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Five years later her bathroom is cluttered with half-used tubes of acne creams. She's tried them all. She slathers on foundation to cover zits and blotches that are the legacy of years of sporadic skincare. She begs mom to spring for some serious dermatological intervention. Each tiny improvement in her skin's look and feel comes much too slowly and painstakingly.

She even bought the same expensive creams, solutions and masks her mom swears by and is puzzled and frustrated that they don't work like magic.

Fifteen years later she's a walking encyclopedia of skincare technologies, both surgical and over-the-counter. Notwithstanding her job as senior beauty editor at a major women's magazine, her skin is a blotchy mess. She has all but given up and begun caking on foundation to cover up everything. Out-of-focus black and white photos, she has decided, is the only kind medium. Yet she's still the first to try each new product that promises magical results.

What's wrong with this picture?

We start committing sins against our skin as teens. We never stopped to consider that makeup was invented to create briefly the illusion of youthful freshness and vigor, qualities healthy girls already have in abundance. What seems to seduce young women into starting with lipsticks and foundation are the bouquets of enchanting new colors that cosmetics companies seem to introduce each year. Add to oily teen skin thick layers of makeup and you end up with angry eruptions. The lesions they leave create lifelong sorrow and expense. When it comes to choosing the right makeup, a mother's advise isn't always helpful, though it's wise to heed well her advice that a healthful lifestyle is the source of beautiful skin.

Here are ten skincare rules to live by:

1. Wash up.
Why all the trouble over the least glamorous part of skincare? The wrong cleanser or soap can sabotage the steps that follow. The difficulty is that soaps and cleansers aren't equally effective. Soap is still the number one choice of cleansing because it's inexpensive and reliable in most cases. But many of the skin problems are caused by the type of soaps a person uses.

Today's soaps, fortunately, are generally just as effective in taking off pigment cells and oils in makeup like foundation and lip colors. So use the right formulation for your skin.

Double cleansing ensures a clean face. You can first erase most of the makeup and dirt with cleanser, then double up with a foam cleanser or soap to cleanse the rest. If your face is shiny when you wake up in the morning, go back to using a single cleanser.

2. Sleep well.
A woman does need her beauty sleep. That's because the skin replenishes itself more actively during sleep through renewal at the cellular level. Too much sleep, on the other hand, can make you look puffy because fluids collect temporarily in facial tissue. Sleeping on your side or stomach will give you more wrinkles in the long run so sleep on your back. No makeup can match the radiance that comes from a good night's sleep.

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