Is Shaving Aging?

A close shave with EVE

While shaving provides the potential for skin health and anti-aging benefits, there are a few pitfalls - one of which will be of concern to you and aging. If you use shaving creams, cleansers, or lotions which contain soaps, alkaline detergents, and chemicals that are irritants or aggressive to the natural pH balance and harmony of the skin, you will be overriding the benefits that shaving provides and actually accelerates aging towards premature aging and skin damage. Really!

Here is the science. It’s another irrefutable law that states, “stress any organ of the body long enough and frequently enough, eventually it will become weak and fail.”

Using products that disrupt the natural pH and flora of the skin causes stress, because it compromises the front line defence of your immune system in safe guarding your body from viral and bacterial invasion. Your body’s survival defence system works on a hierarchy basis. The greatest immediate threat gets the most attention and priority.

So when the front line - first contact point - of your immune system is compromised by your wiping it out with soaps, alkaline detergents and chemicals, alarm bells go off in your endocrine (nervous) system. In response, your body diverts all the resources (nutrition and energy) that would otherwise be attending to daily maintenance and regulation, and directs them to overcoming the imbalance you have unwittingly created. And it will persevere until the balance has been restored.

On the scale of stress, this may seem almost insignificant. But let us assure you that it has impact. Imagine this avoidable and unnecessary stress imposed on your skin every day of your life. Compared to someone who avoids this stress, your skin will succumb to the load and become prematurely weak in it’s ability to respond to other environmental injuries such as pollution, sunburn, and dehydration.

Now the good news

There is the added benefit of stimulating circulation. One of the vital laws we teach is, “increased circulation promotes tissue growth and repair.” This is important if you are interested in preventing aging.

Simply put, we age because we don’t repair well. If preventing aging is important to you, make this your mantra. It will guide you faithfully in assessing and evaluating any advice or question you have in the future. If you repair well, you will age slowly. If you age poorly (for whatever reason) you will age rapidly and prematurely. Now remember - “Increased circulation promotes tissue growth and repair”. You can connect the dots.

..it gets better!

The good news keeps coming, here as stated before, all of the stresses outlined above are totally avoidable. At the very least, ensure that ANY shaving cream, oil, or lotion is 100% free of any soap, alkaline detergents, and aggressive chemicals or foaming agents - the most common being SLS (sodium laureth sulphate).

Then you can go one step further and look for some that are mildly acidic - akin to the pH of the skin - and which contain soothing and healing agents that will combine with the increased circulation you are generating in the capillaries. This can be in the form of natural oils like argan (Moroccan), jajoba, sweet almond oils. Or other herbal or natural healing agents such as Manuka or Jarrah honey etc. This will add an extra dimension to your shaving routine and supercharge the age preventing factor by multiples of ten.

Shaving can be anti-aging for both men and women

The laws and factors outlined above apply to every person regardless of race, age, or gender. Whether you are shaving your face, legs, head, bikini line, etc. The benefits or pitfalls will apply. The key is not to be ignorant to the benefits or dangers, but to be empowered to make informed choices in how you go about it.

I hope I have contributed to helping you with this topic. If you are looking for a product that addresses all of these factors in one, add Skin Rejuvenation Bar to your list of research.

David Ewins