Your dermis gives your skin its structure.  It is a living layer of the skin, where we find fibroblast cells, blood vessels, nerves, sweat glands, sebaceous glands (oil-secreting glands), hair follicles & pigmentation deposits.  Your dermis is the part of your skin that makes it look plump, shiny & strong. The fibroblast is probably the most important cell in your dermis, particularly when it comes to structure, strength & volume.  From the age of 25 our fibroblasts become lazy, producing less collagen & elastin over time so that we actually lose around 1% of our collagen each year.  This leads to thinner, weaker skin, that is prone to dryness, wrinkling and textural problems. A compromised or weak dermis, with decreased fibroblast activity, will display one or more of the following: wrinkles scarring thin…

Your epidermis is the outermost layer of your skin.  It's what the world sees when it looks at you, & it protects you from the elements. The epidermis is made up of 4 - 5 different layers, some of which are viable (living) & some of which are non-viable (dead). The very lowest layer, or basal layer is where all new cells proliferate from & where our pigmenting cells are found. The uppermost layer is called the stratum corneum which is a waterproofing & protective layer.  Between these top and bottom layers the cells of your skin undergo changes & eventually lose contact with their blood supply, meaning that they essentially "die", and slough off from the uppermost stratum corneum. We want our skins to have a strong stratum corneum since this layer protects us against…

I like to think most people who read posts like this are doing their best to look after their skin, but if you’re anything like me maybe you also get really confused by what goes where and when when it comes to your skincare.  Yes we all know we need to cleanse and moisturize and use SPF, but when you have more than 3 products it can become a daunting task applying all of them before you’ve even deciphered which one is meant to go on at what stage of your routine.  Here is what I have learnt with a little bit of research: AM: First things first, when you wake up in the morning your skincare routine should start with cleansing.  Even if you cleansed before you went to…