Are you loving your skin too much?

At Okana we’re big believers in developing a good skincare routine and sticking to it, however it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

The massive amount of information about skincare that’s available online, plus all the social media activity that stalks you through Instagram and Facebook, can lead to an obsession with skin care. Doing too much to your skin too often can sometimes be worse than doing nothing much at all.

Here’s a quick rundown of the obsessive skincare behaviours you need to be aware of:

Too much cleansing

According to skin-care experts, women who suffer from acne and breakouts are more likely to fall into the trap of cleansing too often. They also lean towards oil-stripping cleansers, because they believe it will result in less oil and fewer spots.

There are two problems with this approach. Firstly, over-cleansing your skin with harsh cleansers tends to make your skin oilier than ever. Secondly, it’s likely you’ll compromise your skin’s acid mantle (skin barrier), resulting in irritation and inflammation.

The best and rather counterintuitive approach is to do your heavy-duty cleansing with oil, then follow up with a light water-based cleanser. But only do this double cleanse at night. Double cleansing twice a day is more than your skin needs. If your skin has a tight and dry feeling after cleansing, you’ve definitely gone overboard. 

Too much exfoliating 

If you’ve done any DIY around the house, you’ll know about sandpaper. It’s the stuff you use on surfaces prior to painting, to get them smooth and ensure the paint will stick properly. The same thinking applies to exfoliating your face; you’re looking for a smooth finish that makes a great blank canvas for makeup.

To take the DIY analogy a step further, what would happen if you just kept on sanding those surfaces? You would literally wear them away. The same applies to your face. Exfoliating daily is one of the biggest no-nos we can imagine. While you might think it will stimulate extra cell turnover and create the smoothest-ever surface for your foundation, what’s really happening is skin barrier damage.

If you’re guilty of over-exfoliation, i.e. more than twice a week, your skin will become dry and sensitive – you might notice that it stings when you apply toner and moisturiser. The solution is to put exfoliation aside for a couple of weeks. It might even take as long as a month for your skin to recover, which is the entire length of a skin cell cycle. To hurry up the healing, switch to an all-natural skincare regime.

Too many masks 

Over-masking is a real and present danger to skin health. However it’s easy to understand how a gal can become an over-masker. Clay masks do wonders for skins that are inclined to clog up and break out. So logic, erroneously, says ‘more is better’. Not true. Over-masking has the same result as over-exfoliation – worn out skin. If you love to mask, make it just once a week and limit your exfoliation. For example, exfoliate on a Wednesday, mask on the weekend.

Why is your skin barrier so important?

The obsessive skincare behaviours we’ve described above are a problem because they disrupt the skin barrier function. The skin barrier is the outermost layer of skin cells (the stratum corneum, to be correct) plus the lipid matrix (made of ceramides, cholesterols and fatty acids) that holds those cells together. You can think of it as a brick wall: the cells are the bricks and the lipid matrix is the cement that holds them together.

The skin barrier has two main purposes; it keeps viruses, bacteria and toxins out, and it keeps moisture in. When your skin barrier is damaged by too much cleansing, exfoliating and masking, the moisture escapes - and that’s what makes your skin dry and sensitive. A compromised skin barrier can also result in a rash of small, rough, bumpy pimples.

Too much moisturising

What happens if you moisturise too much? Clogged pores, blackheads and whiteheads, that’s what – especially if you apply moisturiser to skin that is less than clean. Twice a day is the golden rule for moisturiser.

If your over-moisturisation habits are a result of over-cleansing, over-exfoliation or over-masking, back up the truck on the ‘over’ behaviour. You won’t need to moisturise more than twice a day if your skin barrier is in good shape. 

Read more about: What to look for in a natural moisturiser