In the last few decades, achieving and maintaining healthy and age-defying skin is being chased by more and more people looking for the holy grail of skincare routines.
The market is flooded with products claiming to ‘erase wrinkles’, give you ‘glowing skin’, and shave years off your appearance with various oils, antioxidants, and other secret ingredients that take more time to pronounce than they do to apply.
Amongst the bustling skincare market are a few myths that have stuck around despite being debunked and have the potential to do more harm to your skin than good.
Here are some of the most common skincare myths.
The harder you scrub, the better your skin
Your skin isn’t into the rough treatment and your skincare routine should involve just the opposite. While exfoliation is great for removing dead skin cells, exfoliating with too much rigour can also irritate the skin and remove healthy layers along with the dead ones.
Oily skin doesn’t need moisturiser
Don’t confuse oily skin with well moisturised and hydrated skin. While you might be hesitant to put more moisture onto what you think is already moist skin, but water-based moisturisers don’t add extra oil to the skin and cause irritation. They actually help your skin retain its natural water.
You can reduce the size of your pores
There are some products on the market that may shrink your pores temporarily (not without potential side effects), but permanently changing the size of your pores isn’t possible yet. The size of your pores is entirely determined by your genetics, and several things contribute to enlarged pores such as UV damage, hormones, ageing, and the level of oils in your skin at any given time. You can hide them, but you can’t change them.
Sunscreen is for summer
UV skin damage can cause a world of hurt for your skin and your health, and yet, most people tend to only reach for the sunscreen on hot and sunny days. Overexposure to UV rays can kill skin cells both on the outer layers and deeper layers of the skin, result in premature aging, and cause other skin irritations that lead to skin cancer. Those UV rays are lurking all year round regardless of the season, making sunscreen your skin’s best friend for every day use.
Hot water helps open pores to clear them out
As much as we all love a hot shower, hot water isn’t great for our skin and it doesn’t open our pores to deep clean the impurities. Instead, it can strip away all your skin’s natural oils and defences which leave it open to inflammation, pimples, and redness due to the irritation. Your skin is much happier in lukewarm water where you can gently clean impurities instead of trying to melt them off.