10 Skin Myths

I’ve made it a personal task to ask everyone I know what they think they know about skin, and skincare that there are a lot of misconceptions out there being told by god knows who.

These are the ten that were mentioned the most, hopefully this list will be able to clear up some confusion.

1)   “Skin Breaths.” It most certainly does not. Each pore doesn’t have its own individual muscle that allows it to take a whiff of our standard pollution. Its nourishment comes from the oxygen you take in through your lungs that’s delivered to it by blood. So when you take off that heavy foundation and sigh “Ahh! Now my skin can breathe,” it’s not really true.

2)   “Soap is a good enough cleanser for my face.” Washing your face with soap does feel like a good cleanse, but actually it cleans a bit too much. Soap is very harsh and stripping, this makes the skin vulnerable to anything, and everything until it attempts to restore its pH balance which does take it a while. Soap is best kept away from your face.

3)   “My skin is dry.” There’s a huge difference between your skin being actually dry, and dehydrated. Think of it this way. Dry Skin = Lack of oil. Dehydrated Skin = Lack of water. You can’t be both oily, and dry, you can be oily and dehydrated. Your skin either produces too much oil, just enough, or not at all. Treating actually dry skin requires you to use a lot of moisturizer, treating dehydrated skin would require you to exfoliate (or scrub) your face to get the dead skin off and giving skin the ability to retain water again.

4)   “Sitting in the sun will treat my acne.” No. Sitting in the sun will hide the appearance of acne, but will also lead to hyper pigmentation, skin damage, and excessive drying that will signal the skin to produce more oil therefore screwing you over and making more acne for you to “treat” in the sun.

5)   “I don’t like using ‘chemicals’ on my face.” I think by chemicals you mean preservatives? Which are not bad at all for your face, in fact they prevent the growth of bacteria, fungi, and other little creatures that are willing to crawl right into your fabulous pores and well, you know how that goes.

6)   “Scrubbing my skin will clear my acne.” Hmm. Scrubbing is very harsh and will force your skin to make more oil = more acne. If you do have an acne problem scrubbing is the last thing you would ever want to do, try a more mild form of cleansing to prevent causing more damage and irritation to your skin.

7)   “I know my cleanser is working because my skin feels tingly when I wash it.” Your face feels tingly because it’s irritated and probably inflamed. These “tingly” cleansers breakdown the collagen in your face, so you will age faster and slow down your skin’s ability to heal. No more tingly cleansing, please.

8)   “I’m too young to care about aging.” You’re never too young to care about aging. Aging is easier prevented than treated. Preventing a wrinkle is SO much easier (and cheaper) than erasing them. Don’t shy away from the wrinkle care and jump on that wagon before you need Botox.

9)   “I don’t need moisturizer, I have oily skin.” I don’t know what it is about moisturizer and oily skin that have people imaging the moisturizer as the oil monster jumping around on your skin. If you find the right moisturizer for you, you won’t need to worry about looking sticky. Just look for products that says “Oil Free” on the bottle, they exist.

10)  Last and certainly not least, my personal favorite. “I don’t need to use sunscreen.” Please refer to my last post “The Importance of Sunscreen.”

Which one of these ten did you believe in?