Exfoliating the skin is the process of removing dead, dead skin cells found on the surface. This procedure makes the skin texture smoother, fresher and requires a minimum of effort and money spent. It can be easily done at home using cosmetic products or by preparing the necessary composition yourself.
The Importance of Exfoliating Your Skin
Exfoliation is an important part of facial and body care. Our skin constantly generates new cells in the lower layer (dermis) and pushes them to the surface (epidermis). Their life cycle under normal conditions ranges from 28 to 60 days. They then die and their cavity is filled with keratin, which gives our skin its protective quality.
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This is a natural process and in youth the skin is imperceptibly freed from unnecessary ballast. But with age, cellular turnover slows down and cells begin to accumulate unevenly, giving the skin a dry, rough, dull appearance. Exfoliation helps remove tissue that the skin has not been able to get rid of on its own and reveals fresher, younger epithelial tissue.
Benefits of peeling include:
- skin rejuvenation;
- improving its texture;
- reduction of signs of aging;
- lightening hyperpigmentation;
- stimulation of lymphatic drainage.
How to cleanse your facial skin: step-by-step instructions
First you need to get rid of any remaining makeup. If using micellar water, rinse your face with water.
Washing
Wash your face thoroughly with a delicate product: foam, milk, liquid soap. Wipe with a dry towel. For greater effectiveness, apply lotion.
Additional cleansing
Apply the selected peeling product over the entire surface of the face, except for the area around the eyes and above the lip. Massage the skin for 2-3 minutes, leave for a few more minutes. Then repeat the massage, remove any remaining peeling with water.
Toning and moisturizing
After deep cleansing, treat your facial skin with a moisturizing toner. This will help close cleansed pores and refresh. The final stage is applying a moisturizing or nourishing cream.
Preparatory stage
Types of skin exfoliation
There are two main types of peeling:
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- Mechanical exfoliation (scrubbing) literally erases dead skin cells with some kind of abrasive. Sugar, salt, coffee grounds, jojoba beads and other solid particles can be used as a scrubbing agent.
- Chemical exfoliation uses acids including fruit, lactic, salicylic, etc.
Dry brushing is another less common form of exfoliation. It is performed with a dry special brush, without the use of additional substances. Therefore, it has only a mild surface effect.
Which is better: a factory product or a home-cooked one?
Since the exfoliation procedure has been known for a long time, many homemade scrub recipes have survived to this day.
But science and modern technology offer their own cleaning products, so which is better and more effective?
Advantages and disadvantages of home peelings
Advantages:
- Completely natural ingredients.
- Minimal risk of allergies (composition control avoids allergic reactions).
- Volume control (the person decides for himself how many procedures the product needs to be prepared for).
Flaws:
- Time to manufacture the product.
- Short shelf life.
- Heterogeneous consistency.
- No fragrance or specific aroma.
Homemade exfoliating facial scrubs are not inferior in their effectiveness to factory-made ones.
We invite you to watch Elena Malysheva’s program about how a homemade exfoliating scrub works and what effect can be achieved using such a product:
Pros and cons of ready-made drugs
Advantages:
- Beautiful appearance of both the packaging itself and the contents.
- The finished product is available for use at any time (no special preparation is required).
- Homogeneous texture containing fragrances and aromatic additives.
- Chemical composition.
- Increased risk of allergy to components.
- Small volume (50-100 ml).
- High price.
Flaws:
There is no clear answer to the question of which scrub is better.
For greater effect, you need to combine options for influencing the skin of the face, using both homemade scrubs and factory-made products.
Give yourself a cleansing routine. We offer many scrub recipes:
- With salt;
- soda;
- coffee;
- honey;
- sugar;
- aspirin;
- oatmeal.
How to prepare an exfoliator
You can easily make your own natural skin exfoliator. Many products in your kitchen contain useful substances and vitamins that act on the skin no less effectively than expensive drugs.
Coffee-almond scrub
Coffee rejuvenates the skin while brown sugar gently removes dead cells from the skin's surface. You can also use white sugar as an exfoliant.
Ingredients:
- 3 tbsp. l. coffee grounds;
- 1 tbsp. l. almond oil (can be replaced with olive or coconut);
- 1 tbsp. l. brown sugar.
Mix dry ingredients, then add butter. Based on the desired consistency of the scrub, you can use more or less of the recommended amount of brown sugar.
Apply the mixture with gentle movements onto the skin, without rubbing, and massage lightly. After a few minutes, remove the product with warm water.
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Baking soda and honey mask
Baking soda is an inexpensive natural exfoliant that, when combined with honey, brightens and brightens the skin.
Ingredients:
- 3 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tbsp. l. honey
Mix honey and baking soda to make a paste. Gently apply the mask to your face or body. Massage in circular motions, being careful around the eyes. Leave for 10 minutes. Be prepared that the honey will begin to melt on the skin and the mask will leak. It is better to perform this procedure in the shower. Use a washcloth with warm water to remove the mask. Let your skin rest for a few minutes and then moisturize.
