There’s a big bustling world of ways to look after your skin. Toners, cleansers, serums, supplements, moisturiser, minerals, moisturiser with minerals … It can leave you feeling like a newbie at the gym, pretending you understand these strange gadgets and words.
Which is insane, because skincare is simple.
The whole industry can be summed into a few groups. When you know what those are, it’s easy to make your skin into its best self.
Everyone has unique skin, and different skincare is right for different people. Some methods work for everyone (spoiler: it’s swallowable skincare), although looking through the world of skincare is really fun. It’s always changing, but always stays in these categories:
Makeup
Some makeup has minerals and other goodies, but it masks acne. Like a band-aid without the antiseptic, but it looks 10 times as cool. There’s a whole culture around makeup and what it says about your personality. It’s a persona, you know, the Ancient Greek word for mask.
Makeup culture is in an amazing place now, and more than ever it’s normal to get weird with interesting colours and contours. This is a massive category that covers primer, foundation, rouge, eyeliner, eyeshadow, eye pencils, eyebrow pencils, contour and a galaxy of other shiny things. It’s mostly powders, creams and sticks for applying them.
You can do anything with makeup, but comedogenic brands can clog your pores and cause breakouts. But there are plenty of masks that look good AND heal your skin.
Did you know, you can a mix a ¼ to 1/3 of skinB5’s Purifying Mask into your favourite liquid foundation to create an anti-acne, high coverage and instantly mattifying make up? Try it! https://youtu.be/tKsHpXW_xS4
Pastes, creams and other goop
Skin masks go on your face, nourish your skin, then you peel or rinse them off. They can stay on for hours, or they could be a quick and mighty dose of nutrients like the skinB5 5-Minute Skin Purifying Mask. There’s a whole range of plant-based masks now.
Then there are sheet masks. These are fabric soaked in serums, liquids enriched with nutrients. They’re on trend, even though they make you look completely expressionless.
Moisturiser straight up hydrates your skin, which settles skin conditions. It’s the perfect companion for a cleanse, even when all your makeup is off. Look out for moisturisers with Vitamin E, Vitamin C and other goodness, like skinB5 Acne Control Moisturiser and Australian Botanicals Hydrator.
Sunscreen blocks and reflects UV rays. Face oil seals off your moisturiser or serum, and can really lock moisture and nutrients into your skin and protect your skin barrier. Toner often contains alcohol and irritates and dries your skin. A good natural oil like almond or macadamia with a splash of water is excellent for makeup removal, followed by a cleanser with only a small amount of salicylic acid to thoroughly cleanse your skin, gently). Eye cream will stop your eyes looking puffed and dark — if you’re an adult, it’s handy.
A lot of these skincare products are water rather than oil based, meaning they won’t clog pores, which is a good start. But, the only way to effectively hydrate your skin with water is to put it in your body. Speaking of …
Ingestible skincare
Consumables are the start and end of good skin. If you get the right diet, you’ll have the best chance of clearing up your skin. If you’re taking skincare seriously, nutritional supplements are a powerful cherry on top of all that effort. Any acne treatment will work against your body if you just fill it with inflammatory junk food.
In Australia, supplements have to work. TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) approval is a worldwide bragging right, but for our supplements it’s normal.
B vitamins repair your body, especially B5 which helps you restore healthy skin. All the letters help. A is an antioxidant, C creates age-fighting collagen, E and D will nourish the skin, K destroys blemishes. Magnesium, potassium, iron, zinc — our bodies are full of metals that help build healthy skin. You can get it all in supplements like skinB5 Acne Control Extra Strength Tablets and the fruity powder of skinB5 Clear Skin Superfood Booster.
All these goodies are in food. Fruit, vegetables, lean meat, fatty fish, nuts and seeds. If you keep your diet balanced and healthy, it shows on the outside (since that’s where the nutrients end up). But for those suffering from breakouts, supplementation is needed because your body and skin need higher dose nutrients.
Medicine
If it has a prescription on it, a doctor’s suggested it. Over-the-counter treatments exist, but they tend to be nuclear options that dry out and irritate the skin. There are better long-term rememdies. It always helps to chat with a GP or dermatologist. Anti-acne pharmaceuticals will generally come in pill form, and if it gets really bad, they can laser you.
Feel free to ask plenty of questions, really grill your doctor about acne treatments and side effects. Make the visit into a crash course on your skincare. It’s amazing how much they know.
Brave new methods
In Korea, snail slime is proving itself. Eggs are also looking like a good way to protect the skin from daily grime. Microneedling is a trendy roller covered in tiny needles, which inject temporary botox-like chemicals. We don’t recommend microneedling because it punctures the skin, but it looks cool. Donkey milk, yoghurt, charcoal and coffee are becoming popular rub-ins and pull-offs (like your masks). Japanese face razors shave away dead skin. There’s no telling where we’ll find our next hit of good looks.
Still, a simple routine is easy to follow. Care for your skin (remember to cleanse and moisturise!), add some high quality nutrtitional supplements. Then you can try extra support like skinB5’s purifying mask and superfood booster. All that glowing goodness is waiting for you.
Sources:
https://www.dermstore.com/blog/skin-care-101/
https://www.cetaphil.com.au/non-comedogenic-mean-matter/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2018-03-06/what-you-need-to-know-about-moisturiser/9512528
https://thedermreview.com/face-moisturizers/water-based-moisturizer-vs-oil-based-moisturizer/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/12-foods-for-healthy-skin
https://www.acne.org.au/managing-acne-with-medicine
Photo by Charisse Kenion on Unsplash
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