Beauty Basics: Skin Care

Posted on Sunday, at bought • 245 views

Makeup enhances certain features and minimizes others. It can also outright cover things up. But if your skin isn't healthy, you're putting paint over a poor canvas. Sure it looks nice if you get more expensive paints, and pay for the most costly tools and the training to use them; but wouldn't it be easier if you just had the healthiest skin you possibly could? That lets you get better results even if you don't spend a fortune on conceal-all makeup or spend an hour “putting your face on” each day.

These guidelines below apply to everyone, but only in the broadest sense. Your specific routine will have slight variations, and will change over time. The skin care routine you use when you're 18 will not be the exact same routine you use when you're 28 (or 38, or 58.)

Beauty Basics: Skin Care

Cleanse and moisturize

All kinds of chemicals, dirt, bacteria, and other substances accumulate on your skin all day, every day. Even if you stayed in a climate-controlled environment with no outside air, your skin secretes sweat and oil (and layers of dead skin cells.) This can cause irritations, rashes, or become home to bacteria. Wash your skin (or wipe it with a clean damp cloth) at least once a day, preferably twice, to clean off anything that can dry your skin, irritate it, clog your pores. Always use something that's moisturizing, whether you use a soap+moisturizing product, or separate products. Everyone's skin needs moisturizing - we just need more of it as we age.

As you get into your early to mid 20s, you will want to exfoliate your skin regularly. It will help polish your skin, even out rough patches, and minimize buildup. You can exfoliate using scrubs (products that contain small particles to gently abrade away the built-up layers), chemicals (like alpha hydroxy), brushes, or textured cloths. Don't use anything that's too harsh, and don't use a lot of pressure. You want to gently scrape off material that's about ready to fall away on its own, not tear or cause actual damage to the still-living, healthy skin layers. The Clarisonic has gotten lots of raves, and I have one and have used it; but you may find that you can just use a terry cloth and a facial scrub, or any loose-weave fabric and a homemade sugar scrub.

Protect

...and by this, I mean sunscreen. (Because even if you live in dreary rainy London or Seattle, there are days when it's sunny and you go outside.) Generally, everyone who spends more than five minutes in the sun at a time, needs to protect themselves from the sun. Even if a day is cloudy or overcast, radiation does get through the cloud layer. Some people choose to wear broad-brimmed hats, longer sleeves and pants, and gloves - even in summer. Most people prefer to wear sunscreen, especially during the warmer months.

Choose a sunscreen that gives you complete protection from UVA (primarily responsible for wrinkles and dryness and aging the skin) and UVB (primarily responsible for sunburn) rays. If your skin is prone to acne, look for a non-comedogenic product (specifically formulated not to clog pores.) The SPF that you use will depend on your age, family suceptibility to cancers, sensitivity to sun, and general skin condition.

You may have noticed that when you were younger, there weren't too many sunblocks with an SPF higher than 40 - and something with an SPF of 35 or 40 cost more than something from the same company with an SPF of 30. Part of that is marketing: higher numbers are indeed more effective, so the various sunscreens keep formulating and selling products with higher SPF. But the increase in effectiveness reduces the higher you go past SPF 30. Something with an SPF of 30 is more effective than something with an SPF of 20. But while SPF 40 is more effective than SPF 30, it's not the same degree of increased effectiveness as between SPF 20 and SPF 30.

Personally, I will generally buy and use the highest-SPF product available, if it doesn't cost more. For example, the first year or two that it came out, Neutrogena's SPF 85 cost a dollar more than a tube of Neutrogena's SPF 70 sunscreen...but the SPF 70 sunscreen cost the same as a tube of SPF 65 (or 50, or 45, or 40.) And I can recall seeing some SPF 100 stuff from Neutrogena last summer, so either this year or next year the SPF 85 stuff will probably cost the same as the SPF 70, 65, 50, 45, 40, and so on. I will not wear any sunscreen with an SPF rating of lower than 45, though - simply because my family has a predisposition to melanoma. (I could probably get away with just using SPF 45, because higher SPFs don't give that much extra protection. But...like I said, if it doesn't cost me more money than an SPF-45 product from that same company, I'll buy the highest SPF I can get.)

Repair

Besides regular moisturizing, you'll occasionally need to give your skin a little extra TLC. Maybe you've had a breakout, or you scraped your arm, or burned or cut yourself during your morning regimen. Maybe your skin gets extremely dry and cracks in the winter. Or maybe you exfoliated a little too enthusiastically. Once the bleeding has been stopped (if it's something serious enough to draw blood) and the blisters have faded (those straight irons are tricky things, aren't they? Get them too close and they'll burn your ears) you'll want to accelerate the healing and prevent scarring. I love Neosporin, for everything from overplayful cat attacks to breakouts to anything else. It's antibacterial, so it prevents infection; it's thicker, so it will generally stay put; and a small tube fits easily in a pocket or purse. Neosporin is now available in that spray form, in bandages, this-that-the other, but I'm good with the original ointment. It helps things heal without scarring, which is good or I'd have a great big slice across my nose and one cheek, courtesy of my eldest cat. (I'm sure she thought she was just playing. I swear, she looked as shocked as I felt.) I sometimes put down a slightly thicker spot-application and let that stay on while I check my email and catch up on Twitter (about 20 minutes or so) - then I'll wipe that off, and re-apply a thin coat for going about my regular daily routine. For dry skin, I use body butter or (on my heels) straight lanolin hydrous. That's the ingredient in many creams and ointments that heals and moisturizes skin. For most uses, a diluted form is just fine. For persistently painfully dry skin, though, you sometimes need the stuff straight up. My heels won't be helped by anything else - and it's not easy to buy, because the various companies can get more money if they sell it in a diluted format. I bought a large tub (16 ounces) through drugstore.com, and split it with my family so that we'd all have some and be able to use it before it started to lose its effectiveness.


As always, you may have situations or questions that you need to discuss with either an aesthetician or a dermatologist. And everyone's skin will be slightly different, due to diet, activity levels, genetics, environment, and dozens of other factors. This gives you the very basics, though. Just for information, my skincare routine is:

Morning

  1. wash with gentle soap; pat dry
  2. moisturize
  3. spot treatment of any scars, cuts, scrapes, breakouts
  4. apply sunscreen to face/neck/arms

Evening

  1. makeup remover wipes
  2. salicylic acid pads
  3. moisturize

Next week: primer and foundation.

Like this entry? Check these out:


or look at other entries tagged with

Comments

Commenting is not available in this channel entry.