, she can use products that will exfoliate her skin gently every single day. And for that, I mean fruit acids cleansers. I have a triple exfoliating cleanser that is absolutely amazing. And ascorbic acid.

Ascorbic acid is something that will strengthen the skin cells and also brighten the skin, bounce off the light, brighten the the skin. So those two things combine. Amazing for remedy that right now and not getting any more damage done to the skin.

Okay, so that was my passionate conversation about the sun. How I love the sun, but I would never go out during the day without the sunscreen. And actually I would avoid the sun during high sun.

I will check my weather app on my phone and I will see the UV rays. Not the UV rays. I will see the UV index where you can check that anything above 3 is dangerous. You shouldn't be out.

Or if you are out, just don't stay out too long. Okay, so that was that episode. Remember, the UV is tox. UV rays are toxic to the skin and they shatter collagen as a result. Your skin will sag before.

Before you get old. So don't let this happen, see me or get a consultation with me if. That had happened already.

And I can help you with this at home. You can do this at home. You just need the right products. You need to know what to do.

And then later in a year, I will advise you on what treatments should you be seeking to correct this problem. Bye for now and I will see you in the next episode.

Welcome to another episode of your face story, the Billboard of Self, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of skincare, exploring real stories and expert advice. Yolanda Russo, your host. We're talking about acne today. Adult acne, a topic that resonates with many, but it is often misunderstood.

Okay, so let's dive into a real story from the treatment room. Meet Alyssa. She's Pre menopausal. At 35, she shouldn't be breaking out and she does so pre menopausal skin.

Of course it's still healthy, it's still strong. Collagen is pretty strong. The skin is a little bit at times oily, but that will be because of the skincare products at home. So it has to be adjusted.

The skin should be more normal at this age and it shouldn't be breaking out. Especially where Alyssa shares that she did not break out as a teenager and is breaking out every month, it seems.

Yes, this is a common Frustration for many women, or adults for that matter. Women and men. It could be disheartening to see a zit when you wake up in the morning. That comes from nowhere. Well, then nowhere is really relative.

We'll talk about this a little later. For now, let me just do a little Q and A with Alyssa to find out what her skin is.

What is her skin routine and what are the skincare products that she's using? Okay, so I've asked Alyssa if she's washing her face twice a day. The answer is yes. That's very good. What cleanser is she using?

Is it a cream or gel cleanser for her skin because it's still oil prone? It's good. She's using a gel cleanser. Gel cleansers are designed for this type of skin, especially when you flare up with acne at times or oilness.

That's good. Now let's find out what's happening with the skin after she cleanses. So, Alyssa, how does the skin feel after you rinse it off? Do you.

Do you feel your skin is tight or it feels normal? Oh, it is tight. That's not good news. That tells me this cleanser is a little too strong for you.

It might contain salicylic acid, and this is too strong for your sensitive skin. So let's just say don't use this every day. You can use this once a week. That quite all right. But not every day.

It's stripping your skin from the essential oil that it's layering the surface of your skin, and that is not good. So we are going to find another cleanser to switch off with the one that you have now. Tell me about the moisturizer.

So you feel your skin is dry, you run right away because it's tight. You run around right away, away and apply a moisturizer. What type of moisturizer are you using? Okay, it's a cream moisturizer.

It's a heavier moisturizer that might not be so healthy either. And I know why you're doing this, because you're trying to offset the dryness that you are getting or tightness that you are getting after cleansing.

Yes, yes, I understand, but that's not the way to play. You need to change the cleanser or alternate the cleansers and get yourself a moisturizer that is less heavy.

What your moisturizer is, is more for the skin that it's 55. So post, postmenopausal, the skin that doesn't produce oils anymore or very little oils. And that's that's the oil moisturizer.

So why don't you give this moisturizer to your mom and she'll be very happy with it, but you can't use it. Okay, so that's a donation I do like to recommend to clients. Don't throw out your cleansers or moisturizers for that matter. Just recycle them.

Use them anywhere else on the body if you would like, or give it to someone who can use this product. In this case, it will be for older skin.

That means if your mom or anyone around you has skin that is 55 or older, they can definitely be happy with this moisturizer. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Now so we know already where the problems begin. It's your skincare routine now.

