The Skin Nerd’s 10 Skin Commandments

Jennifer Rock gives us her top tips for winter skin in this exclusive extract from her new book The Skin Nerd.

Jennifer Rock

1. Thou shalt aim for seven hours of restful sleep to maximise the skin’s healing ability

While you sleep, your skin is no longer busy trying to constantly protect you from everyday life. This means that it has proper time to heal and regenerate at night.

When you sleep, your blood flow increases so your skin refreshes itself, cells are given nutrients, your body relaxes into REM which enables it to re-energise and recuperate from the day that’s just ended and prepare itself for the day that’s about to start.

2. Thou shalt drink eight glasses of water daily to keep the skin hydrated and healthy

Water hydrates the whole body, including the skin. However, you need to ensure that you’re also consuming enough essential fatty acids to keep the water in.

While water alone is not the answer – nothing alone is the answer – it is needed for life and for us to perform optimally.

Hydration is the key to skin volume. If your skin is dehydrated, it will feel tight, taut and may have a coarse texture to it.

Think of a raisin versus a grape – our goal is the juicy grape!

3. Thou shalt avoid processed food

I know – this one is difficult to maintain at all times, but processed foods affect the body and the skin’s immunity.

They are full of empty calories and empty in skin value too, so try at the very least to reduce your intake.

Processed foods are dosed in preservatives and salt that can affect immunity.

4. Thou shalt keep sugar intake low

I’ve a lot to say about sugar but, for now, know that the sweet stuff also causes inflammation (the body’s way of fighting something that it perceives as a threat, such as infection), which is usually associated with redness, swelling, heat or pain.

It also speeds up the ageing process as well as reducing the skin’s immunity.

5. Thou shalt eat lots of vegetables

When your mother force fed you broccoli as a kid, she was right.

We need to eat vegetables to feed the skin from within with potent antioxidants that control the rate at which we age.

Antioxidants are the unsung heroes of skin health – they literally armour your skin against the environment.

6. Thou shalt consume adequate amounts of protein

Protein isn’t just for those gym gains, it helps to boost collagen in the body.

Collagen is a protein found in the lower layer if the skin – a layer far beyond what we can see and touch – and is responsible for the structure of the skin and the ‘bounce’ associated with the skin’s youthful appearance.

Our naturally created levels of collagen and elastin tend to diminish after we turn twenty-five.

(Most skincare brands say that forty is the age at which you should get on the anti-ageing buzz. Wrong.)

7. Thou shalt gobble up good fats

Good fats, such as those found in avocados, are the key ingredient for locking in skin hydration, reducing irritation and reactive skin conditions.

They lock in goodness. The word ‘fat’ is often feared when, in fact, it is a keyword and ingredient for skin health.

Fat, more specifically essential fatty acids, is key for conditions such as eczema, psoriasis and acne-prone skin, because the fat will act as an anti-inflammatory agent and an internal moisturiser.

8. Thou shalt reduce your caffeine intake

Caffeine increases stress levels, particularly the production of the stress hormone cortisol.

Heightened stress worsens chronic skin conditions and causes dehydration of the skin.

Caffeine is something we all gravitate towards – I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a cup of tea as much as the next person – but for optimal skin health, reduce your consumption over time to one cup per day.

9. Thou shalt not smoke

This one’s obviously a no-no for countless well-documented reasons but the cigarettes you puff on in the smoking area also decrease the flow of oxygen to your skin (affecting its tone and pallor) while robbing your body of Vitamin C, which is an essential nutrient to synthesise (the nerdie word for ‘create more’) collagen.

And, no, smoking is not something you can just ‘reduce’, this is something you need to kick in the proverbials right now.

Non-negotiable. Sorry, not sorry!

10. Thou shalt exercise

Ensure you exercise regularly not just to promote health, but so that your cardio-vascular system can assist with lymphatic draining.

Weight training tones the muscle which lies under the skin and so enables the skin to appear firmer and more taut.

It also stimulates blood flow to give your skin the highly coveted glow.

Jennifer’s Daily Winter Skin Regime

In Winter, my skin, like all skin, becomes less hydrated so I find that I break out as the lack of moisture prompts my oil glands to overcompensate, thus producing too much oil.

I tend not to love the feeling of a heavy moisturiser – this is not the norm, as most start to up the ante with thick creams and oils as we head towards Winter.

To protect my skin from the elements and to minimise any dehydration, I alternate cleansers between a probiotic cream cleanser and a lactic acid cleanser.

Lactic acid is a gentle alpha-hydroxy acid, a chemical exfoliant that is much more skin-friendly than a scrub.

It ousts dullness, puts a stop to congestion and has the added benefit of being hydrating to the skin which you don’t get with glycolic acid, for example.

I follow this up with a light pre-serum. A pre-serum helps to address any inflammation, redness and pigmentation in the skin and preps it so that the products coming after it will penetrate into the skin to their best ability.

After this comes a serum that contains the fat form of vitamin A which helps the skin to repair itself at a cellular level, then I top this with a moisturiser that helps to replenish my skin’s barrier.

For the daylight hours, I shield myself from UV damage with an SPF – SPF is key and you should never neglect to wear it year-round.

Naturally, there’s more to my daily routine than this — I am The Skin Nerd, after all — and you can find out all of it in my debut book, The Skin Nerd: Your Straight-Talking Guide to Feeding, Protecting and Respecting Your Skin, available from all good bookstores.

The Skin Nerd by Jennifer Rock is published by Hachette Ireland and is out now in hardback, €19.99