Get a healthy glow. Purify your skin from the inside out.

Quick, raise your hand if you know the body's largest organ. If you said your brain, OK, maybe you can claim that, but for the rest of us, the skin will win.

Not only is it big, but its condition reflects the health of the body you have cleverly hidden there underneath it. Sure, you want your skin to look pretty, but remember, it is the barrier between you and the hostile world outside you, so it's pretty darn important to keep your skin strong and healthy. When skin gets pimply, itchy, scaly or inflamed, we sometimes douse it with an over-the-counter medication. Often, though, this just turns out to be one big, wet firecracker.

For my money, natural treatments work much better. They last longer, heal deeper and are much safer.
From a natural healing point of view, all types of inflammatory skin disease (think acne, eczema, dermatitis) ultimately arise from the same problem-an accumulation of waste at the cellular level, causing inflammation. These conditions are given different names and express themselves in different ways in individual people, but in natural healing, they are looked at as a toxicity problem and are treated more or less the same.

Ayurveda says that the skin has six layers, and these layers are located not only superficially but extend to the deeper levels of the body, so a ‘skin' disease is not just ‘skin-deep'. In fact, inflamed skin is called "that which comes out from the inner part to the outer part." Acne is the classic hot, inflamed, toxic, pitta condition.

Incorrect diet and lifestyle are the main causes for funky skin. Engaging in a diet or lifestyle that is against your constitution creates an imbalance in the bodily energies, which leads to contamination of the body tissues, leading inevitably to skin diseases. In Ayurvedic terms, the prime dosha involved is pitta. Hot, spicy, fried, oily and greasy foods, overexposure to heat and sunlight, drinking too much tea or coffee, alcohol consumption and smoking can aggravate pitta and bring on that Saturday night date pimple.

To give the pimple the boot, herbal medicine focuses on reducing inflammation in the skin, healing the tissue of the skin and eliminating the source of the irritating toxins through the liver, kidneys, and large intestine.

Green vegetables treat inflamed skin with their cooling energy, which is even cooler when they are used raw. Sounds good on paper, but, sadly, it seems like eating green vegetables has gone the way of the turn signal...

Use any green vegetable, including pea pods, celery, lettuce and sprouts. (French fries aren't green.) It may be the high magnesium content in the chlorophyll, which is known to cool inflammation, or some yet to be identified constituent, possibly bioflavonoids, but high amounts of green vegetables will bring erupting acne, psoriasis, and dermatitis to heal, and quickly. Because it is easy to fill up on fibrous raw green vegetables, juicing is a good choice for getting in large amounts of the active ingredients. Go for a couple of tall glasses of cucumber or celery juice each day to soothe irritated skin.

Speaking of Saturday night dates, we men think of flowers as the price of admission. But rose flowers, used here more for apology than acne, are popular medicine in the Middle East and India for reducing pitta and soothing inflamed skin.

I live in Oregon, and one of the best skin herbs in the world grows in my back yard. You're welcome to come over for a visit, but the tea shelf of your health food store is closer. Still, don't take my word for it, ask any herbalist. Oregon grape root is a favorite (even as far away as England) for calming down skin eruptions.

When it comes to detoxifying the liver, few herbs are better than burdock root. A member of the daisy family, it is loaded with anti-inflammatory active ingredients. British herbalists, especially, turn to burdock for just about any liver toxicity condition, including eczema, psoriasis and boils. In Japan, you'll find it served as a food, known as "gobo." Disguising itself as a long brown carrot, it can be prepared similarly, such as fresh juice or in a stir-fry.

Dandelion is a feisty, bitter herb, but, hey, it's nothing personal. Bitter herbs just want to get their little herby hands on some inflammation and tell it who's boss. It's also a detoxifying herb, especially for conditions involving heat, such as acne, and it especially likes to detoxify your lymph system.

A few too many suggestions? "Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler," said Albert Einstein, a known expert on acne. And that just about sums up the herbal approach to glowing skin. In theory, it's pretty simple. In practice, some effort's required.

Think skin herbs are for the birds? Compare drinking a few cups of tea to luxuriating under a face mask made of bird droppings. Santa Fe's Ten Thousand Waves Spa brags that its Nightingale Cleansing Mask is comprised of a powder of "sanitized droppings" from the tiny flying cosmetologists. It seems that their high nitrogen poop draws out bacteria from the skin and exfoliates more gently than the gentlest acid peel. It's an ancient Japanese geisha treatment, and we know they never have to cover their blemishes with makeup, right? Is your plain old poop-free herbal tea suddenly sounding better than usual? I thought so.

Natural skin care offers you the chance to see herbal medicine at its best. And no short cuts. Be patient-the long-term approach really works. With a consistent approach, your skin will thank you for it. Purify your skin with a few cups of cleansing tea each day, sit back and wait for the compliments.

Let us know how your skin program is going, and share your successes. Have questions? Just ask!