It's not news to most people that food and drink can affect your health and your skin, but it is surprising how many people still don't use this as their number one tool for looking great. Of course expensive treatments and spa procedures can help, but this is something you can do at home every day and it can make a huge difference in how your skin looks.

• Stay hydrated - our skin needs water and a lot of it every day (think of a shrivled grape that has lost its moisture!). If you haven't yet jumped on this bandwagon, get yourself a pretty water jug and fill it up a few times a day - ideally get two or three litres a day (for women); don't go overboard though. Yes you'll pee a lot, but your skin will look brighter and more vibrant. If you get bored of straight water add some lemon, lime, cucumber, fruit, etc.
• It's also important what not to drink - alcohol, coffee, and soft drinks dehydrate your skin and can lead to premature aging and wrinkles. Luckily in the past few years there's a whole new world of non-alchoholic drinks and flavoured waters and once you start exploring them you'll be pleasantly surprised at how great some of them are! With so many choices on the market it's easier than ever to transition to drinks that won't age you unnecessarily.
• Foods can heal. Whether you look at ORAC scores to determine which foods have the most antioxidants (i.e. spices, wild blueberries, dark chocolate etc), or at AGE levels to see which foods are contributing to oxidative stress the most (meats, cheeses, etc although a lot of this has to do more with cooking method - quick tip; anything cooked in moisture is much better for you then something grilled or dry heated). If you're not interested in deep diving into the details, all you really need to know is that eating more fruits and veggies helps protect against oxidative stress, one of the main causes of aging skin.

Women definitely have it tough here! Hormones affect us during the teen years, through child birthing, and then again during menopause. Luckily, keeping your hormones balanced is less mysterious than many people realize; there's quite a lot you can do on your own to keep your hormones as balanced as possible:

• managing stress to avoid increased cortisol (which breaks down collagen production).
• exercising regularly to increase your body's oxygen which in turn improves elasticity; being active helps boost collagen production - yay!
• eating well - getting enough healthy fats, avoiding sugar, eating enough foods high in antioxidants.
• getting enough sleep - inadequate sleep elevates cortisol levels (which decreases collagen); so yes your late nights or early morning could be contributing to your wrinkles.
• supplement with hormone replacement if needed - every women in peri-or-menopause right now is saying 'but I can't stay asleep!'...this is a legitimate issue in those years and there are solutions. Find a doctor (or better yet a naturopath) to see if you would benefit from BHRT (bio-identical hormone replacement therapy); if your doctor is not helpful, search for a menopause Facebook group in your country and you'll find a bevy of supportive ladies to help you find where to get it. BHRT can improve skin hydration, boost collagen, and improve skin elasticity (and for many women it can definitely help you get a good night sleep as well!).

As we age, loss of muscle tone and thinning skin contribute to skin sagging and loss of elasticity. Facial fat deposits lose volume and drift downwards, and our blood circulation decreases which can affect collagen production and increase age spots and wrinkles. A great way to help decrease all of this is to move your face.

• Face Yoga - with dozens of muscles in our face, it's beneficial as we age to 'work out' these muscles and help keep them active. Some face yoga experts give very prescribed daily programs while others give suggestions of exercises you can do in the car, on the go, etc. Don't give up entirely if you can't find time daily to do this - doing some face yoga when you can is better than not doing any at all.
• Gua Sha - this traditional Eastern technique of skin 'scraping' helps increase circulation and promote lymphatic drainage which in turns helps with inflammation, reducing toxins and puffiness, and creates healthy glowing skin. This technique is an easy one to incorporate into your daily skincare routine - simply keep a gua sha with your facial products and do a quick 2-5 minute routine in between your serum and moisturizer; be sure not to press too hard since a light pressure is ideal.
• Facial Massage - there are many types of facial massages including lifting, stimulating, lymph drainage, acupressure, and more. You can do facial massage techniques on yourself at home, or treat yourself to a facial massage treatment at your favourite spa.

Where to find techniques for all the above? Social media and Youtube abound with options. We suggest picking knowledgable and established experts who feel like a good fit.

Everyone agrees sunscreen is a necessary part of every anti-aging regime and we all know that the harmful UV exposure causes photo-aging (premature aging skin), but not all sunscreens are created equally.

There are two types of sunscreen ingredients:

• chemical - most common; options include oxybenzone, avobenzone, octinoxate, etc.
• mineral - zinc oxide and titanium dioxide (zinc is best as it is broad spectrum while the latter is not)

Many chemical sunscreens are banned in holiday destinations around the world because they damage coral reefs and induce birth defects among marine life (so what are these doing to our skin?!). Mineral sunscreens are a safer and healthier choice for any anti-aging routine.

