2. Regularly Drink Green Tea
Green tea contains many health benefits, including antioxidants and metabolism boosting properties. In Japan, tea drinking ceremonies are very important semi-religious events that shape the day. Make you and your family a special pot of green tea every afternoon, and drink it yourself throughout the day. Green tea can become a useful healthy anchor on which you can embrace Asia's best healthy practices.
3. Use the Geisha-Nightingale Method
Just as horse manure is good for growing crops, nightingale droppings, offer a (much more civilized) antidote to your skin's hardening and dullness. For many centuries Japanese geishas made use of nightingale's dried waste, and now expensive facials are produced across the world using the same ingredient. So, if you want your skin to be as soft and bright as a dazzling geisha's, this traditional remedy may be the thing for you.
4. Keep Your Face Away from Sunlight
Dangerous UV rays cause skin problems, like premature aging and cancer. Therefore it is paramount that you avoid direct sunlight by seeking shade, wearing big hats or even umbrellas, covering your sleeves and legs, while making use of sunscreen. This has long been a way of life in Asia and there is no reason why we can't do the same.
5. Make Fresh Fruit Your Daily Dessert
Put away the gloopy, chocolate pudding and sugar-infested ice-cream sundae you had planned for tonight's dessert and head to the green grocer's instead. If you pick up a colorful selection of fresh fruit you can chop it all up and offer a stunning and natural dessert for your family. It will fill yours and everyone else's body with antioxidant rich vitamin C. In Japan and Korea, eating fresh fruit at the dinner table is a normal way of life.
6. Cut Down on Your Dairy Consumption
Again, due to historical reasons, much of east Asia does not eat a lot of dairy. So if you want to look as healthy as an oriental you must be prepared to reduce the amount of milk and cheese you consume. Not only will this reduce your fat intake, it will keep you less full so you can enjoy other nutritious and beneficial foods.
7. Learn About Chinese Medicine
In the West, if you have a particular problem, your doctor will likely prescribe you with some excellent drug specifically produced to target and destroy your symptoms. Traditional Chinese medicine, on the contrary, emphasizes the need for holistic solutions to health troubles. A Chinese medicinal expert might provide you with a healing soup that will tackle the root cause of your ailment, as part of a balanced new approach, to alter and improve your lifestyle, rather than simply tackling the symptom and result of a poor lifestyle. Talk to a local Chinese chemist about what they can do for you.
8. Keep Your Car in the Garage, and Walk or Cycle
Even though they have great cars, people in Asia walk and walk, that is, when they are not bicycling. This kind of non-sedentary lifestyle lies at the heart of the orient's healthy root behavior, and unfortunately makes a favorable contrast to our lazy drive-everywhere attitude. So, instead of driving from one building to another, make more journeys on foot. Or purchase a bicycle and use that (it's a lot more fun and enjoyable than driving in busy traffic). This behavior will improve your body's health, giving your skin the shiny results to show.
9. Discover the Uses of Tofu
Tofu is a regular and surprisingly tasty part of many an Asian dinner table. This natural soy-bean wonder is full of healthy goodness that your hamburger or steak will never be able to match. And it is not just tofu either. Miso soup, edamame and soy sauce also spice up your savory meal. Unfortunately most western people do not eat enough of this kind of plant-based protein, and we can learn a thing or two from our Asian cousins.
10. Increase the Amount of Ginger You Use
11. Embrace Face Masks - the Asian Way
It's not an accident that Asian people take good care of their skin. They use several products, like this tissue face mask, specifically to help do everything they can to keep their faces luminous. Different tissue masks, like shampoos, are aimed at those with different requirements, but all include some kind of anti-aging ingredient.
12. Use Coffee Beans for an Exfoliate
In Indonesia, for a long time, women have been using ground up coffee beans as a strong exfoliant. You too can make this part of your body care routine. The benefit of using your leftover coffee grounds to exfoliate your skin, apart from that lovely smell, is that it is a great anti-inflammatory, which boosts your skin's collagen production. Caffeine is often used in products which tighten your skin, but if you can do it yourself why waste money on such products?
13. Use Matcha Powder for Your Skin
This green tea powder can also be used as part of a face treatment which increases your skin's brightness and will even help treat acne. Matcha is such a wonderful thing, it is full of lovely anti-oxidants, makes delicious and healthy cups of tea, plus in Asia it is used in ice-cream, cakes and even bread. So it should certainly be part of your next big supermarket shopping trip.
14. Use Mint to Lighten Your Skin's Dark Spots
If you already have sun damage on your face, like dark spots for example, there are natural remedies from Asia that can help you. If you grind mint leaves into paste, you can make a superb face mask. Apply and leave for 15 minutes before washing away. If you repeat daily you will see truly sparkling results.
15. Get with the Goji Berry
Containing vitamin C and beta carotene, goji berries are terrific for you. They are also believed to nourish your liver and blood, giving you - in Chinese medical terms - warmer blood, which is necessary for greater skin health.
