Skin issues, like break outs, eczema, psoriasis, and redness, are a reaction to external AND internal processes. For instance, frequently switching out your pillowcase can go a long way in preventing break outs that are caused by the oils and bacteria built up every night. This is an external issue that’s easy to fix. The internal issues, such as your emotional wellbeing and stress levels, are trickier to address but just as important.

A recent study done by the Department of Psychology at the London Metropolitan University found that internal issues can wreak havoc on our skin. Their study uncovered that people with negative emotional patterns, like social isolation, anxiety, and depression, are more likely to have chronic skin problems, like eczema and psoriasis. This shows that one’s thought patterns and way of interpreting the world changes their skin’s ability to take care of itself. This means that your skin care routine should involve tending to your emotional health. If that means speaking with a counselor, exercising, or spending quality time with friends, do it. For you and your skin’s sake, do whatever it takes to break emotionally destructive patterns.

Another important part of your skin care routine is cleansing, treating and protecting with quality skin care products. Lucky for you, OHA fans, OHA is the only skin care line we’ve encountered that addresses emotional health as well as skin functions. Vanilla Leaf Flower Essence is featured in every product and boosts self esteem. The essential oil blends in each product are made to heal skin on contact but also balance the mind and soothe the nerves. This two-pronged approach of feeding skin directly with nutrients while also addressing emotional balance separates OHA from every other skin care line in a profound way. Enjoy your skin care ritual with OHA, knowing that you’re tending to both your external and internal wellbeing.

Both of these oils are organic and can be marketed as such but the one on the right is teeming with nutrients and active ingredients whereas the refined oil on the left has lost a lot of what makes avocado oil so fabulous.

Lavender Field in France

Night Cream: OHA is the only skin care company using organic Kashmir lavender from the Himalayas. This is one of the finest lavenders in the world and it’s in this Night Cream to soothe frayed nerves. The natural healing powers of lavender are intensified by the association with what a lot of people consider the most healing and spiritual place on earth. Australian Sandalwood, also included in this blend, has been used for temple building because it’s believed to protect one from negative energies and surround one in divine presence. Beyond having a beautifully nourishing cream to apply at night, you can bask in the spiritual and healing aspects of these exotic and rare oils. Take time to breathe in the rich aroma and try it for daytime use, too, especially if you need extra calm in your day.

Rosewood Lavender Shea Body Butter: Rosewood is considered to be one of seven trees in the South American culture that can transform the planet. It is thought by the South Americans to be guarded by angel spirits and they use it as a rite of passage when their people die. This blend also includes English Lavender, which contains different compounds from Kashmir lavender due to the entirely different soil. Lavender grows all across the world from the Himalayas, to England, to the USA, to Australia. Martha’s OHA formulations feature lavenders from all over the world in order to provide the skin with every possible healing compound that lavender has to offer.

Intensive Nutrient Complex: Martha’s a firm believer in “it takes a village” when it comes to formulating with essential oils. That’s why she included 7 different lavenders, 3 vanilla balsams and a bouquet of soothing and healing florals in the essential oil blend for this best selling treatment serum. If you consider yourself a connoisseur of chocolate, coffee, tea or wine, you will appreciate our use of small but over-the-top skilled, artisan essential oil producers. These producers and Martha’s skill in blending assures you of true aromatherapy in every application of OHA.

Enough said. How should you use these products to relax? We suggest using any of these as a balm for temples, shoulders, feet and anywhere else a massage therapist would release tension. Be aware of the long history of lavender providing beauty rest that we all need so badly this time of year. As you apply these products to your face and body, take a moment to breathe deeply and enjoy the relaxation that follows.

Best to your holidays!

