Active vs Passive Skin Healers

If you’ve been curious about how routine shifts can change your skin health and why some habits take more time to elicit results, start thinking about your daily actions as having active or passive benefits to better grasp the body-skin connection.

Why I began dividing skin-health habits into two categories—

It’s becoming increasingly common knowledge that engaging with certain diet and lifestyle habits can help boost overall skin health and aid in healing inflammatory skin conditions. You may have heard it from your esthetician, read it in an article, or seen a reel about how activities such as regular exercise, sufficient water intake, proper sleep, lowered stress levels, and minimized intake of sweets and dairy can help you achieve your ideal skin. If you’re anything like me, this list may have made your head spin, especially if you’re in the throes of your skin healing journey, leaving you thinking “First of all, I do some of those things?? And second, does it really have to take so damn much to have normal skin?". If this is you, I see you. Good critical thinking skills. Read on.

Once I went to school for nutrition, I realized a couple of main factors that changed the way I understood how both skin health and healing works:

1. The body is a conglomerate of systems that all talk to each other, making it impossible for anything chronic to be of total isolated origin 

2. Some of the best practices for skin health have seemingly nothing to do with the skin itself, but actually downstream systems that have a feedback loop to it

3. This means diet and lifestyle habits can have both active (direct) and passive (cumulative) benefits— both create forward motion, but one instigates visible change more rapidly than the other

Oftentimes, the best skin healing/health habits aren't a fast track, but a path paver. Below are some examples of this, as well as how to begin applying them to your routine for elevated skin health.

The difference between active and passive habits—

Active (direct) habits can change the way your skin looks or functions quickly, providing near-instant or expedited improvement. These habits also have a cumulative effect, but tend to initiate visual change more rapidly. Active skin healers include using the right skincare products (ideally a nutrient-rich and personalized regimen), getting regular skin treatments, engaging with lymphatic massage, taking the right supplements to expedite imbalance correction, and cutting out inflammatory foods or personal triggers (alcohol, sugar, refined foods, etc). 

Passive (downstream) habits are cumulative, meaning you must engage with them regularly in order for the results to be reflected in your skin. They are one part in the story, benefitting many facets of your health. Although these habits start to work right away, experiencing the peak outcome happens through consistent engagement over time. Habits that affect skin health in a passive manner include regular movement, adequate hydration, stress relief, proper sleep, and consistently meeting nutrient needs through intake of a diverse range of whole foods.

How you can begin to integrate this concept—

The good news is, this means you can work towards your skin goals in a short and long-term way, beginning to reap the benefits now and really owing it to your past-self in the long-run. In order to get the ball rolling, you must start small (overwhelm is at the root of routine dysfunction). Here are two ways to start integrating active and passive skin healers into your daily rhythm–

ACTIVE— Integrate a “treatment” step into your otherwise gentle skincare regimen:

1. Instead of using a skincare lineup that is all actives (which usually results in a compromised skin barrier, more inflammation, and sometimes worsening of symptoms), keep your baseline AM/PM regimen hydrating, balancing, and protective

2. After defining your base regimen, start to give your skin a calculated dose of correction and stimulation in a bi-nightly, weekly, or monthly manner (depending on your skin type and history with actives as well as which form and intensity of treatment)

PASSIVE— Stay hydrated on a consistent basis:

1. Eat your hydration by increasing daily fruit, vegetable, and fiber intake

2. Switch up your liquid hydration game with bone broth, herbal tea, and/or chlorophyll drops

3. Keep a water glass or bottle full and in-sight at your desk or work station

4. Cut back on intake of dehydrating liquids such as alcohol and caffeine

If the thought of understanding how to sustainably integrate all these categories into your routine overwhelms you, don’t let it. It’s easier than you might think when building out your ideal routine slowly and intentionally. You might already have a flow with some of these habits while others are feeling far out of your ethos. This is the core of what The Routine Service offers, guiding you to your sustainable sweet spot with your internal and external habits; pulling together the active and passive aspects of your routine, resulting in elevated confidence in your actions and, ultimately,  appearance.

Full Service is a monthly subscription that blends internal and external routine refinement by combining personalized health coaching and skin treatments.