Victoria Health

Summer is ‘happy’ season for feet. Encased in boots, trainers and lace-ups for – oh, probably nine months of the year, in this country – we get to experience the bliss of wriggling our toes in a lawn, or hot white sand, or splashing in the surf. But while all that air circulation is good for feet, foot health isn’t a given. So this month, Beauty Bible posed questions to Matthew Fitzpatrick from The College of Podiatry, who care for feet 365 days a year (find your nearest podiatrist at www.feetforlife.org).

Oooh, we love a beauty tip. They’re a sort of currency shared between women, we always feel: invaluable snippets which can make us look and feel that bit better about ourselves (if not life in general). We share a beauty tip every day of the week on www.beautybible.com (there are probably thousands archived there in all!), but here are some recent gleanings on our travels – one for every day of November!

Do share YOUR beauty tips with us – via Twitter (we’re @Beauty_Bible) or Facebook?

We love colour. Bright, splashy paints. A flash of a fuchsia or turquoise pashmina. The rose of a new lipstick… But did you know that whenever you choose what to wear, or a colour for your hallway, you’re instinctively using its ability to influence your state of mind? We’ve been fascinated, over the years, to discover how colour is also employed in physical healing, from the medical use of coloured light to the more esoteric ‘chakra therapy’.

The message about protecting skin from sun damage has been received loud and clear. But hair? Another story. And yet hair (being basically ‘dead’) has no powers to replenish and repair itself whatsoever. Which is why, by the end of summer, it can quite simply look like a fried haystack: we’d never expose our skin to sun for two weeks without protection – yet do you give a thought to the equal harm sun is capable of, when it comes to hair…? Sun, salt, wind and chlorine wreak havoc – especially if yours is coloured or processed.