Happy skin, seasonal shifts, basic but brilliant oils + the peri-meno path

Nourishment will always begin & end within (yep yep yep) but there's a lot more we can do to support our outer envelope through perimenopause + beyond

Autumn. A bridge. Presently, here in South Devon, it’s soggier than a wet dog.

We’ve had a run of crystal-bright, blue-skied days – sun on skin so strong, we couldn’t stay out in it for long – followed by endless mizzle… grey sheets of it… everything misty, damp, sodden.

In Ayurveda, early autumn is characterised by heat. The preceding season will always dictate how we enter + experience the season that follows. A long, hot, sunny summer will heat the body up, and that heat will build up gradually… and sometimes, we may get to a point when that heat begins to go from inner store to outer surface… we may get heat radiating out from the inner creases of elbows or backs of knees, palms of hands, or be more prone to heat rash across the neck and chest… lips may chap or redden… the body is looking for outlets for this heat – ways to disperse + release it.

I am fascinated by skin (always have been). I remember as a very young child, taking olive oil from the kitchen, adding rose petals from the garden, and trying to make my own an-ointments. I was a pretty witchy kid (always making up spells, trying to commune with the ‘spirits’, getting lost up the apple tree at the back of our garden)… and the relationship between ritual + self sowed those early inklings of magical awareness in me.

I was 30 years old when I was appointed Beauty + Health Director at PSYCHOLOGIES magazine. I’d already spent eight years working in editorial – doing everything from investigating the claims of eye-wateringly expensive face creams to trialing myriad holistic protocols, all of which promised to be the holy grail of health. I learned that there is very little substance in the world of beauty + health… that you have to look far, deep, long – learn + listen + question everything (and that marketing budgets still dictate success, although today that’s more likely to be digital marketing).

During my nine years at PSYCHOLOGIES, I was also sent pretty much every single new product to trial + test. Hundreds + hundreds of products, every month, from commercial + designer brands, down to masstige + budget, arrived into the magazine office, where my team + I would divvy them up, hand them out, and put them to the test.

I was an absolute stickler for testing. Every single product that was recommended in our magazine had to have been tested by at least three people, for at least six weeks. That became the foundation for the Real Natural Beauty Awards, where every product INCI (ingredients) list was also reviewed by independent cosmetologists, pharmacists, dermatologists botanists and holistic doctors.

In that time, I walked a lot of testing ground. And found some hands-down favourites, universally loved by our panel of testers, which I still use to this day. You’d think that the most expensive serums, with their extract of caviar or pearl or gold would perform best of all… but we found, year after year, that a lofty price point does not always equate to the actual ingredients’ purity, provenance, efficacy or cost.

At the age of 32, I decided I also wanted to train as a holistic facial therapist, so enrolled at the London School of Beauty Therapy, and completed their Advanced Facial Therapy course over a year of weekends. I had my second baby at 33, and started working from home, at first treating friends + family as I continued to apprentice + train in holistic protocols, including Ayurvedic face mapping + reading, gua sha, lymph massage, face brushing, and during that time I also developed my own skin therapies, which responded to skin in the moment – continually ‘reading’ it – curious about how it responded, what it needed, and how it was asking to be supported.

Since then (ten+ years on), I have continued to practise alongside my work as an editor + author, but never for sustained periods. It calls me back every now + then, and two summers ago I found my perfect-fit residency (here, at the beautiful Holistic Hut in Kent, the heart-child of my beautiful friend Joleene, who is an extremely gifted therapist), but my life always moves me off in other directions… lately, all the way across the country from South East to South West.

So, though I’m no longer practising, I remain fascinated by this intelligent, intuitive skin we’re in. It fascinates me that I have two daughters who have the same two parents, yet their skin is completely different. One has naturally olive, rosey, freckly, hot-to-the-touch skin which is sensitive + can’t tolerate bubbly baths (even hypoallergenic natural ones), essential oil or fragrance. The other has extremely pale, almost ivory, cool, drier skin, that even when exposed to the sun, doesn’t really tan, but also doesn’t burn, and seems never to react to anything.

They need different things e.g. one’s skin drinks up + glows with oils, the other’s does better with cooling creams + rose-based tonics. Watching, listening, responding to our skin is a beautiful dialogue… and though I do miss my hands-on therapies, I love that I can pass the knowledge onto my daughters, and weave my learning into these letters.

As part of these learnings, there’s also unpicking… and I have a theory about why so many women from their 40s onward suffer with rosacea.

As we get closer to menopause – a time when so many of the old truths, patterns, behaviours are called into question and abandoned + when, as so many of my aged 50+ friends have told me: ‘You just stop giving a shit!’ – but first, there is a bridge to cross.

