3 Reasons Why Your Skincare Routine Should Not Only Include Your Face

At Bushbalm™, we love to see that facial skincare is trending - but why stop there?! All of your skin, including your tush, thighs, stomach, armpits and bikini line, deserve the same care and attention as your face. After all, your skin is the largest organ of the body and healthy skin is essential to your body’s overall wellbeing. That being said, allow me to tell you why your skincare routine should not only include your face. 

Improve Well-Being & Mental Health

A consistent body care routine can increase your level of well-being and mental health.  You heard me right. This may seem like a bit of a stretch but I'll break it down for you. A study conducted by Yangmei Luo and his colleagues found that when humans experience “positive anticipation for a future event”, their overall well-being increases substantially (here’s a link to the study if you want to read more). 

So what does this have to do with body care? A body care routine can increase the number of things in your life to positively anticipate and in turn improve your overall well-being.

Imagine you have an upcoming event where you need to be in a swimsuit. It’d be hard to focus on how much fun you’ll have, when all you can think about is your razor burn; or cellulite; or hyperpigmentation; or any other totally common skin concerns. On the other hand, if you have a holy grail body care routine that you can count on to keep your skin looking/feeling its best, you can blissfully forget about your skin concerns and enjoy the positive anticipation leading up to the event. 

With consistent use, body care products, like our Exfoliating Sugar Scrub or Nude Oil, will target and treat your concerns so that you can get excited to show off your skin, as opposed to dreading it. By inviting more positive anticipation into your life, you will leave yourself open to the possibility of improving your well-being & mental health.

 Long-Term Benefits

After my last point, some of you may be thinking: ‘I'll do body care when I have an important event coming up - why should I have to make it a routine?’. 

Well, I’ll tell you why: when it comes to the skin, consistency is key. Establishing a body care routine is an extremely effective (& natural) way to experience long term benefits - not just temporary results.

For instance, getting into the routine of exfoliating your body 2-3 times a week can boost your collagen production. Collagen is the key to youthful-looking skin because it maintains the skin’s elasticity. With each year that passes, an adult will lose collagen and elastin which eventually leads to gradual sagging and wrinkles. But there’s an upside - collagen production can be stimulated and built up! 

Exfoliation is an easy and effective way to stimulate collagen. When the skin is exfoliated, it activates fibroblasts; fibroblasts are cells that are responsible for making collagen (to learn more about the process of fibroblast activation click here). Simply put, consistent body exfoliation can slow down the aging process by boosting collagen production throughout the entire body.

This is one of many examples of how consistent body care can produce long term benefits.

Boost Skin Regeneration

Finally, investing your time into a weekly body care routine can boost skin regeneration. 

Skin regeneration is the process by which the skin sheds dead skin cells to replace them with new skin cells. In our youth, the skin will regenerate fairly quickly (within approximately 28 days). As we age, the skin regeneration process slows down significantly. The issue is that the longer the skin takes to regenerate, the more time dead skin cells will rest on the surface of the skin. The more dead skin cells on the surface of the skin, the more dull your skin will appear. 

So how will my body care routine aid skin regeneration? A body care routine will boost skin regeneration by minimizing the amount of time that dead skin cells spend on the surface of your skin. 

There are different steps/products that you can work into your body care routine to boost skin regeneration: 

1. The first, and probably the most obvious, is exfoliation. Exfoliation, whether it be with  a dry brush, or sugar scrub, or both, will speed up the shedding process by physically removing dead skin cells from the surface of the skin.
2. The second product is a moisturizer or soothing oil to follow exfoliation. Exfoliation can strip your skin of its natural oils if it is not followed up with a moisturizer to replenish the skin. A moisturizer, like our Nude Oil, will hydrate the new and emerging skin cells, giving your skin the natural glow that comes with freshly regenerated skin.

All in all, your skincare routine should not just include your face because body care has the potential to: 1) improve your well-being & mental health; 2) produce long term health benefits; and 3) boost skin regeneration.