1. For a quick “pick me up”, use Hydrating Mist all over the face. We’ve heard from some of our longtime customers that they like to spray Hydrating Mist on their face and neck when they get headaches.
2. Vitamin C Hand Cream or Fresh Limes Shea Body Butter: Take a nickel-sized amount and rub briskly between clean hands to heat up. Massage your fingers by pulsing from the base of each finger and working out to the tips. Deeply breathe in the uplifting orange/lime scent. Also apply in brisk, upward motions on your forearms to increase circulation. You can also try a quick mist with either product on feet after a grueling day or a particularly tough workout.
3. Pump 1-2 pumps of the Under Eye Therapy to the tip of your ring finger. Touch ring fingers together to distribute product evenly between them. Starting at the temples, tap gently across the orbital bones moving towards the inner corner of each eye. Continue up over the eyebrows all the way back to the temples. Repeat around the eyes until all the product has absorbed. Once absorbed, take tips of ring fingers in the sockets and very gently do 10-20 tiny, super light circles. For an especially reviving treatment, pop the Under Eye Therapy in the refrigerator thirty minutes before trying this tapping treatment.

CoQ10 Powder: You’ve probably seen this in grocery stores as a supplement to support heart health and energy. CoQ10 is made in the body but is hard to come by naturally in food, hence its popularity in supplement form. Topically, it’s a powerful antioxidant that smoothes wrinkles and reverses sun damage (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20635514). CoQ10 blocks collagen-damaging enzymes called metalloproteinases (MMPs) so the skin stays elastic, supple and strong. MMPs are stimulated by pollution, smoking, oxidative damage from UV radiation and other environmental hazards, so having CoQ10 to protect and fortify collagen against MMPs is especially important for an anti-aging skin treatment.

Argan Oil: This is an oil from Morocco that’s loaded with natural tocopherols (vitamin E), phenols, carotenes, squalenes and fatty acids. It absorbs quickly but is a rich enough oil to deeply hydrate dry skin. As an added bonus, it also prevents and reduces signs of stretch marks and other scarring.

Moroccan Argan Tree

Plum Kernel Oil: Like Argan Oil, Plum Kernel Oil is rich in essential fatty acids, which boost cell regeneration, provide lipid barrier protection and nourish the innermost workings of the skin, the dermis. What makes Plum Kernel especially great in a face cream is its absorbability – it leaves virtually no oily residue so your skin gets hydrated but doesn’t feel like an oil slick.

Beyond containing these beauties, our new face cream is VEGAN. That’s right. This cream is beeswax free and ready to quench those thirsty vegan faces.

CoQ10 & Argan Face Cream seemed like an obvious choice for the Radiant Skin Treatment with its anti-aging and deep hydration abilities. Our customers have mentioned a progressive brightening of their skin with continued use of this new cream due to the high concentration of Vitamin C. Check out the Radian Skin Treatment through October 30^thfor special pricing on all the steps of this skin beautifying regimen.

Our 90% Organic Hydrating Mist can help the skin stay soothed and nourished during this transition. It contains soothing and softening aloe vera, antioxidant-rich green tea and hydrating hydrosols (see below to find out what these are).  Green tea is also an anti-inflammatory, helping soothe redness and rawness caused by chapped, weak layers of skin, while MSM helps strengthen collagen and keeps the skin even-toned and supple.

What’s so unique about our toner is it hydrates rather than “tightens”. When other brands’ toners claim that their toner “tightens”, you’re generally left with skin feeling uncomfortably tight and dry.  Not so with Hydrating Mist because it aims to soothe and hydrate. Hydrating Mist should be applied after cleansing to help prepare the skin for moisture and it helps disperse the products. OHA moisturizers and serums go much farther when accompanied by the Hydrating Mist, so you get better value for your money.

What’s a Hydrosol?

OHA uses Rose and Lavender hydrosols due to their immense healing and soothing properties. You can even use them on babies! Hydrosols are not as bioactive as other compounds but their ability to gently soothe and hydrate is well worth it.

Hydrosols, which you’ll find in our Hydrating Mist, are commonly called ‘floral waters’. Real hydrosols are the first product from the plant distillation process, followed by essential oils. Although it would be significantly less expensive to mix water and essential oils for a toning water (as most botanical skin care lines do), we use real hydrosols because all skin types, even the most sensitive, can absorb and benefit from them.

