Products and Your Skin

Go into any pharmacy or big retailer and you find whole aisles dedicated to skin care products. There are so many choices that it is enough to give anyone choice-paralysis.

What you use and how can either help or harm your skin. Below are a few tips and general guidelines to keep those choices simple and helpful.

The Pearls and Reasons

1. Use Soap to Wash, not Detergent

Everyone uses soap, probably everyday. But do you know if your soap is part detergent? Choosing the right soap can be a huge factor in taking care of your skin.

Real soap is made by taking a fatty acid from an oil or animal fat and using a chemical reaction called saponification. Unfortunately, many mass-produced soaps actually contain detergents, which are less expensive and easier to manufacture. The soaps with detergents suds up well and leave you squeaky clean, but also very dry. If you have sensitive or dry skin, like eczema or flaking psoriasis, and wash with a soap that has detergents, you are drying out your skin and making it more sensitive. If you have blemishes, acne and oily skin and you over wash with a harsh soap your body will work even harder to produce yet more oil.

Read your labels and see. A basic, natural soap should have fewer than 10 simple ingredients, mostly saponified oils, like olive or palm or coconut. Mass marketed soaps have a long list of unrecognizable chemicals, artificial colors, fragrance, etc. This can make for a long-lasting, cheap, and ok product for people who have iron-clad skin. But, if you have any skin issues you should try out a natural soap and see what happens. In most cases you will notice a positive difference in just a few days.

2. Moisturize Properly

Did you know there is a proper way to use a moisturizer? Many people have never been told that there is a ‘right’ way. It is simple.

After showering, lightly pat dry so that the skin is still damp. Apply your moisturizer directly.

A good moisturizer or emollient provides a layer of oil on the surface of the skin to slow water loss and thus increase the moisture content and water-holding capacity of the upper layer of the skin. Basically, it keeps you from drying out. When your skin is very dry it loses some of its protective qualities and can be more easily irritated.

3. Use the Fewest and Simplest Products You Can

The body is an amazing healing machine. Oftentimes it just needs some help in affecting its own healing. If you have a skin condition (which most likely you do if you are reading this), it simply does not make sense to continually bombard and challenge the body with more chemicals, fragrances, etc. Try to keep your skin care routine as simple as possible and give your skin a chance to take care of itself.

4. Avoid Contact (Dermatitis)

Might your skin care products be worsening your condition? It’s possible.

Contact dermatitis is a localized rash or irritation of the skin caused by contact with a foreign substance. It can occur suddenly and acutely if your skin reacts dramatically to something you put on it, but more often, it can be a chronic, ongoing irritation. You may be putting something on that feels fine, but the ongoing nature of the use builds up and creates a sensitivity or reaction. You might never guess that your normal products could be a factor in your condition. But, it could be your soap, your shampoo, your moisturizer, your laundry detergent (via residue in sheets and clothes) or anything else that ends up in contact with you.

How can you eliminate your daily products from the list of suspects? Do an elimination diet of sorts or some patch testing.

If you want to do an “elimination diet” simply stop using one product for a week or two and see if you are any better. If you can’t get by without using something, do a patch test instead. Use your product on one side of the body and use a different product on the other side. Make sure to really make note of which side is which.

Do you suspect your laundry detergent? If your skin irritations are more noticeable where your clothes rub, along the collar, waist, thighs, this might be the problem. Most big brand detergents make use of harsh detergents that are cheap and easy to manufacture. They suds and clean well, but can be too harsh for people with skin issues. Try a product like old-timey real soap flakes or a more natural plant based detergent and see if things improve.

5. Evaluate the Safety of Your Products

Are your products safe? Do you know? As a consumer it is extremely hard to know from just reading the label.

Luckily, there are sources with safety ratings available. Skin Deep: The Cosmetic Safety Database rates over 30,000 products in all categories of cosmetics and personal care. They base their ratings on information from 50 integrated, definitive toxicity and regulatory databases. Products are given a score ranging from 0 (low concern) to 10 (high concern). You can even log in and rate your favorite products to share your experience with others. You’ll find the link to the website below.

Links for Readers Who Want More

Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database. Why use products with ingredients that are suspect? Check out all of the products you use on a daily basis here. They even have lists of the products that rate the lowest concern in each category.

http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/index.php

More about Contact Dermatitis on Wikipedia. A good intro with the different types, causes and research references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_dermatitis

“The Hundred Year Lie” is a website from Randall Fitzgerald, an author who wrote a book of the same title and it is subtitled: “How Food and Medicine are Destroying Your Health”. Fitzgerald explains the body burden of all of the chemicals in our foods, drugs, skin care products and environment and the resulting negative impact on health. If you read this book you will definately make lifestyle changes to make yourself cleaner and healthier. The website is a good intro with excerpts and video interviews:

http://www.hundredyearlie.com/index.html

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