While you are sitting around the Thanksgiving table discussing the fabulous cooked turkey, delicious sweet potatoes, and indulging in your second piece of pumpkin pie, don’t forget to impress upon the crowd that November is Healthy Skin Month. Yes, perhaps in preparation for the cold, harsh months ahead, November is officially designated as National Healthy Skin month in the United States.
A Few Fun Skin Facts:
- There are two diverse types of skin. Glabrous skin, which is non- hairy skin and the other one is Hairy skin.
- The average person has 21 square feet of skin, 300 million skin cells, it weighs nine pounds, and holds more than 11 miles of blood vessels.
- The skin can discharge as much as three gallons of sweat a day in hot weather.
- Skin drops up to 30,000-40,000 skin cells each minute of the daytime.
- The skin on the mouth is 200 times more responsive than the fingertips. The lips and fingertips are ranked as the region with the highest absorption of receptor cells.
Some Ways To Keep Skin Healthy:
Drink water: Lack of water can result in dull, flaky, dry skin. Yuck, who wants that!
Eat a rainbow-colored plate of food: Apparently; there is more than a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Consume the widest variety of antioxidants that come with different colored foods to keep the skin healthy.
Own a plant: A plant in your home can act as an air filter and help keep pollutants from the skin.
Avoid sugar: Sugar leads to damaged collagen, which causes wrinkles. Put down the cookie and reach for an apple!
Sleep: When you burn the midnight oil, your skin does not have an opportunity to rejuvenate and repair itself. So get to bed early!
Stay out of the Sun for prolonged periods of time: Exposure to UV light from the Sun accounts for most premature aging, damaged skin, and skin cancer.
A great way to integrate food (which we often associate with the month of November) and National Skin month is to read the Fuddlebrook book, A Bad Case of the Spots. Freddie learns in a very funny way that too much Sun can be damaging to the skin. Have fun while creating a skin model using pudding, marshmallows, graham crackers, and sprinkles. Of course, when you are finished learning about the layers of the skin, you can eat your model. Yum!
While November is a great month to learn all about the history of Thanksgiving, don’t forget the skinny on healthy skin!
Happy Healthy Skin Month and of course… Happy Thanksgiving as well!