Skin Care Products

How to Get the Best Results From Your Creams

Does your skincare product live up to its promise – delivering the results you expected?  Before you ditch yet another jar of expensive cream, make sure you are giving your cream a fair chance.  Are you using it correctly? Have you given the product enough time to work its magic?

Here are some important tips on how to get the best results from your creams, serums, lotions and potions.

Exfoliate!  Applying any product to skin that is clogged with dead skin cells is counterproductive. The surface of the skin is coated with dead skin cells that block the absorption of any products you apply.  Gentle, daily exfoliating is the best way to ensure that your skin is fully primed to get the best results from skincare products. There are a number of ways to do this:

Select a cleansing product that not only removes, makeup, dirt and excess oil, but dissolves dead skin cells.  Enzyme, or acid-based cleansers will dissolve dead skin cells while cleaning, leaving the skin clean, clear and unclogged.

• Select a cleansing product with a gentle, soft, grainy scrub to exfoliate dead skin cells while you clean.
• Use a gentle buffing tool to clean the face – this will removed dead skin cells while cleaning the skin.
• Cleanse the skin with a skin brush such as those from Olay and Clairsonic.  Oily recommends using the brush twice – first on damp skin, then with your cleanser.  Their studies reveal that this approach has a deep cleansing and exfoliating effect which enhances the penetration of skin care products.

The Order of Things.  The first product to hit the skin after cleansing is going to be the one absorbed best.  Makes sense – so with that in mind, determine your primary goal.  Are you trying to control acne, treat wrinkles, fade sun spots, or trying to tone and tighten sagging skin? Whatever your primary goal is – that’s the product that should be applied first. If you are trying to treat more than one skin condition, use one product on clean skin in the morning, and one on clean skin at night. That approach will enable you to treat more than one skin care concern at a time.  Once the key products have been applied, follow up with more dense products, like moisturizers etc., applying products from the thinnest to the thickest for best absorption.

Note of Caution:  Don’t layer Retinoids with products containing benzoyl peroxide and alpha hydroxy acids – they will deactivate the retinoids.

 Apply products to clean, damp skin.  Damp or moist skin (not the same as wet skin), increases absorption of products.  Applying products to the skin after a warm shower when the skin is plump and hydrated, enables the ingredients to penetrate the deeper layers of the skin, an important thing to know if you are using anti-aging products that are designed to do their best work at the cellular level where collagen and elastin reside. The water molecules on damp skin act as a delivery system to the skin.

Notes:

• If the skin is too wet, the products will just wash away and run off the skin with the water molecules.
• Some products like sunscreen are designed to sit on top of the skin and should be applied to dry skin.

Other Factors Affecting Product Success