In the 16^th Century, tomatoes were given the name ‘love apples’. The story goes that the Spanish conquistadors, returning home from Peru, brought with them a new and delicious plant from which could be harvested the most luscious, juicy, vibrantly coloured fruit. Some Europeans thought it poisonous. (It is, after all, a member of the same family as ‘deadly nightshade’…) Other, braver souls – who dared to bite into the rich red flesh – declared it an ‘aphrodisiac’. Before long, the ‘tomata’ (as the people of Peru originally called it) had earned the name ‘love apple’ – ‘pomme d’amour’…

What’s being discovered now is that it isn’t just our tastebuds that love the sweet tanginess of tomatoes: they’re miraculous for skin, too, packed with antioxidant lycopene and gentle, complexion-brightening fruit acids. Fresh tomato fruit – and yes, the seeds are a clue that it’s a fruit, not a vegetable – is mildly acidic, and can help rid your skin of any excess oil that can lead to breakouts, while tightening pores. For the would-be ‘natural beauty’, skin treatments using tomato are simplicity itself to create (see below).

The Ayurvedic beauty guru Monisha Bharadwaj, author of Indian Beauty Secrets, positively swears by tomato’s skin power: ‘My never-fail trick to keep blackheads at bay and tone my skin before a night out is to rub a wedge of juicy, red tomato over my face and neck for about five minutes and rinse it off.’ Tomato, explains Monisha, ‘is very rich in vitamins A, C and E and contains amino acids and salts, which make it a good astringent for our skin.’ Spas are waking up to the potential of tomatoes, too: at the renowned Equinox Spa in the USA, they harness tomato goodness in a glow-boosting cleanse-scrub-mask combination, while in sun-drenched Anguilla, you can lie back while your skin enjoys a top-to-toe Antioxidant Tomato Wrap, to help fight signs of ageing.

read full article…

Maybe you’re scared of red lipstick. Maybe you’re devoted to it: the make-up ‘signature’ friends know you for. But as make-up statements go there is nothing more classic – and nothing that oozes confidence – like rocking a red lip. For some women – think Betty Jackson – it’s become a signature, like their personal handwriting.

But unlike the judicious, understated application of nudes and neutrals, red lipstick requires not just courage – but skill. So: here’s everything I ever learned about red lips, from the pros, about how a pop of scarlet, crimson or cherry can enhance your looks…

Figure out if you’re a ‘warm’ red or a ‘cool’ red. Rule of thumb: orange-reds, or those heading towards coral, are kinder to olive complexions or anyone who tans easily. Paler skins (i.e. cooler complexions), as well as black skins, are generally better with blue-toned or pinky-reds. If you’re uncertain whether you’re warm or cool, you’ve two options: visit a make-up counter (where consultants can usually tell at a glance), or do the peach/rose test (um, you’ll need a peach and a mid-pink rose, to do this). It was make-up dynamo Sharon Doswett who shared this secret with me: ‘Look into the mirror – then hold up the fruit. If you’re a “warm”, you’ll look better with that peach next to your cheek. If you’re a “cool”, the pink rose will “lift” your face.’ (Unless you’re one of those rare and fortunate creatures – which, it turns out, I happen to be – for whom both ‘warm’ and ‘cool’ colours are equally complexion-perkifying.) Once you know your warms from your cools, as Sharon demonstrated to me vividly in person, it’s easy to take a short-cut to the right red… (NB Do beware of orange-red lipsticks if your teeth are stained, as orange emphasises the discolouration…)

read full article…

Having once been on a Beauty Bible roadshow with my co-author Sarah Stacey – one of those so-glamorous ‘If-it’s-Tuesday-it-must-be-Crawley’ whistle-stop tours around the high street pharmacies of Britain – I’ve acquired some real insights into problem skins, and how much they trouble teenagers, in particular.

Trouble is, many of the products targeted at spots, acne and oiliness are the exact opposite of what’s needed. At times, I found myself standing sentinel over the shelves selling these skin-stripping lotions and potions – so skin-stripping that I swear you could remove paint/nail polish with them, actually – and pointing spot-stricken teens in the direction of gentler options.

read full article…

My attitude to Hastings can be summed up in a single phrase: ‘I do like to be beside the seaside.’ (Those of you who believe in such things might feel it has something to do with being a Cancerian. And, with the dawn of the internet (both a curse and a blessing), it’s become possible to live pretty much where you’d like. Which, in my case, is Hastings Old Town: more a ‘village’, really, of 4,000 people living in an extraordinary patchwork of buildings (from medieval to modern), tucked between two steep hills – with the beach at the end of the road. What’s not to love…?

