FAQs

• Use a natural bristle brush  and it is well worth the effort it will take to find a good brush.
  
  (the Riffi brush  - pictured here - makes an ideal one)
• Use on a dry skin, before your shower or bath.
• Used daily, you need only brush for a few minutes but a minimum of 3 times a week works produces excellent results too.

The skin is an excretory organ and will be working just as hard overnight as it did during the day.  Also because there is very little gravitational pull and muscular or skeletal movement as you lie sleeping, the system of waste removal from within the tissues slows and drainage is not effective. 
Your cleansing routine in the morning is a good way of getting the whole system up and running quickly, as well as cleaning off the debris of dead skin which is ready to slough off and the residue of the night preparations you used.
 

A cleanser can be judged to be good if it loosens well but is easily removed.
Toners can be judged to be good if they remove well, but are mild. Those labelled for dry or sensitive skins are usually good whatever your skin type.  Make sure your cotton-wool is kept quite wet during the whole removal process.
 

To my mind, your toner is more important than your cleanser.  If you are pressed for time in the mornings, use a liberal amount of toner on cotton wool and do that twice.  That would be more effective than using the cleanser only. 
The evening cleanse is just too important to miss doing thoroughly.

 You should be using both of them liberally.  If the cost of your products does not allow you to do so, then try to find ones that work effectively, fit into your budget AND allow you to be liberal with them.
 

Our skin is an organ that requires a constant turnover of new cells.   These form and move up towards the surface, changing as they pass through the layers of the Stratum Corneum, where they slough off.  This continuous production of cells is called differentiation. 
Vitamin A plays an important part in the differentiation of cell structures and without it the process cannot be completed.  If we have only a little, the process does not lead to optimal functioning of cells being created; but if there is enough available within the cell, then the daughter cells produced can be healthier than the mother cell.
Differentiation is a lifetime process.  As our diets are often poor and global pollution levels are high, it follows that topically applied vitamins can be beneficial for life.
 

The Vitamin A found mostly in the epidermis is Retinyl Palmitate and the very much stronger version – Retinoic Acid - is found within the cells. The body produces it’s own very clever way of changing one into the other, as needed.  I feel we should follow this long-established body wisdom and use Retinyl Palmitate on the epidermis too.
 

The smaller the grain the better.  If you buy a product that has got too large a grain and is ‘scratchy’, you don’t need to throw it away.  Adding a small amount of your cleanser to it in your hand, will provide a buffering to the granules.  Remember, it is you who are providing the energy of this method of exfoliation so you can easily keep a lighter pressure.
 

Man-made spheres are more smoothly rounded than naturally ground products (like almonds and walnuts).  The one downside of the man-made ones is that they are attracted to our static electricity and can be tricky to remove from the hairline.

Fine skin does not need to be exfoliated very often, so you can either start with once a fortnight and then observe whether you need to do it more or less often – or leave it to your Therapist to do, if you have one.  Other conditions where caution should be practiced are those skins with lots of capillaries close to the surface, Rosacea, fragile or thin skins and acne.