Skin care, different skin types
By mati. Filed in Skincare |Tags: skin care, Skincare
I have recently heard many women state that they only wish to use ONE skin care product when they get out of the shower. They don’t want to buy exfoliators, cleansers, toners and so on. So the question is, is it enough to only use one product on your skin?
When you are very young and your skin is plump and healthy, you might be able to get away with only one product. My 9 year old daughter uses a light hydrating lotion on her face after taking a bath. It keeps her skin soft, and also protects from the cold in the winter. However, this kind of skin care regimen is no good when the skin starts showing signs of time. At that point, you need more than just one cream or lotion because you can’t cover all your skin needs in one layer.
The more mature your skin gets, the more different ingredients it needs to stay elastic and healthy. The first area to be affected by age, hormones, temperature and UV radiation is the area around the eyes. Aging in this area starts to show up as early as in the early twenties. The skin around the eyes have no sweat glands, so it tends to simply dry up since it has no protective barrier to hold moisture in.
Moisture is the most important thing you can put around the eyes. It can be in the form of a toner or spritz, or a light moisturizing face cream or serum. In addition, you also need an oily or buttery barrier to keep the moisture from evaporating. These products should be layered, with the moisturizing agents first, to allow them to penetrate the skin, and an emollient barrier on top that keeps the skin soft and prevents the moisture you just added from evaporating. Other ingredients that should be considered around the eyes are anti-oxidants that prevent formation of wrinkles from UV damage. So, really, what you want in your facial cream or eye cream is moisture (water, hyaluronic acid, glycerin, etc.), a buttery barrier (coconut, shea, jojoba etc), and anti-oxidants (green tea, acai berries, vitamin E or C, etc), and ideally, these ingredients should be layered and not just contained in a single cream.
So why can’t we just put all of these ingredients into one product? You can, but it won’t give you the maximum benefit of the ingredients. The reason is, some of these ingredients are made to penetrate the skin and moisturize the deeper layers, and other ingredients are supposed to sit on top of the skin to soften and protect.
A lot of times, you’ll hear people say that if you have dry or mature skin, you need a rich cream. Not so! If you put a rich cream on dry or mature skin, it will simply sit on the surface without increasing the moisture levels in the skin itself, and if you want to improve the way your skin looks, you really need to do both.
Therefore, the best solution is to use products that can be layered, where each product has a specific purpose. For example, if your skin is normal or oily, you probably won’t need to add a barrier to the skin. A light natural face moisturizer is all you need after cleansing and toning. If, however, you have dry or mature skin, you must add moisture first of all, and it has to be as a thin serum so that it can bathe your skincells in moisture and penetrate into the deeper layers. Then, after allowing your serum to sink in, you add your rich, buttery barrier cream to soften the skin and keep the moisture in.
This is why, using one product on your face is basically useless, unless we are teenagers, or even pre-teens. What we need are products that can be layered, depending on what each individual skin type needs. This can vary with age, hormones, temperature, and UV exposure.
CLICK HERE to see suggestions for how to layer skin care products depending on skin type.
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