Everyone wants to look young, but if you don't have a skin care regime, as you age, it will definitely show in your face. And it's for this reason that spa manager Carlethia Thurston says people should now be taking extra care of their skin from as young as 25 -- 10 years younger than what previously used to be the recommended age.
One of the biggest culprits in rapidly aging skin is the sun.
"The sun is actually responsible for 85 percent of our aging," said Thurston, who heads up the team at the Amber Spa at the Warwick Paradise Island. "Everybody wants to look young, but as you get older, if you're not starting a proper regime at a particular age ... we used to say 35, but it's younger now ... I think at 25, reason being the sun is so intense."
Case in point, on many days, the mercury in thermometers tops out at 90-degrees outdoors, but the heat index makes it feel like it's more than 100-degrees. It's those very same sun rays that can be most damaging to the skin.
Most people, especially Bahamians and people of color, need to be educated on the importance of using sunscreen or sunblock and SPF (sun protection factor) when they are out and about. SPF is used to estimate the amount of UV radiation it normally takes to sunburn one's skin with protective sunscreen. The "A" in UVA stands for aging; the "B" in UVB stands for burning.
Ideally, sunscreen should be applied at least 30 minutes prior to sun exposure to allow it to be fully absorbed into the skin.
Besides sun protection, Thurston also holds fast to the importance of exfoliation and application of a weekly masque as important to a healthy skin regiment.
"Whenever you undergo some sort of treatment, you always need maintenance. Once you exfoliate on a regular basis, this really helps to renew your skin cells. Once you start renewing those skin cells, the dead ones are going to be just gone. If you don't remove the dead skin cells, what's going to happen is you're going to start developing more dead skin on fresh skin, so you're not able to see that glow."
The makeup trend is to use highlighters to achieve a glow, but with exfoliation to remove dead skin cells, the spa manager said you get that natural glow that people are trying to achieve with makeup.
Thurston began her career as a physical therapist assistant and after four years began a full-time career in massage therapy and skin care. She pursued a career in teaching and opened Thurston's Institute of Massage and Esthetics in 2008; she has taught massage therapy at the University of The Bahamas and the Bahamas Technical and Vocational Institute (BTVI).
At Amber Spa, Thurston, who heads a team of five, says it's about holistic healing and that it's their belief that health, wellness and beauty are intricately linked from beginning to end. And, as such, at the spa they seek to teach as they treat their clientele.
"We don't just want you to come in to experience a service -- we want to tell you why you're experiencing certain issues with your lower back, or why this is tightening up, or why your skin looks the way it does, because at the end of the day, when you have our clients feeding on that knowledge, they teach themselves and realize it is something they really need to do, or do more often."
In optimizing health and wellness, they make use of the Mila d'Opiz line that aims to harmonize nature and natural things with quality skincare.
"The Mila d'Opiz line is different from other lines in that they keep the minerals in the glacier water, and that's what makes it so unique, because most other organic lines, they have purified water, so it's more or less an added benefit to the products you use as well," she said.
"I'm impressed with this line because all of its qualities are intact. They did not extract anything out. They left everything in. As soon as you open a bottle, put it on your skin, you immediately see a difference. It's not something where you buy a line and have to wait a month or two to see the results; this is just pure performance ingredients."
Thurston also likes the line for its anti-aging properties which means people are making use of the plant extract, the fruit extract, the natural, the holistic, and the hyaluronic acid with their treatment.
"If you have been doing severe damage to your skin and not wearing moisturizer or exfoliating, this actually speeds up the process as well as to strengthen your cell matrix so that your skin will be able to absorb everything in that very last layer of the skin responsible for your cellular turnover. It helps to strengthen collagen and elasticity."
Amber Spa at the Warwick Paradise Island is open seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian