Healthy skin? Take a closer look at your beauty products

Hi fellow steemers,

Keeping my skin healthy is almost every bit important to me as is eating healthy. Of course one has to do with the other, but still there’s more to it when it comes to your skin.

As owner of a tanning salon (where I use spraytanbrand Infinity Sun, a high end brand of sunless tanning) the skin is something I deal with every day. First of all it’s very important to protect it against environmental damage such as harmful sunrays, and I guess everyone knows that the daily use of a sunscreen is a must. Second, drinking a lot of water (or green tea or…) also keeps your skin hydrated. But it doesn’t stop there. Did you know that skin that is in perfect condition doesn’t need to be clogged with bodylotions etc.

That’s what I wanted to tell you some more about: the use of your everyday products such as shower gels, soaps, bodylotions.
I don’t want to name any brands but I guess you all know what I mean when I mention Nv, Dv, l’r**l…
Well these brands claim to be all healthy and good for you but that’s mostly far from true. I’m not going into the chemical specifics of the ingredients, but one aspect of it I know quite a lot about since spraytanning for 6 years now is the build-up on your skin of these types of products:

When you use a shower gel, your upper skin layers absorb quite some product and after a while your pores get sort of “clogged” by all these synthetic ingredients.
I’m talking about mineral oil, sillicones, parafinium liquidum and petrolatum. All ingredients which are very cheap for the production companies, they make your soap or lotion feel very soft, but what they don’t do is hydrate…
You can almost look at it like a plastic layer you build upon your skin. Your skin can’t breathe as well as without using these, and even more, our spraytan doesn’t even stick to the skin, I’ve seen it a lot of times, it just drips down your skin instead of setting onto the skin.
That means that the plastic layer as we call it is quite persistent.

You can notice this yourself: you smeer your bodylotion, your skin feels incredibly soft, for a while at least, but you can use this type of bodylotion all year and still your skin will feel dry.
When you stop using it, it takes upto two weeks before all the residu is removed completely of your skin…
So when I was first aware of that, I must say I was quite shocked about that, we all try to eat healthy and all, but our skin, which is one of our biggest organs, we keep attacking it with all sorts of rubbish every single day. And a chemical that stays onto your body for more than a week after you stop using it…

Another fact: the follicles on your skin that produce sebum (not exactly sure if I translated this correctly… I mean the “grease” your skin produces) stop producing this when using these types of products, so in fact by using these, your skin will be more dry… It’s like a vicious circle, you keep on using more of it, skin dehydrates…

I’m not saying all sillicones are bad (the ones soluable in water are less persistant), and there will be other opinions on this matter, but since I work with skin all day, I see what they do!
A lot of my clients who switched their daily regimen to using products without sillicones and mineral oil are amazed of what it has done for their skin.
Also my children’s skin improved a lot when I stopped using the common baby shower products we all know… Way less dry!

I would say, give it a try for a week, you will notice a big difference already! Let me know if you like some suggestions on which are my favourite showergels and skincare products.

(Ps, the gorgeous girl in the picture is a friend of mine, her bronzed skin spraytanned by me 🙋🏽)

💋