When we moved here (that’s me and Craig Sams, health food entrepreneur, biochar guru and my co-founder in Green & Black’s Chocolate), it wasn’t exactly ‘Shoreditch-on-Sea’ – which is one of the comments often heard nowadays, as DFLs (Down From Londoners) discover our quirky mix of dozens of independent shops and restaurants.

Because it was hard to get our hands on good, organic food, we decided to take over our local bakery (founded 1826), turn it organic and put in a one-stop organic and local food store. Then, two years later, frustrated that there wasn’t somewhere I could go to do Yoga or have a fab massage, I transformed a run-down local Regency-era council building into The Wellington Centre: a 9-room ’boutique’ wellbeing centre which offers 20 classes a week (Pilates, Yoga, Tai Chi, etc.), and every imaginable therapy from Colonic Hydrotherapy to Deep Tissue Massage, via facials and Physio. In the past seven years, we’ve seen an influx of Londoners, who – like us – have moved here for improved quality of life.

read full article…

Men have sheds. Women have – well, we have bathrooms. (And thank heavens for that.) Yes, the rest of the family are in and out of them, too. (Leaving their towels dripping on the floor.) But when it comes to finding sanctuary in the home, there is nowhere better: lock the door, run the taps, lie back and soak your cares and stresses away. Because while we may all fantasise about a fortnight at Chiva-Som (or some other faraway spa), in reality, a night in with some gorgeous bath and body treats is the closest most of us get to a wellbeing escape.

So we should be thankful, then. Because in the past few years, as a beauty editor I’ve been privileged to see first-hand how the beauty world has been falling over itself to offer us pampering potions for at-home treatments: bath oils, salt scrubs, foot treats, face masks – and more. All designed to offer the blissful benefits of a salon or spa visit – but with the bonus: we can enjoy, then flop into our own beds, afterwards. In a perfect world, we’d prepare for this experience by tumbling dry a vast pile of clean fluffy towels, and preparing a relaxing playlist on our iPhones. But because this isn’t a perfect world, all that’s really required is a lock on the bathroom door (or a chair that can be wedged under the door handle), to maximise our chances of privacy.

Whizz up a juice, unroll your yoga mat for a few smooth moves, beforehand – and retreat…

Start with water therapy. Physiologically, the relaxing effects of soaking in water are simple to understand: warm water displaces weight, making you feel light. As your capillaries dilate from its warmth, your blood pressure drops. What’s more, according to Diane Ackerman, author of A Natural History of the Senses, a soak in the tub is ‘a ritual that is restorative, sensuous, religious or calming.’ So: chuck out that ageing flannel. Pension off that rubber duck. And prepare experience splendour in the bath.

read full article…

Botox, Faux-Tox, Whatevertox… You won’t catch me signing up for any of them. But it’s true: a furrowed brow is one of the most ageing features on a face. So have you considered this low-tech way to banishing forehead furrows – through meditation…?

Now, I know myself that the very act of meditation can be stressful. Seek to empty the mind, and instantly it fills with To Do Lists, becomes preoccupied with a dive-bombing bluebottle in the next room – or one’s limbs simply develop a bad case of Lotus position-ache. As a result, potential meditators often abandon a tension-banishing technique which, when practised regularly, can keep at bay a wide range of complaints including headaches, migraine, asthma, eczema, PMS, hypertension and even heart attacks. (One London study of meditation and relaxation training for men and women at risk of coronaries found that, four years on, not only did members of the meditating group have lower blood pressure readings, but showed fewer symptoms of heart disease, less angina and a lower number of deaths from heart attack. Can’t argue with that.) More meditative bonuses: zapped stress and the ability to cope better with forthcoming activities or problems.

read full article…

When it comes to hair tips, I’m a sponge. Which has been very useful, over the years, spending time in the (salon) chair with some of the greatest names in hairdressing, from John Frieda to Nicky Clarke, Frederic Fekkai to Philip B., Charles Worthington to Adam Reed (of Percy &…) My aim, always, in whatever I do, is to walk away from any encounter with at least one invaluable nugget of info that I can use in life, moving forward – so here, I’d like to share some ofthe tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years that I hope will help ensure every day is a Good Hair Day, from now on.

read full article…

Dewy. Fresh. Quenched. Are those words that apply to your skin, or are you more: Thirsty. Parched. Sahara-dry…? If you fall into the latter category, welcome to the club, because it happens to us all: the sensation that our skin’s too tight for our face, the texture that resembles crêpe paper if we don’t keep slathering on creams, and perhaps even itching. Mostly, skin starts to dry out from 40 onwards, as soon as hormone levels start to drop. But in our modern, hermetically-sealed world, it’s a common skin woe at all ages: air-conditioned or centrally-heated air literally sucks the moisture out of skin. (And turning up of the thermostat at work and at home at this time of year just makes dry skin – as well as those heating bills – worse.)

