With the time you spend on the health of your body, it’s easy to overlook spending some time on your skin. The good news is that the regular exercise is already helping your skin, by increasing circulation and the sweat pouring out of your pores is helping to keep them clog and toxin-free. Here are a few easy ways to ensure that your skin stays as healthy and youthful as your body.
Gentle Cleanser
Use as gentle a cleanser as you can on your body – especially if you are showering more than once a day. Harsh cleansers (even those that are anti-bacterial) can actually leave your skin more prone to a breakout than a gentler alternative. By stripping your skin of its natural moisture barrier, these cleansers can leave an open door for bacteria and can also cause inflammation on their own.
Tip: Avoid long lists of ingredients. Instead, look for simple lists of natural substances.
Moisturize!
Whether you run in the Arizona desert or the Georgia humidity, your body (and particularly your skin) is shedding moisture with every step – mile after mile. Of course you know that proper hydration is important for your performance, so we won’t even spend much time on that. If you’re drinking enough to stay on top of your game, you’re probably drinking enough for healthy skin, but you really can’t go wrong with another water bottle, so drink up!
Unfortunately for your skin, simply drinking more isn’t enough. With wind and heat and the constant evaporation of moisture from the surface of your skin, you’re going to need a good moisturizer – and you’re going to need it just about everywhere, so look of a noncomedogenic formula that won’t clog your pores. Then buy the biggest bottle of it you can find and keep it in your running bag.
Tip: Use the moisturizer on your feet to ward off the drying and cracking that can take place – especially during the weeks leading up to a race.
Sunscreen, Sunscreen, Sunscreen
This probably is not news to you – especially if you are a long-distance runner and spend more than an hour pounding the pavement or hitting the trails every day – but a regular sunscreen will fail miserably in the face of everything you put it through over the course of your daily run. You need a sweat-proof formula that is going to stay put mile after mile. Find as high an SPF as you can (70-80 or more if you can find it). If you’re spending this much time outside anyway, you’ll still be tan through the sunscreen but you’ll at least be protecting your skin as much as possible from the aging and drying effects of the sun.
Tip: If you are logging 50 or more miles per week, first of all, congratulations. But seriously, check-in regularly with your dermatologist for a skin cancer screening and have her track the size and color of any moles or dark spots you find.
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