HOW TO REPAIR YOUR SKIN BARRIER
People are unaware that most of the products they use are harmful to their skin
WHEN customers message Nicolas Travis, the founder of the skincare brand Allies of Skin, with questions about their sensitive skin, he asks them what other products they’re using. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he said, it’s something with drying alcohol or harsh essential oils.
“I have to tell them, ‘You’ve just spent years of using really badly formulated products, which is like years and years of eating junk food,’” said Travis, whose company is based in Singapore and is in stores in 15 countries. “I say, ‘Your skin isn’t sensitive, your skin barrier is just really weak.’”
Ask aestheticians and dermatologists what problem they’re seeing these days, and more often than not, the answer is a brokendown skin barrier. Little wonder, then, that the new beauty buzzwords are “barrier repair” (and its cousin “barrier protection”).
A broken barrier — symptoms include inflammation and patchy, flaky skin — can eventually lead to other problems since it means the skin’s defences are compromised. Besides sensitive skin, barrier dysfunction is also partly responsible for rosacea, eczema, psoriasis and acne, all of which are on the rise, according to epidemiological studies.
What’s to blame for the mass barrier malfunction? Too many creams, serums and other hopes in a jar.
“It’s largely a product of our own obsession with squeaky clean and using product upon product upon product,” said Whitney Bowe, a dermatologist in New York. Combine product overload with environmental assaults, and you have a recipe for skin barrier disaster.
Here’s how to avoid that — or to repair the damage.
What’s the Acid Mantle, and Why You Absolutely Must Protect It
The acid mantle is the protective film of natural oils, amino acids and sweat that covers your skin. Damage it with too much scrubbing or neutralise it with alkaline washes and you’re on your way to barrier problems: inflammation, allergies, breakouts.
Cleansing your skin with anything alkaline interferes with the skin’s ability to repair itself and makes it less elastic, Bowe said. A high pH also encourages the growth of a bacteria called propionibacterium acnes that, as you may guess from the name, plays a major role in many forms of acne. That face wash that is superfoamy and lathery? There’s a fairly good chance it’s alkaline because the ingredients that give it those qualities are high pH.
Dos and Don’ts of Restoring Your Skin Barrier
The first step in skin barrier protection is stepping away from the kajillion products.
“The 10-step Korean regimen is an ordeal for the skin,” Surber said.
Chemical exfoliants like glycolic, lactic and salicylic acid are usually more gentle than physical exfoliants (particles in scrubs, microdermabrasion) but should be used no more than once a week for dry or sensitive skin and three times a week for oily skin.
Initially, there was a lot of excitement among doctors about ceramides, which glue the barrier back together and help prevent the skin from drying out and wrinkling. But the skin is simply too complex for any single ingredient to do the job, said S. Tyler Hollmig, an assistant professor of dermatologic surgery at Stanford University.
Products with ingredients like glycerin, petrolatum and hyaluronic acid can also help repair the skin barrier and replenish lost moisture. These don’t need to be fancy. Shari Marchbein, a dermatologist in New York, advises that, as basic as it sounds, moisturiser should be applied within 60 seconds of cleansing to trap in the hydration.
“If you frost a dry cake, the cake is still dry,” Marchbein said. “If you frost a moist cake, it stays moist.”
| The New York Times