Mineral sunscreens have come a long way in recent years; a decade ago you'd look like a white ghost using one, but strides in technology mean that many zinc oxide based formulas now go on quite easily (just a few seconds to properly rub into the skin and then it looks great; see our spf options here).

Note - many companies who make mineral sunscreens will use nano-particles (making the particle size of the mineral super tiny; you won't see this on ingredient lists since it's a process and not an ingredient); nano-particles are still banned in many places (not in North America) and it's not something you know is used unless you reach out to a company and ask them. We find the easiest way to know is just to check the brand website - if they don't use nanoparticles they're normally proud of that and typically promote that info on their website.

In the clean beauty world there's a lot of talk about how 'bad for you' many ingredients are but that's not the only issue ... many ingredients are simply too harsh on your skin. Regardless of how toxic or not they may be, there are many cheap filler ingredients that are aging your skin unnecessarily.

Don't think that just because a product is expensive that it's avoiding using those ingredients - all mainstream brands use harsh ingredients. What the high end mainstream brands typically do is use a few really great quality ingredients that are actually helpful for your skin, but the rest of the product is filled with inexpensive harsh ingredients that are nullifying any benefits those few good ingredients might be helped with.

Be sure that ALL the ingredients in a products are there with the sole purpose of helping your skin - not just a few key ingredients.

Not sure how to do this?

• check out our Natural Beauty Guide for more info on this topic.
• look at the ingredients on the bottle - can you read and understand most of them? Do they look like ingredients that would be gentle and beneficial to aging skin? Even if you don't know what they are all, you can typically get a sense of them by just looking at the ingredient list (in our Natural Beauty Guide above you'll see ingredient lists for several Vit C serums compared and it's obvious which one has the best ingredients even if you don't know anything about ingredients).

While you may have been able to get away with a more minimal skincare regime in your younger years, if anti-aging benefits are important to you, this is the time to take it up a notch. The number of effective skincare ingredients has risen considerably in recent years so there are many more we could mention, but these are our top three choices for anti-aging superstar ingredients:

• Retinol - this is the megastar of anti-aging ingredients and also the most misunderstood. In a nutshell - many retinol products are so harsh they do more harm than good; of all the ingredients we're discussing here, this is the one that is most important to get a quality brand for (and by quality we don't mean the most expensive; there are many expensive and/or prescription retinols we would never use). Far too much info to discuss here, so for more info please visit our blog on retinols.
• Vitamin C - with a multitude of benefits, vitamin c is an essential part of any anti-aging skincare regime. It works to reduce fine lines and wrinkles, promotes collagen production, reduces pigmentation, brightens dull skin, has photo protective properties, and helps stave off pollutive stress. It does a lot!
• Hyaluronic Acid - the ultimate ingredient for hydration. As a powerful humectant, it increases water content in the skin and acts like a sponge to attract water to the skin surface. It also boosts other serious anti-aging benefits like diminishing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by creating a plumper, smoother complexion.

Do you need all of them? That is completely up to you ....it's like asking if you 'need' to eat spinach, blueberries, and sweet potatoes to stay healthy. All of them are helpful but it's up to your personal preference (and budget) to pick which you want to use. Visit our website Quizzes page if you want skincare recommendations.

Anyone old enough to care about anti-aging ingredients has likely heard about famous positive thinking experiments:

• Grade school teachers from all over, Ikea, and even NASA have all done experiments on how kind and happy thoughts (or vibrations) can positively affect how well plants thrive (and aren't we are living things?).
• Japanese doctor Maseru Emoto's famous experiments on water molecules showed that depending on the nature of the words or thoughts, the water crystals would either become 'beautiful' or 'ugly' (and aren't we all just mostly water?!).

Imagine how your face/skin/body reacts to your thoughts about it on a daily basis? How many times do you look in the mirror every day, and how many thoughts are you thinking about yourself? Whether it's through positive thinking or simply through changing your perspective, your thoughts about yourself make more of a difference than you give them credit for; feeling good about yourself changes how you see yourself (which it turn changes how others see you too). Don't let a few wrinkles or saggy areas determine how beautiful you think you are - we are supposed to age and aging skin does not mean you can't still be beautiful - they are NOT mutually exclusive.

BE KIND TO YOURSELF AND REMEMBER TO TELL YOUSELF DAILY HOW FABULOUS YOU ARE! 💕