Three primary causes: ingredients, usage (personal habits) and combinations of products will sensitize your skin to the point of flare ups when any product is applied.
Let’s summarize these issues and then drill down.
Sensitive skin issues have predominated skincare since the mid-1980’s with the introduction of exfoliating acids. However, these acids are now only one of many possible skin sensitizing ingredients. Natural products and biomimetics are the villains in many instances.
There are, besides the ingredients, the personal habits of skincare that will lead to sensitization. A skincare routine that involves a daily application of this and that and a little bit of these and those once in a while is a great way to sensitize your skin and make it susceptible.
And then there are the combinations of products that will cause sensitization. An experienced esthetician will tell you not to mix product lines and this generally good advice is based on the experience that formulators in the past tried to avoid bringing an ingredient or product into the mix that would cause problems.
However, product lines now have much more skin activity and consumers are more knowledgeable about skin tools such as exfoliants, or powerful metabolites like retinol or specific natural extracts like arnica. These consumers look for certain ingredients and often end up with an array of products from different makers.
So which of these three issues will create the most problems?
Personal habits or usage by far creates the most sensitizing problems. You can select about anything for your skin and if the application is infrequent (like 1x per week) you will be fine. However, if you have a half dozen of wonder products and apply a different one every day, there is a strong likelihood you will have sensitized your skin.
How can that be? Aren’t skin care products like food for the skin?
Actually, skin care products are like feeding a steak to a baby. The skin is only 19 sheets of paper thick. For a test, go ahead and apply your moisturizer to a memo pad and check back in an hour. The paper is saturated deeply.
The skin has just been fed a huge 48 ounce steak – and you are doing that morning and night. The skin machinery has to break down all that stuff and do something with it. Fortunately most of it does not go deeper than the first six sheets, BUT this accumulation sends signals much deeper in living tissue.
It won’t take very long until your skin has been weakened by all this.
The skin doesn’t realize it should be happy eating so much, instead it acts as if it has been invaded. It puts up a zillion sandbags to prevent penetration to the vital organs. These fragmented proteins will swell up your skin and you will smile with pleasure that your wrinkles have diminished. How delightful.
This defense by the skin wears it out, though. After a while it shuts down a lot of biological activity to protect the body – which is its job as you might recall. It doesn’t know you want to look luscious.
In fact you have an unsustainable growth of fragmented protein and a skin that has called out the fire department.
Now your skin has taken a turn to the drab and most unexpected it is also dry, dry and also can be crazy oily. Your cleanser is ruthlessly scrubbing away the little whiteheads and most unwelcome is that this is causing more and more pinking and dry patches.
So now, exfoliants are brought in to smooth the rough skin that has been created by all the sandbags. This looks great. Swollen and smooth.
You then apply the moisturizer du jour and whoa! Your skin feels hot, is pink and takes an hour to settle down. If the day is warm you look and feel like a jalapeño pepper intervention.
All this began with a simple daily moisturizer. Now here is where you need to look at the moisturizer itself. Both the frequency and the ingredients are wrong. And, worse to worse, this may be, and probably is, an old reliable product.
You can end up in an endless search and with the same outcome. Flare ups. You weakened your skin to the point it gave up. Now here’s the kicker. When you stop Old Reliable your skin gets even crazier. What. Is. Going. On. ?????
Addiction. You suddenly pulled off the covers and the skin that has been shut down is forced to act. It will take a week or longer to become itself again.
In our work with tens of thousands of consumers who have faced this craziness we have found that they will never ever be able to address aging skin until they get a handle on their daily routine and understand what is going on.
Skincare products can act like sugar in the liver.
Cleansing with the right products is 90% of skincare. If it foams, it probably is not good. If your skin feels squeaky clean, it probably is not good. There are ways and products to get where you want without spending yourself into crazy. Get guidance. A great place is this link.
Get started right and learn the rules your skin lives by. It isn’t 1960 anymore where everyone washed with cold cream, used Trushay Lotion and was good to go.
