Today is my day off. And what did I do as far as my little self indulgent beauty treatment? Why, I exfoliated of course, which I try to do once a week. It doesn’t always work out that way, especially if we’re travelling on the weekend, but this week it did get to work out.
I used my home microdermabrasion product, which is on and off my face in about one minute since you don’t want to over do it with these microderm products or you may over irritate your skin or remove TOO MANY dead skin cells, which can leave your face wide open to damaging environmental factors such as UV rays and pollution.
After I gently exfoliated, I decided to forego that typical second step since I’d be getting in the sauna and didn’t want my skin to be too exposed, which is the light acid peel I do on my face after the microderm. This usually leaves your skin looking red and irritated, but it looks really smooth and radiant a few days later, like you have new skin – because you do!
After gently patting my skin dry and rinsing it with ice cold water to seal the pores shut again, I got on my sauna clothes which consist of shorts and a tank top – yes, even in the winter that’s what you have to wear in a sauna, and went downstairs to the basement where we keep our infrared sauna. I baked in it for about 45 minutes, reading a good book, and then fell asleep (yes, more pampering) for a bit before waking up feeling refreshed and relaxed.
My skin was a bit pink when I got out, but it looked healthy and felt really smooth and almost wrinkle free. They say that infrared saunas help increase the circulation in your skin, but there is also speculation that the deep heating of the infrared heat helps to regenerate collagen production again. Not sure how much validity there is to that, but I do know that the thermage technique is supposed to regenerate collagen using deep heating too, so who knows.