A Few Words from Martha Buldain, OHA Formulator: I want to emphasize that this is a beneficial and therapeutic product, not just filler in your skin care routine. It helps hydrate and refresh, while also helping all of our other products disperse evenly and sink in thoroughly. I especially like mixing the Hydrating Mist, Intensive Nutrient Complex, and Daily or Night Moisturizer in the palm of my hand. Three steps done at once saves time while still providing nutrients and hydration.  Lastly, it is truly refreshing and uplifting, with lavender and grapefruit, and it helps ease headaches.

The layer of skin we can see is the epidermis. It’s comprised of mostly dead skin cells that lay like scales on a lizard. It protects our internal organs and more vulnerable layers of skin. In healthy skin, dead skin cells will slough off gradually and evenly. When we’re under stress, dead skin cells slough off unevenly and create gaps in the surface. This can translate into uneven skin tone, blotchiness, sensitive skin, acne, dryness, redness and rosacea. Fortunately, the Daily Moisturizer is full of polysaccharides that fill in those gaps in the epidermis. Filling in those gaps allows the skin to retain moisture, stay balanced and lock in those nutrients that are being delivered to the deeper layers of skin by the Intensive Nutrient Complex.

Used in concert, these two products help soothe the most inflamed skins and feed the deepest layer of skin while protecting and reinforcing the structure of the outermost layer.

When you consider what quality skin care products ought to be doing for your skin, you think of wrinkle prevention and healing. What those boil down to are protection from UV damage and anything that may compromise the lipid barrier. Both of these needs are met by vitamin E. According to a 2009 article in Skin Inc called Vitamin E : A Skin Care Ally, by Doctor Pugliese, Vitamin E has two major functions: 1) protect the skin from ultraviolet rays and 2) maintain the skin’s protective barrier.

The body naturally creates alpha tocopherol but it gets depleted with any exposure to UV rays, causing temporary imbalances that can cause serious skin damage. When skin is exposed to harmful UV rays, it creates free radicals and skin goes through oxidative stress. Applying and ingesting vitamin E are essential to keeping the skin protected from sometimes unavoidable exposure to UV rays. Having an ample supply of vitamin E on the skin protects against this damage and prevents the skin from losing water. This is why vitamin E should be a staple ingredient in all sunscreens.

Besides using the full OHA system on your skin, another way to get Vitamin E in your life is to eat foods that have naturally occurring vitamin E, like, wheatgerm, sunflower and olive oils and nut oils, like almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts and peanuts. According to Skin Inc, “Using both oral and topical vitamin E can help prevent, or markedly reduce, damage from free radicals”.

As you well know, OHA is teeming with beautiful essential oils, extracts and minerals, but what sets it apart is the concentration of those potent ingredients and the added bonus of skin-enriching nutrients. Now is as good a time as any to review why these nutrient-rich ingredients rock:

MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane): “MSM is an organic sulfur-containing compound that occurs naturally in a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains and animals including humans. It …aids in sulfur metabolism, particularly in connective tissue.”  Martha formulated this into most of her products because it supports collagen connectivity while also encouraging skin detoxification. It also helps skin repair itself.

Ester-C & Ascorbyl Palmitate: Both are Vitamin C supplements, which support collagen and protect Vitamin E and our skin cells from oxidative damage (aka “aging”).

Tocopherol & Tocotrienol: These are Vitamin E supplements which are potent antioxidants.

Hydrolyzed Oat Protein: Smoothes fine lines and wrinkles while drawing moisture to the skin.

Glyceryl Stearate: Made from glycerin and stearic acid (an emulsifier derived from vegetable fats), this little wonder helps skin stay hydrated throughout the day.

These ingredients sound intimidating but they support our skin in beautiful ways and keep our complexions looking fabulous. When someone asks you what makes OHA so great, you can tell them it’s made of unbleached and vibrant plant oils with skin-boosting supplements. Easy peasy.