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We have a question for you: How much would you be willing to spend to get smooth, silky, younger looking skin, minimize the appearance both of the pores on your facial skin and the unsightly cellulite on the rest of you, and get a rosy glow that makes you feel sexy all over? 

Well, three or four minutes a day is all it takes for you to look and feel younger and sexier if you add ice rolling body brushing to your daily beauty routine. Two minutes to brush, and one minute to ice roll—that’s three minutes. The extra minute comes in if you ice roll twice a day. 

You might say, “All this brushing and ice facials—that’s just a gimmick invented by the beauty industry to get us to buy their stuff.” Maybe not. Historically, we have records that some members of royalty rubbed their faces and décolleté with ice as a complexion refresher and to preserve their beauty, and in cultures such as Greece and Japan, skin brushing has been used to keep the body healthy. Certain tribes of American Indians are also known to have scrubbed their skin with sand.

“OK,” you say. “That’s all good and well, but those cultures didn’t have any scientific proof.” No, they didn’t know about molecular biology. But for the same reason, we now know why Grandma’s chicken soup helps, there’s science behind these two little beauty regimens that really work.

Now, we know you don’t want a course in anatomy and physiology. You just want to look younger and feel better, so what you really want to know is if ice rolling and body brushing work or not. The answer: Yes! We’ll skip the complicated details, give you the basics, and start with ice rolling.

Have you ever had an injury and been told by your physician to use ice on the area? That’s called cryotherapy, and it works by narrowing blood vessels. Ice rolling your face and décolleté narrows the blood vessels which in turn reduces swelling. That means your eyes look less puffy and lessens the raised appearance of any blemishes. Ice rolling also reduces muscle spasms and relaxes your skin so it looks and feels smoother. 

Ice rolling also triggers production of collagen, the protein that makes up more than 80% of your skin. The word collagen comes from a Greek word meaning “glue” and a suffix denoting “producing.” So collagen “produces the glue” that keeps you young. Ice rolling very gently irritates the deep layers of collagen. Those layers then respond by creating more collagen which helps your skin stay more elastic which helps you look younger. 
Ice rolling also slows down aging by slowing cell metabolism. We’ll skip the complicated explanation and just say that if the cells on your face “slow down” they’ll need less oxygen so they won’t die off as quickly and you won’t look as old because your skin won’t be as…flaky. Which moves us right into body brushing.

Experts agree that there are five scientific benefits to body brushing, the first and most important being that it exfoliates. Nowadays it’s common knowledge that exfoliating your face and décolleté is important for a more youthful appearance. Exfoliating all over helps your entire body rejuvenate. If you know someone who had a burn or skin infection that was debrided (medical removal of dead, damaged, or infected tissue) you’ll understand why getting rid of old cells helps skin heal.

Second, the reason body brushing gives you a “rosy glow” is because it promotes circulation, not unlike “pinching your cheeks” to create a natural blush.  

Third, body brushing improves your skin’s appearance, and here’s the quickest analogy as to why: To make yourself look older for a theater production, or just for Halloween, you pat on a lot of white powder. Wearing a layer of dead skin cells is like wearing white powder all over. Body brushing “washes away” the powder of dead skin cells, just like you’d wash the makeup off your face, but this time, every inch of you looks younger.

Fourth, body brushing reduces the appearance of cellulite—those hard little bumps of “orange peel” fat— by stimulating the top layer of the skin that the bumps are stuck to and loosens them so your new and improved body-brushed circulation can carry them away.

Fifth, body brushing improves your immune by helping your internal organs work better. Your skin is your largest excretory organ (meaning it gets rid of wastes). Brushing away the top layer of dead cells lets your skin do its job so your kidneys, liver, and lungs don’t have to work overtime. And anything that helps your organs work more efficiently helps you look and feel younger and may actually slow down the aging process.

So see? There is science behind the “trend” of body brushing and skin rolling, and it really does take only three—or four—minutes a day. And if two little beauty treatments taking only three or four minutes can give you results, head to toe, why not give them a try?

If you want to fully benefit from the ultimate experience of body brushing and ice rolling, check out Modern Skin Labs Premier Body Brush and Derma Ice Roller here."

Photo courtesy of Modern Skin Labs