Skin Care At a Glance

By Isabella Tarrant.

Skin care is an incredibly personal thing. It is a very particular ritual to each of us and, regardless of how often it is spoken about openly it is something everyone is conscious of. The fact of the matter is that in a day and age where the beauty industry is worth billions it is hard to know where to start with skin and taking care of it.

Due to how personal skin is, the factors surrounding what makes your skin look and feel the way it does are endless. Hormones, diet, genetics, bacteria, you name it, it has an effect on your skin. So, it is easy to understand that people’s skin is different for lots of different reasons. Comparing your skin and its appearance to someone else’s is like self-sabotage because their skin is inherently different to yours. That’s not to say you can’t aspire for yours to be different - it just requires some investment, in terms of both time and money.

As a disclaimer, I am merely someone who is especially interested in skin care. I have educated myself about skin types, the ingredients, and the types of products. I continue to educate myself daily. I have worked at The Body Shop for two years and have been trained with an understanding of the different types of skin and ingredients that aid that specific skin type. As well, the steps to create a routine and how to use and apply products.

My infatuation with skin care started when my brother was staring secondary school. My mum got him a couple of basic products to keep his skin clean and moisturised in preparation for the teenage years where hormones run wild. I was fascinated by the ritual he was doing and if I’m honest, I was also a little jealous that he was getting so many new things. My lovely mum indulged my intrigue and bought me the exact same basic skincare pieces she had gotten my brother and I was hooked. It may have been the routine of it, as a lover of planning, but the act of taking some time each day and my sole focus just being on this one thing, I absolutely loved. It wasn’t until I was about 14 or 15 that I started taking ingredients into account. The ingredients matter because they will either aid your skin in so many ways or cause your skin more issues. This is where the investment of time is necessary, as a means to understanding your skin.

The first thing to consider is the type of skin you have. This revolves around how your skin feels when it’s clean. Is it tight? Does it feel greasy? Is it shiny? Is it a mixture of tight, shiny and feel greasy? Does it feel like neither of these things? Or does it feel like neither of these things but look slightly flat or lacklustre? All of these questions have answers and finding the answers is vital for you to figuring out the type of skin you have. Below I have typed out some outlines to the most common skin types;

Normal Skin

If your skin doesn’t really display any tightness, greasiness, a combination of those or exhibit any redness when clean and dry then you have normal skin.

Dry Skin

If your skin feels tight or displays flakes of skin; doesn’t show any sign of grease of shine, then you have dry skin.

Oily Skin

If your skin looks shiny and is greasy to the touch, doesn’t demonstrate any sign of tightness or dryness, then you have oily skin.

If your skin doesn’t sound like any of those, keep reading as you may have a combination of these types of skin.

Combination Skin Types

Normal to Dry and or Dehydrated Skin

If your skin feels slightly tight, doesn’t show much sign of shine but looks a little flat or lacklustre, then you probably have a normal to dry and or dehydrated combination skin.

Normal to Oily Skin

If your skin doesn’t display tightness but it slightly shiny or greasy to the touch, then you probably have normal to oily combination skin.

Dry to Oily Skin

If your skin feels tight or displays flakiness in some areas, but shiny or greasy to touch in other areas then you probably have dry to oily combination skin.

There are of course specific things to consider when it comes to your skin.

Sensitivity

Sensitive skin is incredibly common. It is caused by nerve endings in the top layer of the skin being irritated. This occurs because the skin’s natural barrier function is weakened due to something irritating it. There is an almost endless list of triggers for sensitive skin but some of the most common are;

the environment – sun expose, changes in air temperature, pollution; hormones – periods, stress, pregnancy; water temperatures to name a few.

Redness

Redness can be caused by a lot of things but if you display redness in small areas of your cheeks or forehead, around the nose – it could just be your skin but it may also be sensitivity. In extreme cases it could be rosacea.

Spots

Spots are caused by an excess amount of sebum (oil) that is produced by the skin. That sebum then gets trapped in your pores, causing them to block and thus forming a spot. Spots can be caused by numerous amounts of things, this is where the list of hormones, diet, genetics, bacteria etc comes in to play.

For those of you that may feel overwhelmed at this point, this is only a glance into the skin care world. Fortunately, as someone who spends most of her time researching, reading and applying skin care I will be writing individual posts for the types of skin. Along with this, which products to use, how to use them, routines and any extras that may be of interest. I hope you not only learn something from these posts but also enjoy them. Skin care, fundamentally, is about taking care of yourself and I hope that with the next posts that follow I can convince you of just that.