We don’t move from one way of being and presenting in the world – calm, agreeable, lighthearted, smiley, subservient (for example) – to outspoken, bold, brave, truthful, argumentative (for example) – overnight. The old ‘you’ must first be released… a lot of menopausal women describe this as the death of the person they believed themselves to be – perhaps the ‘good wife’, or ‘good daughter’, or ‘kind friend’, or ‘good listener’ – to someone who has far, far less tolerance for any level of pretence.

There’s a sense that menopause cannot be arrived at in a mask. However hard you may try to keep the same, safe clothes on your back, something must be shed. What’s unhelpful, conditioned, forced upon you will not hold. And what’s swallowed down – the bitten tongue + minced words + genuflection + urge to be always amenable – goes up in smoke. And with smoke, there is fire.

And it’s THAT fire – that latent, deep-rooted, burning, ember-in-the-heart HEAT – the stuff that must be known, must be shown, must be seen + heard, that burns up through us as we approach this point in our lives… it’s when many women describe, in quite literal terms, the hot flushes, the blind rages, the seeing red – waves of it – as the harms, hurts, untruths, lies, pain + trauma that haven’t been made sense of, assimilated or reconciled, finally comes up to the surface.

Almost as though our skin starts speaking up FOR us. It is also, far from coincidentally, the time in our lives when we are most likely to experience that inner FIRE as outer FIRE too. And fire, along with the truth, will OUT.

This is such a nuanced, interwoven, complex thing… and not something I can explore in suitable depth in this particular letter… but it is something I’ll return to, as I continue to research the ways in which our bodies/minds/souls/skin changes during this 'threshold’ of our lives – where perimenopause is very similar emotionally, psychologically + physically to our pre-menstrual phase… and some of this also forms part of the book I’m presently writing, which keeps unfolding + expanding, day by day.

My ‘way out’ for latent heat of all kinds tends to be the palms of my hands… it’ll always start with a patch of red, itchy skin in the inner fold between thumb and palm, and if I don’t pay attention (i.e. respond) it will spread… and before I know it, I’ll have red, raw, sore palms for weeks on end.

The things that build + trigger heat in my body? (this will be different for different people) – too many concentrated tomato-ey foods; too much fermented, spicy or salty food. Too much peanut butter. Too many eggs. Red wine or spirits (I love a wee nip of port, but it is so heating!).

I eat + enjoy all of the above, but need to balance them with lots of cooked, cooling greens, clear broths, warm water, cooling herbal teas (fennel, mint, rose, liquorice) + cooling foods such as carrots, beetroot, celery, courgette, cucumber, squash, apples, pears, coconut, coriander. Almost like clockwork I also come to crave celery, beetroot + apple juice at this time of year (random I know, but a South London cafe close to where I used to work did an ABC (Apple, Beetroot, Celery) juice, and my body would yearn for it throughout late summer + early Autumn (the body’s intelligence is a truly wondrous thing).

I also share some of the ways in which I balance the heat in my system in this episode of my old podcast, here, if you’re interested :)

Alongside the many emotional + underlying reasons for rosacea (most commonly diagnosed in women of ‘middle age’), the main physical reason is a compromised skin barrier following the use of aggressive skincare products (often, the daily ‘acids’ – seemingly innocuous AHA toners, which brighten + exfoliate), but can, over time, thin + sensitise the skin. AHAs (alpha-hydroxy-acids) promote the effect they do by irritating the skin’s surface, which triggers a mild inflammatory response; i.e. it’s the inflammation that causes the skin to swell slightly (yep, in beauty marketing, it is called ‘plumping’).

And there’s nothing really wrong with that in isolation, but when you repeat that process, day after day, the inflammatory response can move from low-level to a higher grade of inflammation, where skin is sensitised and irritated for a longer time. I have seen this dozens of times in my holistic practice and it is my opinion that the over-use of acids, exfoliants and harsh cleansers (often foaming; look out for Sodium Laureth Sulphate, and avoid if you can) can contribute to persistent redness, or rosacea.

I’ve also talked about this with my friend, Sharon McGlinchey, holistic skin therapist + founder of MV Skintherapy. In her 40+ year career, treating women day in day out, she has seen a steep rise in the prevalence of sensitivity, redness, rosacea and skin inflammation, which she puts down to over-exfoliating, acids + inexpert use of light treatments, including LED and laser.

We have one skin for life, and it does not have an inexhaustible capacity to renew + replenish itself, so in my view, we need to be as gentle as we can with it, and respectful of its in-built repair process.

For me then – seeing + feeling the changes in my skin as I move from my early to mid-40s and beyond, I’ve noticed a shift.

