Don’t get excited! I don’t mean ‘don’t wear your daily sunscreen.’ What I mean is if you’ve been holding on to any particular sunscreen for too long, it’s probably time to throw it away.

The ingredients in sunscreen are, obviously, the most important components of this product. And further, you always want to be sure the sunscreen ingredients are their most potent. Over time the likelihood of your sunscreen going “bad” (meaning losing its potency) is great.

I’m not talking about the sunscreen you use every day or your daily moisturizer with sunscreen in it. I’m speaking more about the bottle you used occasionally (or often) last summer, but it’s been sitting in your bathroom shelf all winter, not being used. For those cases, I would toss them out and opt for a brand new bottle.

For me personally, this suggestion pertains to the extra large bottle of sunscreen I use on my body. The bottle I used in October for the last time, but not since. I don’t use expensive sunscreen on my body anyway (there is so much surface to cover that Banana Boat or Target brand sun products due just fine) so it’s not like I will be incurring a huge expense by replacing the old with a new bottle or two.

If you have any sunscreens that have been sitting in your car all winter, throw those products out as well. Extremes (especially hot, but cold too) in temperatures can render the sunscreen ingredients inert (inactive) and can also mess with the other ingredients and cause any cream, sunscreen or otherwise, to go bad.

I take a Sharpie waterproof marker and mark the date I opened the new sunscreen so I can tell just how old it is. If you find any 2008 dates on your bottles, I’d just toss them. You want your sunscreens to be as new and as potent as possible, so ditch the old and get yourself and your family some new products to move into summer with.

Enjoy the warmer months that are upon us now and do wear sunscreen daily. Be sure to slather your entire body if you are a golfer, hiker, runner, biker or are doing anything out in the sun for a prolonged amount of time with little clothing protecting your skin. Also remember to reapply. Putting sunscreen on in the morning isn’t going to give you much protection come lunchtime.

I’ll be writing more about sun protection, sunscreens, and sun exposure as the weeks go by, so keep checking in!

True or False: I only need to wash my face at night.

FALSE: You should wash your face morning AND evening. Why? You wash in the A.M. to clean off the film that has deposited on your skin during the time you were sleeping – similar to the film on your teeth in the morning. You want to wash your face in the evening to get rid of all the dirt, oil, and debris that has accumulated on your skin from the entire day – even if you never left the house! Not to mention any makeup you may have applied.

Make washing your face a twice-daily habit. If you do, you will enjoy cleaner pores, which means healthier skin.

You have no functioning oil glands directly under your eyes, so you want to keep that skin moisturized at all times. Why? So that when you express and the lines crease around your eyes, they are creasing on soft tissue. Lines are formed after years of facial expressions and sun exposure that cause a breakdown of collagen (the supporting structure of the skin), which then creates a wrinkle. A topical cream is merely keeping the tissue soft and, therefore, the lines less noticeable—less hard looking. Creams (even the most expensive eye cream) cannot completely repair damage induced by sun exposure, nor can a cream stop the natural aging process. At best, with eye creams specifically, they can help to soften the blow caused by facial expressions. As consumers, we have been lulled into believing a mere manmade cream can overturn what nature, genetics, and sun exposure have caused. Don’t be fooled. Being clear about what is and what is not possible will save you a lot of time and money. However, using eye creams is vitally important in keeping the tissue around the eye area soft and supple, reducing the look of the lines.

The plain truth is this: pores don’t shrink. There is no cream, ointment, or skin care regimen that can change this fact. Pores are not little openings that can expand and contract like muscles. They do expand or stretch, but pores are not so elastic that they can contract to their former, smaller state. Pores will naturally enlarge as you get older due to the downward pull of gravity (especially in the cheek area). Because oily skin is usually congested, this type of skin will be more prone to enlarged pores. Debris nestled in the pores over a period of time will expand the opening to support the enlarging plug or blackhead. Exfoliating and using a high-quality clay mask on a regular basis (1 to 3x per week depending on your skin’s condition) will help keep dead skin and oil from clogging your pores and lessen the chance of enlargement.