Beauty Blog
Olide but Goodie - Dry Body Brushing
Beauty Blog: Body Care
This blog was originally posted when Pamper Yourself Denver first started blogging over a year ago. It is a great blog about body brushing so we wanted to share it again.
Do you shower every morning?
Before you shower....take care of your skin, and your body...by giving it a dry brush.
What the heck is a ”dry brush”? you ask.
Simple. Take that long-handled brush that you use right now when you shower (always assuming it has natural, not synthetic, bristles) and, while your skin is dry, brush yourself, starting from your toes upward, in brisk, upward movements, toward your heart.
Now you’re asking, why?
Simple. Dry brushing stimulates your skin, and the subcutaneous parts of your skin, which helps your circulation, helps get rid of cellulite (after a several-month period) and helps your skin maintain its health.
What are the scientific proofs behind this, I hope you’re asking now.
Dry brushing has been popular at European spas and in many cancer treatment centers for the last 30 years, first advocated by Dr. Paavo Airola of Finland. Russians, Turks and Scandinavians have used this treatment for centuries.
That’s historical precedent. What about scientific?
Howard Murad, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist and author of The Cellulite Solution is a champion of dry-brushing. He points out that it “stimulates blood and lymph flow, exfoliates the skin and encourages new cell growth.”
Most women are really concerned about cellulite, the fatty deposits on our hips and thighs. According to Murad, skin brushing can help control this, by stimulating the journey of nutrients and oxygen to the outer layer of skin. “Although there are no blood vessels in the epidermis (that outer layer), the dermis (the layer of skin just under the epidermis) is rich with blood vessels, and the epidermis receives nutrients and oxygen supply from the dermis.”
In addition to stimulating that blood and oxygen flow to help with cellulite, dry brushing is useful for a number of other reasons. The skin is an organ - the largest organ your body has, and it is responsible about one quarter of your body’s “detoxification” each day. Most of this detoxing comes out as waste acids, through your sweat glands.
Sweat is not just something that occurs when you exercise hard, although it is a necessary function of the body at that time. Part of sweating is to cool your body, but another part of it is to release impurities. Chemical analysis of sweat shows that it has almost the same constituents as urine. (Charming thought!) If the pores of your skin become choked with dead skin cells, it’s that much harder for the sweat to release the impurities...and places an extra burden on your kidneys to do so.
Lymphatic system
Blood is considered to be the important fluid in the body… but there is more lymph in our bodies than blood. Lymph consists of white blood cells in an “interstitial” fluid that bring nutrients to our cells and removes waste. By stimulating the movement of lymph, you help your body detoxify all the quicker each day.
There are a host of other reasons to pamper yourself with a five-minute session of dry brushing every morning, but these will do to get on with!
Oh, I can hear you asking a final question. Wouldn’t all this good stuff happen to you when you brush yourself while taking a shower or bath? No. The water makes your skin more elastic, and defeats the purpose. It’s dry brush all the way.
After you dry brush, then it’s time to hit the showers.
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November 6, 2009 Bookmark and Share
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