Wash Your Face With Water Wash Your Face With Water
Last year, out of an obsessive need to organize my mind, I began trying out new skincare products and rate them, mostly to myself. It happened as a result of some research I’d done about skincare and beauty routines after realizing how tired I felt due to poor life balance and how that could impact my overall health, and also my skin.
Some products I had tried were noticeably useful, such as sunscreen or makeup removers — they did what they claimed to do. But the deeper solution for a “tired” appearance wasn’t in any gel, cream or tonic. It usually never is.
Obviously, and thanks to a job shift, changing my lifestyle has contributed to feeling better and more energized.
At the time though, thinking they’d keep my skin from getting dry or tired again, I kept buying more products. One to moisturize, one to clean up, one for night repair, one for enlarged pores, and the list went on. The thing about skincare marketing is it makes you believe your skin has lots of “problems” and that you need to tackle them all.
Your skin can handle its own problems
It was when I came across an interview from Dr. Yael Adler, a German dermatologist, that I realised less can definitely be more in skincare.
By using too many products, we tend to irritate the skin. We should build up the skin from inside: just eat healthy food.
So simple, so obvious, and yet, we keep spending money in all these anti-aging products to prevent skin oxidation and wrinkle formation. We “wash” our face with chemical cleaners, and are surprised when we develop rosacea, dermatitis or other sensitive skin conditions, perhaps due to an overuse of products that remove the natural barrier of the skin.
In another interview, Dr. Adler claims that the only creams that can improve skin protection are sunscreens:
To understand what the sun does to the skin, stand in front of the mirror and compare the skin of the face with the skin of the tail, which is always protected from the sun. The difference is obvious.
Food for thought
Eating foods with many colors, such as fruits and vegetables, so present in our Mediterranean diet, is one of the best forms of protection. “Tomato sauce or juice, which has lycopene, an essential repairing antioxidant, is more effective for the skin than any expensive cream. And a glass of carrot juice a day – which makes the skin a little more orange – increases by two or three times the time the skin endures sun exposure.”
I’m amazed by how, no matter what subject I read about, less is always more. Less is always better.