Skin Care Tips For Athletes!

For athletes, a healthy skin-care routine is as vital as stretching. Here’s the 411 on how to best take care of your body’s largest organ.

- Jill Schildhouse

Your skin is the permanent, protective coat you’ve been assigned to wear during this lifetime — shielding your insides against the outside, regulating your temperature and creating that all important vitamin D. And regardless of its freckles, wrinkles, specks, spots or scars, it’s important to treat your skin like the fabulous designer outfit it is.

But let’s be honest: As athletes, we regularly abuse our skin, exposing it to sun, sweat, wind, chafing and more. But just like you help your muscles recover from training, so should you nurture your skin after exercise.

“If the eyes are the window to the soul, your skin is a mirror of your physical and emotional well-being,” says Karin Hermoni, Ph.D., skin-care expert and head of science and nutrition at Lycored, a wellness company based in New Jersey. “Adopting an effective beauty regimen today will be reflected in your skin in the future.”

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Knees and Toes)

Though your skin is all technically part of the same organ, its properties and thickness vary, and each zone requires a unique kind of care to stay healthy and strong. For instance, you wouldn’t use the thick, pasty cream you use on cracked heels for your face, nor would you waste your pricey facial rejuvenating serum on your ankles. Here’s what the experts recommend for the different skin zones.

FACE

The epidermis on your face contains more oil glands and hair follicles than any other area of your body. “This creates a platform for the regenerative capacity of the skin,” says Zena Gabriel, M.D., FAAD, a dermatologist in Newport Beach, California. “Facial skin is also thinner than other parts of the body, so it is more penetrable by products.”