The Four Commandments for a Beautiful Skin

The Four Commandments for a Beautiful Face

If you are a woman, you would want to be beautiful, youthful, and forever young.

What is beauty? Is beauty only skin deep, or something in the beholder’s eye?

In the Orient, the perception of beauty may vary from that in the West: the focus in the East on inner beauty or the inner eye may sometimes seem like imperviousness to the Western mind.

The Oriental perception of beauty may have stemmed from Buddhism, which promotes the following inner innate qualities:

Compassion for others

Detachment from negative thoughts and feelings

Peace of mind and inner tranquility

Right-mindedness from a true heart

A truly beautiful woman has a serene face with a softening spirit. Such a face is often a reflection of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual aspects of that individual. Beauty is more than skin deep: it exudes inner confidence.

You may become aware of the first click of your biological clock around age 30, when your first streaks of silver appear on your hair, or around 35 when you first notice your crow’s feet (for some, this may have happened even sooner.).

According to Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras, clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, understanding the changes and learning how to accept and cope with them are anti-aging.

After age 30, your estrogen and testosterone (yes, in women too) levels begin to decline, thus initiating the long process of aging. Getting yourself informed is important in keeping yourself younger for longer.

The four commandments of eternal facial beauty are:

(1) Thou shalt not smoke

Cigarette smoke contains free radicals which damage not only your skin but also your entire body system.

Do not smoke. If you are a smoker, quit smoking immediately.

(2) Thou shalt not drink excessively

Excessive alcohol damages your liver, which supports your skin and kidneys to remove toxins from your body. A damaged liver affects your fertility, your hormone production, and your skin beauty and health.

Drink moderately – no more than one glass of wine a day.

If have alcohol addiction, cure the addiction naturally and permanently.

(3) Thou shalt not worship the sun

The sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays damage your skin permanently.

(4) Thou shalt not eat junk food

Diets and nutritional foods play a pivotal role in skin aging. You are what you eat, and you become what you eat. 

Stephen Lau

Copyright© 2018 by Stephen Lau

My Newly Published Book: The Happiness Wisdom

I have just published my book: “The Happiness Wisdom”, which is a 161-page book on human wisdom based on ancient wisdom from the East and the West, conventional wisdom, and spiritual wisdom, which may all provide guidelines for choosing the happiness ingredients for your own happiness recipe. In addition, the book also provides real examples taken from real life, illustrating how these real people perceive their realities, and thus leading to their happiness or unhappiness.

Human happiness or unhappiness is no more than a perception of the human mind, based on an individual's own life experiences. You think, and your perceptions then become your "realities"; with profound wisdom, you can change how your mind processes your perceptions. Change your mind to change your realities, and live your life as if everything is a miracle! Your life journey is uniquely yours. Make your own happiness recipe from the happiness ingredients of ancient wisdom, conventional wisdom, and spiritual wisdom. Continue your life journey with your own happiness recipe.

Click here to find out more about the book.

Click here to get your digital copy, and here to get your paperback copy.

Stephen Lau

How to Save Your Face

Everybody wants to look young or younger. From a distance, the body shape tells all: if you have a crooked spine or an overweight physique, you look old or older than your age. At close proximity, your face tells all: if you have sunken cheeks, wrinkles, and crow's feet, you look old or older than your age. To look forever young, save your face.

To save your face, protect it from the sun. Sun-exposed face ages much faster and more severely than protected face from the relentless rays of the sun.

Alcohol and smoking may deplete your body of oxygen. Inadequate supply of oxygen creates and develops toxins during metabolism. This explains how you get cramps when certain parts of your body do not have sufficient oxygen supply.

If you are a smoker, a drinker, and a sun worshiper, you get synergistic or multiple effects of aging. You will regret when you reach forty, looking fifty or even sixty. Find out how to quit smoking and stop alcohol addiction.

Eat super foods. Get plenty of vitamin C and vitamin E to neutralize free radicals and counteract cellular damage to your skin. Get these vitamins from natural sources, preferably not from synthetic vitamins tablets. Liquid vitamins are easily absorbed by your body.

Your body needs protein, and so does your skin. Get your protein from plants, such as beans and vegetables (broccoli). If you get protein from animals, the trade off is that you get the fats as well.

