Starting a Personal skin care routine

Your personal skin care is very important. However following a routine or a procedure for attending to your skin needs is very beneficial. Some beleive, a routine of going to the beauty parlours every other day is personal skin care or applying some cream or lotion on your skin, every now and then. Personal skin care is not that complicated and neither is it that expensive.

You need to determine your skin-type (oily, dry, sensitive, normal etc), before your start a personal skin care routine. Then experiment with a few personal skin care products to select the personal skin care products suitable for your type.

There are 4 steps to applying your routine:

Cleansing: The three main ingredients of a cleanser are oil, water and surfactants (wetting agents). Oil and surfactants extract dirt and oil from your skin and water then flushes it out, thus making your skin clean. You might have to try a couple of cleansers before you find the one that suits you the best. However, you should always use soap-free cleansers. Also, you should use Luke warm water for cleansing (hot and cold water, both, cause damage to your skin). Take care that you don’t over-cleanse your skin and end up damaging your skin in the process.

Exfoliation: Skin follows a natural maintenance process wherein it removes the dead cells and replaces them with new skin cells. Exfoliation is just a way to facilitate the skin in this process. Dead skin cells are not capable of responding to personal skin care products but still consume these products, hence preventing them from reaching the new skin cells. Thus removing dead skin cells is important in order to increase the effectiveness of all personal skin care products. Generally, exfoliation takes it place just after cleansing. As with any personal skin care procedure, it’s important that you understand how much exfoliation you need. Exfoliate 4-5 times per week for oily/normal skin and 1-2 times per week for dry/sensitive skin. Exfoliate a couple of times more in hot and humid weather.

Moisturizers: This is one of the most important things in personal skin care. Even people with oily skin need moisturisers. Moisturisers not only seal the moisture in your skin cells, but also attract moisture (from air) whenever needed. Use of too much moisturiser can however clog skin pores and end up harming your skin. The amount of moisturiser needed by your skin will become apparent to you within one week of you using the moisturiser. Also, applying the moisturiser is best when your skin is still damp.

Sunscreen: A lot of moisturizers (day-time creams/moisturisers) come with UV protection – so you can get double benefits from them. Such moisturisers are recommended for all days (irrespective of whether it is sunny or cloudy).

The opinion on how-to for personal skin care differs from person to person. Each person must experiment with various personal skin care products and also with the amount you need to apply. Whichever application gives you the best results is the best routine for your personal skin care.

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