Actually, skincare products, not the routine because you are diligent enough using the products twice a day. That is good. You've mentioned that you use the pads to wash the skin sometimes when you are tired. No, no, no, no. You.

The pads are reserved for travel and places where you can get water. And you must use the pads because you have to take off the the product. The makeup and the washing of the face is a problem because there is no water.

So the pads are okay, but not any other time. The pad does not have enough saturated liquid in it. And when you apply to the skin, it literally just swipes off the surface.

Good cleanser will go deep under into the pores and break down the dust, dirt, pollution oils out of your pores. That's the purpose of the cleanser. While I'm on the cleansing, please don't rush the cleanser.

Set the intention in the morning and at night when you use the cleanser, close your eyes, rub the skin and think of the pores. All the million pores on your face getting absorbing the cleanser and spitting out all the dust and dirt and pollution out of the pores.

So set your mind to it. Even if you go to the shower, just don't rinse it off in the second after applying. Give it a couple seconds.

Sometimes I say give it like 30 seconds at least. Okay, so that's for your skin. Good. So let's move on.

So you're saying what should you do? Yes, that's a good question. We already covered that. What we need to do is change your products and eliminate the washing with pads.

That's not gonna happen. You can take the pads to the gym and wash your face or wipe your face off after sweating before you get home.

That's good because that will help you with the Stickiness, so you won't be producing zits because of the sweat. That's a great idea, too. Okay, so yes, you are exercising in the middle of the day. That's a great idea.

Now you can also get yourself apple cider vinegar or witch hazel. Either one is going to work well for your gym bag and you can just help yourself with it.

Removing the immediate sweat after exercising, before you get home, before you get to shower, so that the clot, the pores don't stay clogged. Okay, so that's your solution there. Let me see. What else would you be asking me? Okay, yes. So you are now asking me, what should you do?

What treatment should we recommend for you? Your skin is still very healthy. It is just needing to unclog. So what I would recommend is to exfoliate. Do you exfoliate at home?

Okay, you do exfoliate, but exfoliating with the gritty stuff is not really helpful. So please change that to more gentle exfoliant such as glycolic acid or other fruit acid cleansers. Cleanser exfoliants. Yes.

We're going to use today triple exfoliating cleanser from my skincare line. And I will show you how quickly you'll look. Actually, your skin is going to glow.

Right after use of this because the skin is going to be light and able to breathe on its own. If it does right away, you will see the radiance of the skin. Because your skin is still young, it still produces enough of moisture itself.

So that would be the first solution. We're gonna do deep cleansing and we are going to use Zit Zapper, the tool that will disinfect and shrink your acne.

So that way we don't have to ever touch this. But we need to address that and we need to help it to go down.

That's, that's very proprietary product which is extremely, extremely good for the skin. For your own sake. When you have breakouts at home, please don't touch them, don't scratch them, don't squeeze them. Use apple cider vinegar.

Just hold that pad with the vinegar for 30 seconds or longer, let it dry a little bit, and then use an ice cube over it for another 10 seconds and, and just let it be. So that's how you're going to deal with this type of acne. Acne is a general term. It's not really something that teenagers get.

You have a different type of breakout, which is also called acne, but it's not addressed the same way. Okay, so that's what we're going to do, that's how I'm going to help you.

And right away you are going to see the difference because of the proper exfoliation. And now, from now on, you need to exfoliate twice a week. Morning and at night, exfoliation, morning and at night exfoliation.

And the exfoliation that we are going to use and I will recommend is a cleanser and exfoliant at the same time. So you don't need an additional product for that. Okay? So that's it. So I hope I can help you. I hope we got to the root cause of your problem.

And if you don't touch the skin, if you don't try to squeeze it, the zits will go away within hours. They will go away the next morning when you wake up, they should be gone. Because you're going to use the apple cider vinegar to dry the skin out.

You're going to use lighter moisturizer not to suffocate the skin. And you're going to exfoliate the skin. Gently so that the skin breeze breathes on on its own. So that's what we're gonna do. Okay?

So I hope this helps. I hope it helps you, the audience. Please send me any comments. If you have any questions, I will be happy to to answer. Thank you. Bye for now.