Hydrate your skin: drink plenty of water (not just eight glasses of 8 oz water). Your skin cells need water for growth and regeneration. If you feel thirsty, you may already be dehydrated. Remember, your kidneys need water to function efficiently to give your skin its bounciness and firmness, the absence of which is often a sign of old age.

Maintain good atmospheric hydration for healthy and youthful skin. During winter, make sure the air is not too dry; during summer avoid traumatizing heat. If you fly frequently, make sure your skin is moisturized because in high altitude, the pressure on your skin is greater than in the air, resulting in more and faster evaporation.

Don’t scrub or wash your face too many times a day. Your face needs oil production to protect it, so do not strip away those protective oils from your skin. Individuals with a good density of facial oil glands tend to have fewer wrinkles than those who have drier skin. And don’t take a “too hot” bath, because it causes your skin to unduly produce more oil, causing damage in the process.

Cleanse and moisturize you skin with Cetaphil (an inexpensive over-the counter cleanser and moisturizer). Use sunscreen if you are exposed to the sun.

Start protecting your skin at any early age, irrespective of your gender.

Stephen Lau

Copyright © 2018 by Stephen Lau

Let Go of Stress to Look and Stay Younger

Inner peace is anti-aging, while distress is aging. Being a parent, you must learn to let go of everyday stress to look and stay younger.

Stress is normal. Your body needs stress to accept challenges, to concentrate on doing a difficult task, to make important decisions, or even to have sex. But too much stress can accelerate your aging process.

How stress can age you

1. Chronic stress, which causes your body to maintain physiological reactions for long periods of time, especially with respect to the release of hormones, can lead to depletion of vital nutrients in your body, particularly DHEA (a hormone critical to aging and longevity), vitamin C, and the B-complex vitamins.

2. During stress, your body uses its DHEA supply and impairs the functioning of your body’s hormonal glands. According to scientific research, your DHEA levels decrease as you age. Stress is adding insult to injury.

3. Too much stress increases the production of hormone epinephrine, which wears out your hormonal glands.

One interesting study showed that men who practice meditation (an anti-stress strategy) regularly have significantly more DHEA than those who do not, and the difference is even much more significant in the case of women (maybe women do have more stress than men).

Indeed, stress can accelerate the aging process. According to Robert Sapolsky, author of Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, you lose your ability to cope with stress as you age, due to elevated blood pressure, which adversely impacts hormone secretions. In this way, stress can become a vicious circle.

If you wish to remain younger and healthier for longer, do not allow stress into your life.

Living in the present

In addition to meditation, cultivate inner peace to look younger for longer by living in the present, which is essentially acute awareness of what is going on around you, in particular, your body response to it. For example, if you are walking, pay total attention to the surrounding, as well as the movements of your hands and feet, and your breathing, instead of listening to the music or talking on the cell phone. Read my book The Book of Life and Living for more tips on wisdom in living.

Also learn how to make your own natural/organic skin care recipes to rejuvenate your facial beauty from Naturally Skinsational.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© 2018 by Stephen Lau

 

Facial Exercises - Do They Work Or Not?

It is a myth that facial exercises may make you look younger, just as exercising the body tones up your body muscles, thereby making you look younger. But facial exercises are something else.

The explanation is that facial muscles on your facial bones are thin and flat muscles, whose function is to give expressions to your face. Facial exercises, through repeated tightening of the facial muscles, only accelerate the formation of wrinkles. Facial exercising does not enhance the tone of your face, nor does it strengthen your facial skin.

The muscles of facial expression are attached to the skin on your face, and repeated tightening or exercising of those muscles folds your skin over and over until wrinkles are formed on your face. Facial exercises are only a wrinkle workout for you.

Remember, Botox utilizes the same principle of reducing the movement of the muscles around the horizontal lines of the forehead or the smile lines of facial expression in order to make you look younger temporarily. The success of Botox attests to the importance of not exercising your facial muscles.

However, don’t stop smiling! Smiling serves to animate your face, giving it a pleasant expression of youthfulness. Smiling is like a natural exercise, but facial exercising is something else—like using steroids for muscle building.

For absolute facial beauty, do not exercise your face. There are books about facial exercises: they make money from you, but do not make you look younger for longer. Massage is something else: it relaxes and soothes your skin.

Stephen Lau

Copyright ©2018 by Stephen Lau