As part of my work, I’ve been speaking to women about their skincare routines and I am so stunned by some skincare routines that I was compelled to write this blog.
A minority of women are using aggressive skincare products, to deal with pigmentation and/or acne and in the process are damaging their skin
***
1) Background on exfoliating acids and side-effects
I have written many blogs on this (links at the end) and this is a basic reminder of what they are:
a) Why is exfoliation important?
As our skin ages, the rate of cellular turnover reduces: you get drier, scalier looking skin. Exfoliation is vital to youthful looking skin. See this blog
b) What are exfoliating acids?
b) What are not exfoliating acids?
c) How do these acids work?
At the most basic level, they cause dead skin cells (corneocytes) to stick less to each other and thereby increase cellular turnover.
2) What happens to your skin when you over-exfoliate?
Side effects of over-using exfoliating acids are:
- Increases risk of getting more pigmentation (exfoliating acids increase the risk of post-inflammatory hyper-pigmentation)
- Make skin more susceptible to UVR damage and therefore photodamage, which also includes fine lines, wrinkles, loss of collagen etc
- Increases likelihood of skin dryness
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that there is nothing scarier to me than skin dryness.
Dry skin is a primary characteristic of an impaired skin barrier. In English this means that
- Your skin will become drier because your losing more water (rate of Trans-Epidermal Water Loss increases)
- Skin becomes scalier and more rough
- Skin becomes tighter after you wash it because the skin’s ability to hold water is impaired.
Specifically with exfoliating acids, exfoliating with strong concentrations and/or excessive use can also cause:
- Severe redness (or severe erythema)
- Swelling
- Burning
- Rash, skin discolouration and blistering.
3) Examples of over-exfoliating routines
I’ve only highlighted the exfoliating acid part of the routine because honestly, no amount of face oil or moisturising repairs the damage.
In this routine, the person is using at least 2-3 exfoliating acids of different strengths including salicylic acid (2% and 5%), lactic acid, glycolic acid and tartaric acid. And be in no doubt, yogurt shown above contains lactic acid
Routine 2
In the morning alone, the person is using:
- a physical exfoliator (facial polish)
- Exfoliating acids (the toner)
- Skin lightener (ascorbic acid and alpha arbutin) and an
- Aggressive spot corrector
The evening routine is worse because at Step 3, the person uses every day one of the following:
- Exfoliator: 10% lactic acid
- Skin lightener: Azelaic Acid
- Exfoliator: Mandelic Acid 10%
Sunscreen…
The side-effects of overuse are compounded by the fact that there is absolutely minimal sunscreen usage, which is restricted to outdoors when
Final word…
Routine 1 person’s primary complaint is dry to very dry skin – she did have acne prone oily skin. The use of the exfoliating acids has coincided with her dry skin. Routine 2 person’s primary complaint is pigmentation, which dispute her use of products, still keeps coming back. This pigmentation is of course encouraged by the lack of sunscreen use and is also likely to be PIH (post-inflammatory hyper-pigmentation), which is pigmentation that occurs in response to wound-healing.