Clean Your Skin After the Summer’s Stresses

After a whole summer under the sun, swimming and relaxation, many people are in dire need of a skin refresh. We sweat a lot during the summer and this, combined with sun protection, can leave skin feeling clogged. At the same time, skin feels drier due to exposure to the sun’s rays, pores become more prominent and skin feels more uneven in color and texture. In short, it’s time for a skin cleanse.

Cleansing

It’s important to choose a gentle but effective cleanser. As skin ages, it becomes drier and thinner – the production of your natural collagen, hyaluronic acid and sebum – which help keep skin soft and supple – diminishes. So don’t use a cleanser that dries out your skin even more. A good cleanser cleanses your skin of makeup but also of exhaust fumes, pollutants sweat and sebum without drying out your skin.

The skin’s pH is 4.7-5.5 and is therefore acidic – this is to allow the good bacteria to produce acids so that the less good bacteria do not damage and/or irritate the skin. An ordinary hand soap has a high alkaline pH and will dry out your skin. This is also true of some facial cleansers. Soaps and gels often dry out the skin but leave it feeling clean and lathered for a while. So choose your facial cleanser carefully as you use it 1-2g/day.

Deep Cleansing

This is also a good time to do a deeper skin cleansing using an exfoliator. Exfoliating the skin helps to remove the old and spent skin cells that lie on the skin surface and make the skin look dull, dry and uneven. Our skin forms and sheds lots of skin cells every day, but sometimes the skin needs a little help with this. A proper deep pore cleansing will freshen the skin and help the pores to close up again. Skin feels softer, smoother and has a completely different glow.

Peeling

Again, it’s important to choose the right type of peel when you have skin that’s starting to show signs of ageing. If you choose a grain peel, don’t get too coarse grains in it, it can damage the skin more than it does good. If you choose an acid peel – AHA, BHA or PHA – again, make sure it’s tailored to ageing skin.

A gommage peel can be difficult to perform on thinner, sagging skin and is not recommended in the first place. This type of product is not as common today. Enzyme peels are gentle on ageing skin and often contain papaya enzyme/papain or pineapple enzyme/bromelain. These enzymes help to dissolve the bonds between the dead spent skin cells.

After deep cleansing, the skin is thoroughly cleansed, cell renewal is initiated and the skin feels silky smooth with a lovely glow. However, be careful not to overdo the exfoliation as it can irritate the skin.

Day/Night Cream

After cleansing and/or exfoliating the skin, it’s time to round off the skincare routine. Again, what we need is a little different – it could be moisture, other nourishment, anti-age/active skincare, something that soothes, protects and strengthens your skin. There is an endless array of products to choose from. Day creams, night creams, 24-hour creams – then you can also add serums, oils and a whole host of other specialist products.

Active skincare is for those who need an extra boost, as many of us do after the stresses of summer on our skin. Quite simply, products that work on the skin’s signs of ageing such as fine lines, wrinkles, enlarged pores as well as pigmentation spots and generally sun-damaged skin. In addition, it is always good to have softening properties that bring out the radiance in the skin and even out the skin tone.

How about you? Do you have any other tips to share to clean your skin after summer? Leave them in the comments below!

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