How To Get Better Skin For Free

You don’t need expensive products to nourish your skin. You can get better skin for free. 

A holistic approach to skincare will give you healthy skin at a fraction of the cost of those pricey tinctures, lotions and balms.

Looking for radiant skin on a budget? Look no further. You can focus on circulation, food and keeping the muscles underneath your skin healthy. This helps your skin from the inside out.

Here’s four ways to nourish your skin without spending a dime:

1. Take Your Face to the Gym

You exercise your body, how about your face? As we age, it is not our skin that loses its firmness first, it’s the muscles that support our skin. They atrophy, causing noticeable weakness and that dreaded sag.

There are lots of facial muscle exercises to keep your facial muscles strong and keep your skin healthy.

Vowel Counting

Say your vowels out loud: “A,E,I,O,U.” But do so with exaggerated facial expressions. Focus on feeling your mouth opening wide and really accentuate the movements. 

For example, when you say “A,” open your mouth wide, side to side. When you say “U,” stick your lips out as far as they go… as if you’re reaching for a kiss.

Repeat your vowel counting three times per day. 

2. Choose Skin Friendly Foods

Beauty comes from the inside. The foods you eat directly impacts the look and feel of your skin. 

There are antioxidants, vitamins and minerals found in whole foods that help you build  healthy skin. It's an inside job. 

Focus on a whole foods diet with a variety of fresh vegetables. Different colour vegetables promote different health benefits. A variety ensures you are getting a balance of antioxidants to fight the damaging effects of oxidation on your skin.

Think about dark, leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower.

Omega-3s should be a staple of your diet for healthy skin. The anti-inflammatory properties of omega-3s are vital in building and maintaining the fats in your skin tissue. Fatty fish like salmon, mackerel or anchovies are a great source of omega-3s.

Some of the best skin friendly superfoods include guava, sunflower seeds, bone broth and algae.

Guava is full of vitamin C, E and A: the perfect cocktail to optimize collagen production.

Sunflower seeds are full of antioxidants and Vitamin E. They’re shown to protect your skin against UV and DNA damage associated with skin cancer.

Other pantry staples that help your skin are extra virgin olive oil and green tea. EVOO is full of monounsaturated fats and antioxidants. Green tea has many antioxidants to help your skin recover from damage. 

3. Give Yourself a Facial Massage

Facial massage helps work out your muscles and boosts circulation. This type of massage ranges from intensive deep tissue aimed at lymphatic drainage to lightweight strokes to add some pep.

The great thing is, you can go as easy or as hard as you like… since it’s your face, after all.

Here’s four easy facial massages you can do in three minutes to boost your skin health.

1. Use your knuckles to rub your forehead and chin muscles horizontally for 10 seconds. Start with light pressure. This relaxes and centres the often overworked chin and forehead muscles.
2. Use this same technique, but push your knuckles underneath your cheekbones. Again start with light pressure, you’ll feel it when you find the right spot. Hold until you feel a relaxing of the muscles, 1-2 minutes. This is referred to as a pressure point massage. Pressure point massages increase circulation and primes your cheek bone area.
3. Use your thumbs to apply pressure on the corners of your eyebrows that meet your nose bridge area. Press down for three seconds. This helps to increase circulation and relieve tension around your eyes. Ensure you’re pressing on your brow bone area only. Do not jab any fingers into your eye area. 
4. Place your index to pinky finger (use all four) on your jawline below your cheeks on both sides of your face. Begin to massage upward and outward, toward your outer cheek / ear area. Massage upward and outward using your four fingers for about 20 seconds each time. Aim for five sets. This will increase energy and circulation in your cheek bone area. 

4. Reduce Your Stress

Reducing stress is the number one lifestyle change for healthy skin. Why?

Chronic stress negatively affects your body’s immune response, leading to inflammation all over your body, including your skin.

Now inflammation is not all that bad in short bouts. However, chronic inflammation is implicated in every negative health outcome or disease. 

Heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune conditions, obesity and diabetes all have inflammatory triggers.

Stress is a key contributor to these negative health outcomes. 

If you have skin conditions like eczema, you know how stress can increase your symptoms.

The stress hormone cortisol, directly breaks down your skin’s natural collagen production.

Reducing stress will benefit your overall health and the health of your skin.

How can you reduce your stress?

A regular exercise routine helps buffer the negative impacts of stress on your body. It lowers your resting heart rate and circulates endorphins in your bloodstream to help you recover from stress.

You don’t need to sit on a bike or treadmill to exercise. Find activities that you enjoy. Maybe it’s dancing, walking, pickleball or gardening. These are all great ways to exercise.

You can start by walking more or opting to take the stairs instead of elevators. Find ways to incorporate movement into your day to make it fun. 

Another proven way to decrease stress is meditation. Meditation centres your mind and body while helping you relax by reducing stress hormones in your bloodstream. 

There’s many forms of meditation. If you are starting out, I’d recommend using a simple vipassana or mindfulness based meditation. There are fantastic apps that provide guided meditations on this.

Meditation helps release stress-inducing thoughts or worries. It helps you become more aware of your inner body and its surroundings. 

I prefer a moving meditation. I’ll typically walk very slowly while counting my breaths and slowing my breathing to a crawl. 

The point is this: there are many ways to reduce stress through meditation. You do not need to sit for 20 minutes to call yourself a meditator. 

Find a pleasurable form of meditation that is easy to stick to. Heck, some people even ‘meditate’ while they’re washing dishes. It is oddly soothing, after all.

These cost-effective skin-care techniques can help you feel healthy and look healthy. No matter what your circumstances, I’m sure you can benefit from the methods above. 

What do you think about these low-cost skin care methods?

What do you do to keep your skin healthy?

Leave a comment and let me know.