5 Swedish Lifestyle Tips for Radiant and Youthful Skin

Simple Habit Changes Can Lead To Significant Skin Improvements

Stare at a photo of Nicole Winter for as long as you wish and you’d never be able to guess her age correctly. This Swedish Hollywood star and Stråla Founder looks incredibly healthy and youthful. Her Scandinavian roots influenced her beauty rituals and taught her important lifestyle habits that helped her retain her radiance as she aged.

Nicole Winter's Top Swedish Lifestyle Tips For Beautiful Skin

Lucky for us, she’s not stingy with her skincare secrets and has shared a few top tips on how she keeps her skin youthful and supple.

1. Get Your Beauty Sleep (And a Silk Pillowcase)

Sleep is probably the cheapest skin rejuvenation product out there. And, even better, we all have access to it. Getting about seven to nine hours of sleep every night is super beneficial for the health of your skin.

Your body detoxifies and your skin is rejuvenating while you sleep by producing new collagen as part of its “repair process.” Plus, ample shut-eye helps keep your eye area bright and inflammation free. When we lack sleep, the veins under the thin skin near our eyes begin to dilate causing dark rings and puffiness.

Also, a silk pillowcase can help fend off fine lines and prevent acne. But, don’t forget to wash it regularly. Silk absorbs less moisture than cotton, so it allows skin on your face to remain more hydrated than it would on other fabrics. If you have dry skin or live in a dry climate, a silk pillowcase is especially important for healthy facial skin.

That said, put down your phone at night and sleep your way to even more beautiful skin.

2. Implement Habits to Reduce Stress

Or at least manage stress as well as you can. Stress causes the skin to release cortisol (the stress hormone) leading to an increase in the skin’s oil release and eventual production of pimples.

Meditation is a great de-stressor and can work wonders not only for the skin, but also for the mind, body, and soul. Meditation is known to create a relaxing feeling by bringing positive energy into one’s body. This tranquility inducing energy comes with mindful breathing and increased oxygen which boosts cellular health and rejuvenates skin thereby improving complexion, reducing wrinkles, and slowing down the aging process.

Renowned dermatologists also agree that stress and stress-related hormones can adversely affect the skin and practicing meditation to help reduce stress, therefore improving the skin’s appearance.

Swedish people generally find happiness in simplicity and try not to over stress about things out of their control. Take a page from their book and relax today.

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3. No Smoking

This may be obvious, but it is worth re-iterating: smoking is bad for your skin. There are more than 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke. These chemicals deteriorate collagen and elastin, which are the fibers that give skin its strength and elasticity. This leads to loose, thinning skin. Smoking also depletes oxygen and narrows blood vessels, which decreases blood flow and starves skin of needed nutrients.

Put the cigarette away and skin will begin to recover from the wrinkles, uneven skin tone, and loose skin developed while smoking. Within only a few weeks after stopping to smoke, skin complexion will be visibly brighter. Then, after six months, skin will begin to return to its original vitality.

4. Exercise regularly

Swedish culture promotes an active lifestyle, especially in the summers when the weather is perfect outdoors. For all of us skincare lovers, it’s good to know that this outdoor activity will not only help us de-stress, but will also help skin maintain a youthful glow.

So how is that possible? Well, first, sweating has plenty of benefits for skin on the face, neck, hands… anywhere sweat glands are present. As we sweat, our bodies release toxins and impurities built up internally. Sweating also helps purge skin of all the toxins from the environment that accumulated on our skin and in our pores. Further, sweat washes away dead skin cells.

And, if sweat doesn’t wash away the toxins or dead skin cells, then the shower or cleanse after the workout should – leaving your skin fresh, clean, and radiant. A post workout wash is especially important because the urea content in sweat can irritate the epidermis if left un-washed for a long period.

These sweaty workouts are known to improve circulation too. When we exercise, our blood vessels dilate and carry more nutrients and oxygen throughout the body to support strenuous exercise and to support skin cells – leading to improved skin tone, clarity, and texture.

In fact, researchers studied the skin effects of regular exercise on adults and the results showed that adults 40+ had the supple and elastic skin of those over a 10 years younger and, at the microscopic level, skin appeared up to 25 years younger.

Now, with that information in your arsenal, head outside and sweat!

5. Enjoy the Great Outdoors

Sometimes leaving the house and taking a walk for some fresh air and a healthy dose of nature is really what our skin needs. The act of solely being outdoors in nature exposes our skin to sunlight UV rays, which stimulate the skin to produce the vitamin D that bodies use to absorb calcium and mineralize. Plus, the plants and trees in nature mean you are hopefully in an area of higher quality air filled with oxygen and less pollutants. This can help skin appear more toned, healthy, and vibrant.

Sunlight from being outdoors also helps with mental well-being and the health of the central nervous system through boosting the brain’s release of the hormone serotonin. Serotonin helps boost mood and elicit a calm and focused mental state. Lastly, being outdoors in the sunlight also helps regulate our internal clock so we can fall asleep on time and allow our skin to recover and beautify in bed.

Please remember though to always apply sunscreen and try to stay away from strong direct sunlight especially when the UV rays are harshest. Researchers say skin only needs 10-15 minutes of sunlight daily for us to reap the rewards.

There is a lot to explore, so start enjoying the great outdoors today.

Enjoy These Swedish Lifestyle Tips For Beautiful Mature Skin

Overall, you may have caught on that a balanced lifestyle leads to beautiful skin. No surprise there.

Nicole Winter, Stråla Founder, enjoys the “short-lived but radiating sunlight” in Sweden each winter and, even in that climate, still attempts to walk outside for an hour each day. This combines stress relief, exercise, and being outdoors for the perfect natural skincare triple threat (plus exercise and sunlight assist with sleep, so we’ll call it a quadruple threat).