The real prize: Beautiful Skin or Healthy Skin ?
The quest for lasting youth and flawless beauty is as old as
man. Throughout the ages and despite the fickle craft of
fashion, a beautiful skin has remained the most constant and
prized possession. One merely has to page through an edition
of a beauty therapy magazine, to stand in awe of the enormous
investments in time, money and brain power locked in this
search for the seemingly elusive skin "alchemy".
Healthy skin on the other hand appears to be much more of a
medical domain, yet aside the efforts to promote good, safe
sun practices, little appears to exist in the medical literature
that specifically address the principles and practice of skin
health as such.
Such complexity and diversity of treatments in beauty therapy,
makes it very hard to decipher which treatments will be the
most successful to produce beautiful skin. On the other hand
one may ask what needs to be done to obtain healthy skin?
Perhaps two simple definitions may help to solve this
seemingly deepening riddle.
First a working definition for beautiful skin. Beautiful skin,
probably is best defined as skin which is smooth, firm, evenly
toned with tight pores and possessing a dynamic blood and
lymphatic circulation.
Healthy skin on the other hand can be defined as skin where
the cells of the skin produce healthy, highly specialised new
cells, membranes, collagen, elastin, and the all important
"glue" together with the inter-cellular connections, which
ensures a resilient and flexible living laminate.
The question is: are these two ideas or definitions compatible
within any treatment approach for obtaining beautiful skin?
In this, the beginning of the 21st century of human biological
science, medical science in particular is increasingly dealing
with intelligent cellular communication and behaviour. The
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science of how cells communicate with each other and how
food, medicine or toxins have an influence on this
communication process is fast becoming the direction most
medical treatments will be moving to.
It makes very simple and powerful sense: get cells to behave
like stem cells so that ageing and sick tissue can return to a
state akin to that of a healthy child. One merely has to look at
the skin of a healthy 4 year old to understand how powerful a
tool this can be in skin.
Vitamin A is very interesting in this respect, because it is the
most powerful signal cells have to induce the formation of
healthy, young, vital and highly specialised cells in all respects.
Add sufficient vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene and any
number of other powerful anti-oxidants into the equation and
cells will "perceive" pure, harmonious instructions for their
functions and behaviour.
Once cells behave as "happy", healthy cells producing healthy
proteins lipids and sugars, the skin appearance gets a
particular character.
It becomes smooth, firm, evenly toned with tight pores and has
dynamic blood and lymph circulations. It contains healthy
new cells, membranes, collagen, elastin and the all important
"glue" and inter-cellular connections, which ensures a resilient
and flexible living laminate.
The skin treated by the method of Advanced Vitamin Skin
Therapy or AVST as pioneered by Dr. Des Fernades and
successfully propagated by the Environ® skin care company,
is healthy skin in the first place.
Looking however at our definitions above and the descriptions
of the end result of AVST, it becomes clear that lasting
beautiful skin in essence, healthy skin.
Environ® AVST is not science fiction - it is standard
contemporary and very available beauty therapy practice.
Using the ability of carefully chosen molecules, in carefully
balanced formulations, AVST is able to help instruct skin cells
to function at their optimum level. This produces healthy,
optimally functioning skin cells, with a beautiful appearance.
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As the science of cell behaviour develops, it is perhaps time to
shift the skin beauty paradigm to the domain of skin health.
Once one grasps the fundamental role that optimally healthy
cells play in creating a structure like beautiful skin, the
apparent mystery of how to obtain or recover beautiful skin
becomes easy to grasp.
AVST assists the rest of the complex signaling systems
inherent to every human skin, to create healthy cells, which in
turn produces the type of highly desirable skin know as truly
beautiful skin. And to boot, it does so in a lasting manner.
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