The main ways in which our skin might change as we enter perimenopause

1. The drop in our oestrogen levels can lead to skin beginning to feel noticeably drier – this seems to happen almost overnight for some women

2. Skin can begin to feel itchier + more irritated, and needs to be moisturised more often in order to feel ‘comfortable’

3. The same old products we’ve used, and tolerated, may suddenly become irritating to us

4. The skin, particularly around the mouth and eyes, can become sensitised more easily, and may react to products more than normal

5. Eyes may become more sore + dry, and you may find that your usual mascara or eye cream causes a reaction

6. Skin may begin to show more pronounced pigmentation and we may become more sensitive to UV light

I have typically T-zone-oily Mediterranean skin, but it’s also sensitive, and I am prone to dehydration. Dehydration is different to dryness – the former is lack of water in the skin (or the skin’s impaired ability to hold onto water in the epidermis), whereas dryness is lack of natural oils + sebum.

Both become common as we age… and both can be supported, naturally + effectively, with the right approach.

As I’ve aged, my skin has needed a more responsive approach. I find that I can’t carry on using the same things, day in, day out, for months on end. Perhaps that’s my skin reminding me that I’m never the same from one day to the next, either. And certainly, my skin also has a cyclical + seasonal pattern (one I’ll explore in the next SKIN post, in November).

But, just to keep it interesting, it doesn’t tolerate lots of change either, and constantly trying new things, or layering up too many things, is also very likely to irritate.

Here, then, are my seven Doses for this beautiful, earthly envelope we call our SKIN. The first one, because it’s my seasonal shift every year + how I adapt things as the mercury dips and my skin gets a little drier or more tender.

The other recommendations begin to explore some of the things I’ve come to rely on to keep my skin calm, happy and nourished – naturally – as I get older (which, in spite of what the marketing teams might sell to us in the form of every ANTI-ageing product out there, is nothing other than a blessing, every. single. day).

7 Daily Doses for Happier Skin, Naturally

1. An Autumn Bath… bliss.
   I am the only person in my birth family of five who enjoys a bath. My siblings + parents are stalwart shower-ers. Whereas, funnily enough, in my own family of Mr R and our two girls, we would all choose a bath over a shower every day of the week (my eldest actually refuses to shower at all… she hates the feeling of the water beating down on her).
   
   Come the cooler months, a deep, hot, oily, salted, bath is my idea of heaven. If my skin is feeling tender, I will add a cupful of Dead Sea salts – I love the Zaytoun one (also sold via Oxfam stores all around the UK) which comes from the Dead Sea in Palestine and supports a brilliant social enterprise in the region. I’ll add a slug of neutral oil such as jojoba (FYI at this time of year I also find nut oils, rosehip oil + sesame oil too heating for my skin if it’s ‘hot’ or tender that day).
   
   I also add a cupful of food grade baking soda (I use this one) if I am feeling off-balance in my body… perhaps my digestion has been off, or I feel a bit ‘acidic’ (this might be a sour taste in my mouth, skin redder than usual, my stools looser than normal), and just feel as though I need to neutralise + rebalance my skin. This ‘acidity’ is also linked to an excess of heat (pitta) in Ayurveda, and another tell-tale sign for me is if my eyes are unusually red, sore or prickly-feeling.
   
   I realise as I write these things down that I work on intuition a lot, so would also encourage you to feel into what you might enjoy in your own bath… which oil (neutral: jojoba or sunflower? cooling: Coconut? heating: Sesame?) Which salt (epsom, sea salt, magnesium flakes, Dead Sea?) Which essential oil? Personally, I can’t go wrong with geranium which is profoundly balancing for women’s health + hormones, and is used in Neal’s Yard Remedies’ award-winning Women’s Balance blend. Other women I know thrive on lemon + basil (energising + cleansing), may chang + rosemary (mood-boosting + clarifying), rose + jasmine (heart-bolstering, sensual).

2. Super, simple, serums
   In my facial therapy room, I relied on a couple of different, very gentle, universally-well-tolerated serums, for most of my clients. Madara’s Hydra Intense Rose Jelly was one of them, and it’s also what my 14-year-old, who has naturally drier skin, and my 12-year-old, who needs a lightweight, natural moisturiser, both use at home too. I will always return to it, but last year, aware that my skin needed a bit ‘more’ than it was receiving, I upped the nourishment by switching to their Hydra Firm Hyaluron Jelly. Same easily absorbed, lightweight, highly hydrating ‘jelly’ texture, but with some additional deep-hydrating + firming benefits. I did notice an uptick in hydration, but don’t think it did much on the firming front… which brings me onto number 3…