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?