Lemon body peeling
Cut a lemon in half and dip half in sugar. This way you will get a double effect. First, sugar works as an exfoliant, and lemon contains large amounts of vitamin C and fruit acids, which dissolve dead cells.
This product is quite strong on the skin, so it is not suitable for facial skin. But it perfectly cleanses the whole body. Particular attention can be paid to areas affected by cellulite, as lemon scrub perfectly combats this problem.
General recommendations for selection
An anti-peeling scrub should be selected for your skin type based on the composition of the product. For example:
- For oily skin, a more suitable base is clay. This cleansing frees the skin of dead cells, removes excess fat, and tightens pores.
- For dry skin, the base of an exfoliating facial scrub is cream. In addition to exfoliation, it moisturizes, helps restore water balance, and nourishes with nutrients.
- For normal or combination skin, the best base is a gel. It removes excess keratinized particles and complements care with hydration and nutrition.
The exfoliation procedure should be done no more than 1-2 times a week. With more frequent cleansing, either the fat glands are activated and produce more subcutaneous fat, or microcracks appear, the skin becomes thinner, dries out, and aging begins.
Features of abrasive particles:
- The thicker and rougher the skin, the larger the abrasive particles required for effective exfoliation. For oily types, elements with large and medium diameters are suitable, for dry or combination types - small ones.
- For sensitive epidermis, manufacturers have developed fillers - gel granules and wax balls. They have a streamlined shape and soft texture. In this case, a gentle cleansing occurs, the skin, even the most sensitive, is not injured.
Body scrub and face scrub are not interchangeable products. The skin on the face is more delicate than on the body, so the abrasive particles are selected smaller and polished more thoroughly.
If you cleanse your face with a body scrub, you can injure your skin and speed up the aging process.
Professional facial cleansers
Let's look at how to properly cleanse your face at home.
Let's look at what cleaning products you can choose from professional lines.
Tonics
Facial cleansing toners are designed to soften the skin, give it firmness and elasticity. Emollient ingredients have a calming effect and give a feeling of freshness.
Gels
Facial cleansing gels are suitable for all skin types. Gives a mattifying effect and prevents dryness. They also soothe the epidermis and maintain natural water balance.
Scrubs
Scrubbing products contain exfoliating particles. Additional components moisturize and soothe the epidermis.
Milk
Cleansing milk is designed to cleanse sensitive and allergy-prone skin. The compositions are selected in such a way that they carefully and at the same time delicately remove remnants of makeup from the face. With regular use, the milk saturates the skin with nutrients.
Micellar water
A universal product, suitable for any skin type. It has an oil and water base and easily copes with waterproof cosmetics. Does not cause irritation, moisturizes the epidermis.
Dry brush
Followers of Ayurveda are very fond of using a dry brush instead of a scrub. Exfoliating your skin with this accessory has been proven to improve blood circulation, promote lymphatic drainage, and even increase energy. Brush bristles are usually made from synthetic nylon or natural boar bristles. Rarely you can find options with copper threads, but they are intended exclusively for very rough areas of the body, as they are very tough.
When using a dry brush, be extremely careful: try not to put pressure on the tool, but you shouldn’t be afraid of it either. Balance is important.
Homemade scrub
In order to get smooth skin, it is not at all necessary to buy a scrub in the store. There are a great many recipes for homemade peelings floating around the Internet, but the most popular of them is perhaps coffee peeling. Mix the grounds (you can also use salt or sugar instead) with one of the base oils (olive, jojoba, almond or grape seed oil are suitable) in a 1:1 ratio and apply the resulting mixture to the skin. Those who like to experiment can add a few drops of essential oil or a spoonful of honey to their scrub.
Features of cleansing different skin types at home
Let's look at how to cleanse your facial skin depending on its type.
Cleansing oily and problematic skin
Hydrophilic oils are recommended for girls with oily and problem skin. Before going to bed, you need to wash your face with a gel with scrubbing particles. They will remove dead cells, the foam part will remove dust and dirt.
It is important to know! Do not frequently use alcohol-containing products. They dry out the skin greatly.
Cleansing dry and sensitive skin
Those with dry skin should use micellar water or milk from the appropriate line to remove makeup. For cleansing, you should choose foam. Complete the cleansing procedure with a moisturizing cream, which saturates the epidermis with beneficial substances.
Cleansing normal skin
Women with normal skin type can choose cleansers with any texture. In the morning you can simply wash your face with warm water, and in the evening it is enough to remove any remaining makeup with a special milk. It is useful to use a scrub weekly.
Cleansing combination skin
Combination skin is characterized by the appearance of an oily sheen in the T-zone. The remaining areas are dry. This type of skin should be cleansed using a foam cleanser with a delicate composition.
