How to Keep Your Skin Healthy and Beautiful (Or Handsome, If You're an Uptight Dude)

Here is a list of just some of what can be found on one square inch of skin: 20 yards of blood vessels, 78 sensory apparati to detect heat, 650 sweat glands, 65 hairs (on average), 13 sensory apparati to detect cold, 1300 nerve endings to send pain signals to your brain and back, 78 yards of other nerves and up to 100 sebaceous glands. Beware of the latter: here there be pimples.

The skin is your body's largest organ unless you are crazy smart like Stephen Hawking and own a brain the size of Van Gogh's talent for painting. Your skin should be treated with all due respect you give to, say, your anal sphincter that you are so delicate with mostly. Would you expose your heart or liver to the damaging rays of the sun without appropriate lotion? Of course not, yet people daily expose their skin to harmful conditions that is aging their skin more rapidly than it needs to. Here, take some of this medication in literary form to learn how to keep your skin looking beautiful.

Quit smoking. Nicotine has the effect of tighting up all those little vessels of blood in your body. What does that mean? That means oxygen flow is obstructed and oxygen and other nutrients are what makes your skin cells grow up to be nice and big and strong. Like Vin Diesel.

Keeping your skin moisturized will make it even happier than Mel Gibson in the front row at a rally in Nuremberg. When skin gets dry it tends to crack like the suspect on the stand in an episode of Perry Mason. Cracked skin ain't good and not just because of looks. Cracked skin can get infected more easily than smooth skin. Moisturizing your skin also provides more flexibility whereas dry skin makes it harder to move body parts.

Apparently, it is Ginger and not Mary Ann that is the real hero of Gilligan's Island. Ginger allegedly (that is allegedly, mind you) contains some antifungal properties. According to some sources that may or may not be reliable, ginger is supposed to contain more than 20 different antifungal compounds, including caprylic acid. There might be something to this idea since caprylic acid is found in mammal milk and we know for a fact that stuff is chock full of goodly things. The caprylic acid is the most powerful compound in ginger, but the others all combine to make it potentially a serviceable herbal treatment to prevent the development of fungus on the skin. You know: jock itch....athlete's foot...beck's brain..;all those fun(gal) skin conditions nobody wants. As for me, I was always a Ginger man.

You don't want to hear it, but exercise is one of the best gifts you can give your body's largest organ. Become an organ donor and donate time to your skin. Calisthenics, aerobics, weight-lifting and even sex can be enough exercise to exorcise those dark circles beneath your eyes and generally unattractive condition of your skin elsewhere. It's all about pumping that blood. If your blood is circulating in a healthy way it means your skin cells are regenerating with more vigor than the next incarnation of Doctor Who.

And that ain't not good.