Facial cleansing care

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best cleansing gel for oily skin
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Cleansing can either purify your skin or break it, as a recent study shows, so today I'm going to give you my tips for effective cleansing, the mistakes not to make and my product recommendations.

Despite the fact that cleansing the face is an important step in any grooming routine, the facial careAlthough cleansing is often carried out incorrectly, either by being too aggressive or, conversely, by leaving residues of pollution, make-up or sunscreen on the face, this step is much more subtle than it seems.

"Cleansing is an essential step in any beauty routine". Beauty Decoded

Why is effective facial cleansing important?

• Cleansing helps reduce blackheads and pore size
• Removes allergens and purifies your skin's surface
• It fights the appearance of imperfections.
• Prevents the appearance of wrinkles by removing pollution

The physiology of our skin :

But let's start with a brief reminder of our skin barrier, because cleansing must purify our skin without damaging the texture of our facial skin.

Our skin has two protective barriers: sebum and the stratum corneum. The stratum corneum is made up of dead cells called corneocytes, held together by a lipid-rich matrix.

These inter-epithelial lipids are mainly composed of ceramides, cholesterol and free fatty acids, which must be distinguished from sebum lipids, which form a protective barrier on the skin's surface. 

The principle: Excess sebum is removed without damaging inter-epithelial lipids.

How do I clean my skin?

Cleanse your skin in the morning:

In the morning, cleansing should be very gentle and prepare your skin for your various skin care products. But the question I'm often asked is: Do we need to cleanse our skin in the morning? The answer is it depends! Both are possible, it's a question of preference, but the advice I can give you is to test both.

Option 1: Simply rinse your face. This is recommended for people with very dry skin, as it removes old cosmetics that may have oxidized. This promotes acne and microcysts.

Option2: You can cleanse your face with a gentle cleanser, which I recommend for those with oily skin, or those with normal to dry skin who have long evening skincare routines with many active ingredients. The rule is: don't aggress your skin with too strong a cleanser.

Cleanse your skin in the evening:

As far as double cleansing is concerned, I advise you to do it at night if you have make-up or if you wear sun protection in the morning.

Double cleansing consists of using a cleansing oil or balm to remove residues of pollution, make-up or sunscreen, followed by a gentle cleanser to remove the rest of the impurities. The advantage is that this process is highly effective for eliminate blackheadsWe use two gentle cleansers instead of a single aggressive one.

Now let's get to the heart of the matter and I'll present the best cleansers in each category, oils, balms and cleansing milks and gels.

How to choose the right cleanser for your skin type?

Dry skin: You can choose from cleansing oils, cleansing milks, cleansing balms or purifying gels. The important thing is that you shouldn't feel any tightness on your face at the end of the cleansing phase, so choose a gentle cleanser. A strong cleansing gel, for example, can damage your skin barrier, making it more sensitive to allergens.

Combination skin: You can choose either a foaming gel or a purifying care product. The important thing is to adapt your product to your driest skin zones and use a purifying gel based on salicylic acid to remove excess sebum, blackheads or reduce enlarged pores.

Oily skin: You can choose a gel that foams and purifies, but there's no need to use a scouring product. If you wish to reduce your imperfectionsIf you want to reduce your blackheads and minimize pore size, don't rely entirely on the gentle cleansing phase, but rather on the following steps: Exfoliation with a purifying salicylic acid gel and retinol serum or cream.

Cosmetics to include in your beauty routine

Cleansing oils:

Cleansing balms

Cleaning Gels

Salicylic acid cleanser

Natural Cleansing Foam

Micellar water

As for micellar water, which is a face-care classic, you need to rinse it off after use. Even if the bottle of a micellar water says you don't need to rinse it off, I strongly recommend that you do, to eliminate the surfactants present. Micellar waters are practical but should be used sparingly, so try to use balms or make-up-removing oils instead.

Cleansing masks can be interesting, especially if you have acne, micro-cysts or blemishes.Chemical scrubs or peels are useful; I recommend one session a week to exfoliate the skin deeply.

Don't spend too much money on a cleaner:

Firstly, because I recommend double cleansing, which means you buy two products, so you don't spend your money on elaborate packaging or succumb to products that make outlandish promises to justify an exorbitant price tag.

As for the active ingredients we look for in a cleanser, we want moisturizing and cleansing ingredients, of course, and even slightly exfoliating ones, but in fact we mainly want a cleanser to remove things and not the other way round, especially as it only stays in contact with our skin for a short time.

We start with make-up-removing oils or balms, which you should already know to use on a dry face, massage in and rinse off at the end. This type of product should create an emulsion that removes all make-up, sunscreen and traces of pollution, as they are water-soluble, i.e. they also contain emulsifiers.

Mistakes not to make :

So the last thing you want is to carry out an unsuitable cleansing routine that will excessively remove your sebum and the inter-epithelial lipids that make up your skin barrier. That's why I'm going to start by giving you a rundown of the most common mistakes.

Use an overly aggressive cleanser or soap that will completely remove the good lipids from your skin's surface. Even organic soap has a very basic PH, whereas our skin has a slightly acidic PH. Use a cleanser based on soap may be catastrophic, but using a neutral ph is not ideal for the face.

Neutral pHIt's certainly a good marketing concept that must sell, as some brands proudly display it, even though it's preferable to use slightly acidic PH. But let's be clear: if you use a cleanser with a neutral ph, i.e. a PH of around 7, and your skin is healthy, this won't have much impact, because your skin will quickly return to its physiological PH. On the other hand, if your skin is not really healthy, I recommend using a cleanser with a slightly acidic PH.

AlcoholWe avoid cleansers that contain too much alcohol.

SulfatesWe avoid cleansers that contain them. This type of cleanser lathers a lot and costs nothing, but there's nothing natural about them. Products containing SLS, sodium lauryl sulfate, "a particularly aggressive surfactant", are harmful to your skin. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm going to quickly summarize this study which came out this year. In this photo, we can clearly see a deterioration in the skin of people who use cleansers containing SLS, as can be seen in the bottom right-hand corner.

And on this other photo, you can see the appearance of Circular nano object which illustrates the alterations induced on our corneocytes. I mention this because sodium lauryl sulfate can still be found in some products today, because of course they're cheap, very effective, foaming, but too irritating.

I'm not going to give you a lecture on surfactants, but you should know that they have affinities with water and fat, and when they're grouped together they're called micelles. They have a variety of actions, but in cosmetics, they are mainly used as detergents or emulsifying agents, i.e. they enable substances that don't mix, such as water and fat, to blend together.

As you can imagine, not all the products I've selected contain sodium lauryl sulfate.

On the other hand, at the end of cleansing, if you feel tightness, it's probably because your cleansing is too powerful. Your skin risks becoming sensitized and dehydrated, because it will become permeable, and eventually you won't be able to tolerate the really effective active ingredients like vitamin C, retinol or exfoliants.

The other possibility is that if your cleanser isn't powerful enough, you'll have trouble rinsing it off, and make-up and sunscreen residues won't be sufficiently removed, resulting in a dull complexion and clogged pores.

Essential oilsBe careful with essential oils, which can cause allergies, especially since they don't add anything to a cleanser.

After that, it's important to understand that there's no universal product that's perfect for everyone, because every skin is different and it's quite possible that a product I recommend won't suit you, so you need to test and find your ideal cleanser.

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