As women are experiencing ever increasing demands on their time, many have opted out of using a toner in their skin care regime and only use cleansing and moisturising as the key steps to keeping their skin looking healthy, vibrant and young.

This is however a big mistake, as toning is a very important part of a daily skin care regime. Toning follows the cleansing routine and actually serves some important functions.

1. Toning closes the pores of the skin. Once cleansing of the skin has been completed, the pores tend to be open and therefore slightly enlarged. As a result, moisture can leave the skin, which in return dehydrates the skin. This is not a desired effect on the contrary loss of moisture from the skin is highly undesirable.

2. Closing of the pores has another benefit. It stops dust and other air born particles from settling in the pores and potentially causing problems. In addition, good quality, natural toners are anti-septic and provides moisture and nutrients to the skin, preparing the skin for the third step in a skin care regime - Moisturising. Some skin care companies have tried to eliminate the need for this step combining the cleansing and toning steps into one step and formulated their cleansers to include toning

functions.

Now think about this for a second and you will realise how ridiculous this concept is. A cleanser is supposed to open the pores and remove dirt and stale natural oils from the pores and thus cleansing the skin. A toner, as we discussed above, is designed to close to pores... See the contradiction? It cannot possibly work.

Any astringent (substance that closes the pores) cannot be applied to the skin at the same time as a product that is supposed to open and cleanse the pores. It just does not work. The whole idea is just to market a product to time-poor women by telling them they can combine these to steps and thus save time.

Unfortunately most women do not fully understand just how their skin care products work. They like them, their skin may even look good and the products therefore appear to be doing their job. In reality however, these types of skin care products are only doing a moderate amount of caring for the skin and the bulk of the products do very little at all except look good on the shelf and cost money.

The three steps in any good daily skin care regime must include cleansing, toning and moisturising. In addition, you should always consider using natural skin care products, as there are too many synthetic and artificial chemicals in

commercially made skin care products which may actually do you harm.

Let's look at a natural toner and it's ingredients to understand how they actually work.

The Wild Herb Toner from Wildcrafted Herbal Products is used for oily skin and has a number of specifically chosen ingredients, which include:

Rosemary, Witch hazel, Juniper Berry and Peppermint. These herbs and essential oils are chosen for their toning and invigorating effects on the skin, while Grapefruit, Niaouli and Sweet Orange refresh the skin and combine to maintain normal sebum (oil) secretion.

As you can see, it is important to understand the functions a particular product is supposed to have and how these functions interact with the other steps in your daily skin care regime. Knowing this you will now probably understand why toning is a necessary part of your daily skin care regime.

About the author:

Danny Siegenthaler is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and together with his wife Susan, a medical herbalist and Aromatherapist, they have created Natural Skin Care Products by Wildcrafted Herbal Products to share their 40 years of combined expertise with you.

© Wildcrafted Herbal Products 2006

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