The Beauty in Creating a
Sense of Calm
As a doctor of women, one of the most common questions I address in the exam room is why and how our hormones affect our mood, metabolism and skin. Face-to-face, with my patient I can interpret so much about her status from that first visual connection. Our skin, particularly our facial skin, reflects so much information about our hormonal status. I can relate from personal experience as to how variation, not just in hormones, but in stress levels, sleep patterns, diet and genetics affect us and our largest organ: our skin. As I myself navigate each of these influences and look for solutions, I can share my insights to help us all address these challenges throughout the month, and as we age. One of my most effective solutions it to create a sense of calmness in our lives, our moods, and our metabolism… and this will reflect in our skin.
Calming Ritual in three steps:
1. Get Adequate Sleep
When one of my patients is feeling out of balance, one of the questions I always ask is her amount of quality sleep. Try for a minimum of seven hours and consider a fitness tracker to determine if you are experiencing disrupted sleep. There are a number of techniques and herbal supplements that can help with good quality sleep, but the first step is to make a conscious effort to clock it in.
2. Create a Mindfulness Moment in your Day
One of the quickest ways to create a sense of calm is to take five minutes for a meditative practice incorporating deep breathing in a quiet and soothing pose. I start each morning by sitting comfortably straight in my bed, arms relaxed at my sides, and breathing in deeply, exhaling slowly as I imagine my day to come. I visualize the day exactly as I want it to happen, closing with a feeling of gratitude.
2. Skin Calming Regimen
One of the best ways to achieve clear, glowing skin is to create a regimen of cleansing and treating the skin with ingredients that help offset and prevent disruption. You will know that your skin needs calming if it has redness or blotchiness. Blemishes are another sign of inflammation and the treatments that are often used to “zap” them can irritate the surrounding skin, furthering the need for calming. If you notice that your sunglasses marks are slow to disappear, that is another sign of inflammation of the skin, and a calming ritual can help to ease the puffiness and lack of “bounce-back” in tired, irritated skin. There are many factors that influence disruptions to skin, hormonal change being a leading contributor.
Hormonal variation throughout the month can make it challenging to keep skin consistent and calm, and hormonal decline as we age furthers this dilemma. That is one of the reasons we developed VENeffect Skin Care. VENeffect is designed to create the “Venus Effect”, that beautiful balance in skin when we are at our peak hormonally, creating a calmness and a glow that is natural and effortless. Our line consists of ten products, each designed to inspire vitality in skin, and the most recent specifically designed to calm skin:
VENeffect Skin Calming Mask - with pink clay and calamine, calms and brightens, while reducing uneven skin tone and age spots as it smooths and refines the skin’s surface. This mask is a calming pleasure to use, as the lovely pink clays and calamine create a thin layer that dries down to almost pure translucency within five minutes. You can rinse it off or keep on trouble zones over night or even under makeup.
VENeffect Skin Calming Mist - is a refreshing cloud-like mist that instantly hydrates, calms and infuses the skin with phyto-nutrients to create a beautiful dewy glow. A perfect companion to the mask, simply mist over skin after rinsing and lock in that lovey, calm skin with a touch of hydration that lasts all day. Reapply throughout the day to renew that calm, hydrated glow.Creating a sense of calm in our lives is a wonderful gift of beauty and well-being. At VENeffect, we strive to share understanding and solutions with that goal in mind.
About Rebecca Booth M.D.:
Rebecca Booth, M.D. is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist who has been practicing medicine for over 30 years as Co-Managing Partner in one of the largest OB/GYN practices in the southeast of the United States: Women First of Louisville. She is a nationally recognized expert in hormonal wellness and author of The Venus Week: Discover the Powerful Secret of Your Cycle…At Any Age (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2008). She, together with her sister Cecil Booth, founded an anti-aging skin care line, VENeffect, with a breakthrough phytoestrogen technology to replenish lost elasticity and luminosity. She has appeared on The Today Show and been extensively featured in leading women’s magazines including O: The Oprah Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Glamour Shape, Prevention, and Self. She has been published in leading medical journals. Dr. Booth earned her medical degree from the University of Louisville School of Medicine. She resides in Louisville, Kentucky.
