Face Care You may be born with beautiful skin, but try holding onto it through the rigors of childhood and adolescence -- good luck! Even so, you shouldn't let your dreams of healthy skin die a horrible death. If you try hard enough, you can recapture that radiant glow that you had when you were a youngster. Naturally, you'll want to focus on your face, since that's what the world sees most often (unless, of course, you're Miss October. But let's assume otherwise.). It all starts out with good health; there are plenty of skin care secrets to be found out there, but most of them boil down to taking care of yourself. Be sure to eat a healthy diet heavy on fresh fruits and veggies, exercise daily, and get plenty of restful beauty sleep. Taking supplements, like Vitamin E and Omega 3 fatty acids, can also help your skin tone. Appropriate hydration is especially important to great skin. By hydration, we're talking about drinking water, and plenty of it: at least two quarts a day are recommended to keep your interior hydrated. Coffee, tea, sodas, and other drinks replete with caffeine don't count; in fact, you should limit their use. Alcohol is similarly a no-no. The next no-no is smoking. Cigarette smoke is a form of pollution, and it does more than rot your lungs, kill your taste-buds, and give you bad breath: it dries the skin of any part of the body it touches, and where does most of the smoke end up? In your face. As difficult as it is to quit smoking, you have to make a choice here: do you want to have a great looking face, or do you want to feed your addiction? On top of that, you'll need to avoid too much sun. Tans look great, for a while, but they'll turn you old before your time. When you do go out into the sun, you should protect your face with a wide-brimmed hat or sun block, especially in these days of the widening hole in the ozone layer. You can be a sun worshiper or a beauty with flawless skin; you can't be both. Your next task is to develop an effective facial cleansing routine. Determine your basic skin type -- oily, dry, or normal -- and use the appropriate cleansers once or twice a day to remove dirt, traces of makeup, excess skin oils, bacteria, and all the other things that can clog your pores and cause unsightly blemishes. Basic soap and water is acceptable occasionally, but at least once a day you should use a commercially prepared skin cleanser; regular soap is too harsh for constant use. Once you've cleansed, rinse your face thoroughly, because you don't want any traces of the cleanser to remain; it can cause redness, itching, and irritation if it dries on your skin. You can help minimize this possibility by splashing on a skin toner or astringent, which both removes traces of cleanser and tightens up your pores. This is especially important if you have the larger pores that usually come with oily skin. One inexpensive, all-natural skin toner is witch hazel extract; however, it's not for everyone, because it can leave your face too dry. If it doesn't work for you, don't hesitate to switch to a toner made in a laboratory. Nothing's too good for your face! The last daily step in your skin care routine should be the addition of moisturizer. Again, how much and what you use depends on your skin type, but you need to be sure that your skin is well hydrated. Hydrating from within by drinking plenty of water is a good start, but it's only a start; hydrating your skin from the outside is equally important. On top of your daily routine, there are certain steps you should add occasionally. You shouldn't hesitate to exfoliate every couple of months to get rid of old skin cells. Then there are those beauty masks guys like to make fun of; most beauty consultants recommend that you subject yourself to one weekly. Whether it's a homemade peach mask or an expensive mud mask from Paris, the idea is to deeply cleanse your face, removing the gunk that everyday cleaning doesn't always get. The cucumber slices over the eyes are optional. A word here about chemical peels: they may be all the rage among some segments of society, but they're not generally recommended. Since you're literally peeling off the upper layers of your skin -- hence the name -- every chemical peel carries a risk. They can have seriously bad effects on your skin, varying from reddening and extreme irritation to severe pain and tissue damage. That said, chemical peels can be used to effectively treat some skin problems, like acne scars and some environmental damage, that don't respond to other treatments. If you feel you must have a chemical peel, be sure that it's performed by a trained dermatologist or plastic surgeon.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------If you are a business owner get listed at Best Personal Care Site, part of Localwin Network.