Until fairly recently, I didn’t give my own dry face and body too much thought. Yes, my skin often feels like it’s a size 10 and I’m a size 12, and absorbs skin creams so greedily you can almost hear the slurping. But every so often, in my glamorous life as a beauty editor (in between taking tea with make-up artists, playing with next season’s colours and Eurostarring to Paris for fragrance launches, naturellement), I hear something that makes me do a double-take. There I was (at the St. Martin’s Lane Hotel, as it happens), listening to Lancaster cosmetics’ in-house skin boffin Professor Leonard Zastrow talking about sun damage, when he flashed up a slide that declared: ‘Dry skin is a cause of premature ageing’. Yes, I knew that the crêpe paperiness, the tautness and the thirstiness were a well-known sign of ageing – but a cause? I collared the professor, at the end, to ask for an explanation.

If you’re ready for the science bit, it goes like this. In well-hydrated skin, so the professor explained, the cells in our skin communicate efficiently. They tell each other to produce more elastin and more collagen (which gives skin its ‘bounce-back’ factor), and all the other good things skin needs. But when skin’s dry, there are gaps between the cells. (Under a microscope, those gaps look scarily like Grand Canyons.) There’s a communication breakdown. Cells aren’t getting the right message – so production of collagen and elastin slows. What’s more, in dry skin, cell turnover can slow down from 28 to 40 days. (Which explains why dry skin often = dull skin). The natural healing process is slower, too. And you know what? It’s a vicious circle: the drier our complexions, the more of that precious water escapes – because the all-important barrier (which keeps moisture in and irritants out) is impaired.

read full article…

We all know what exercise does for our bodies: keeping them toned, sleeker, melting fat, lowering cholesterol and reducing cancer rates, busting stress, yada-yada-yada… But less well recognised is that exercise is your biggest beauty treatment of all – and as the words ‘Quantitative Easing’ still swirl ominously in our brains, it’s worth remembering that they’re f-r-e-e… What’s more, with autumn upon us, gorgeous crunchy leaves on the ground and breezes blowing in, is there a better time to get outdoors, lace up our shoes, and enjoy the beautifying benefits of exercise…?

From reducing acne breakouts to helping to defy time, health (and skin) experts are now saying that regular exercise can play an important role in how young and healthy your skin feels and looks. As Dr.Audrey Kunin, dermatologist and author of The DERMAdoctor Skinstruction Manual (you can find it in this country via www.amazon.co.uk) acknowledges: ‘It’s no secret that exercise has important benefits for the entire body. But what many people don’t realise is that the skin is the largest organ of the body, and so the benefits can be enormous.’

Aside from the benefits of increased circulation, which we’re probably all familiar with, exercise benefits the complexion by creating the right environment for your skin to build collagen – and collagen is one of the two most important elements (the other is elastin) in maintaining skin’s ‘bounce-back’ factor. (You know: that plumpness and springiness that youthful skin has, but which tends to diminish as the years tick by.) ‘Our fibroblasts – which are the collagen-producing cells in the skin – become fewer in number and “lazier” as we get older,’ says Dr. Kunin. But if you rev up your exercise regime, skin becomes infused with oxygen and other nutrients which set up ideal conditions for collagen production.

read full article…

You can’t judge a book by its cover. But according to ayurveda (pronounced AH-yoor-vay-dah) – an ancient form of medicine that comes to us from India – you can judge a person’s health by the condition of their skin. As Christy Turlington – long-time yoga bunny and co-founder of the ayurveda-inspired Sundari range – once explained to me, ‘We recognise that mind and body are intimately connected in terms of health and wellbeing. The skin is a mirror of what’s happening in the body.’ In other words, beauty is not just skin deep.

Agrees Pratima Raichur, a botanist, chemist and natural skin specialist who’s also author of a fabulous, inspirational book – Absolute Beauty: Radiant Skin and Inner Harmony Through the Ancient Secrets of Ayurveda (published by Harper Collins;  find it on www.amazon.co.uk) – ‘External beauty without internal health is impossible.’  Raichur believes that the chemical ingredients in most beauty products don’t address what really causes skin problems. ‘They don’t fully nourish or rejuvenate the skin, and they don’t affect your mind,’ she says, explaining that in ayurveda, the aromas of essential oils are used to calm, cool or stimulate you mentally.  (And Western medicine is starting to back some of these claims.) Pratima adds that the antibacterial and antifungal qualities of the oils themselves can help heal skin infections like acne.

read full article…