Most of us blame the skin we don’t have on a bunch of things: genes, stress, life, products. What we don’t blame?
1
We don’t cleanse skin thoroughly
That means NO WIPES. Too many of my patients use wipes to cleanse their skin at night without realising that quite a bit of residue is left on the skin. You can use wipes to remove makeup, but to really cleanse your skin properly, you need to use a cleanser with water, especially at night. Ideally, you should be washing your skin with cleanser and water morning and evening. If you do that, you should only need to use an exfoliating product once or twice a week at most.
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2
We don’t use the correct amount of product
And the error is almost always on the excess side of the scale. Most of my patients tend to apply too much product to their skin. Less is generally better, as you risk overloading your skin and causing more problems otherwise. Not sure how much is enough? I generally suggest a ‘grain of rice’ amount of eye cream, applied to your ring finger and gently patted along the eye bone. For all other creams, a ‘pea sized’ amount is usually enough!
3
We don’t apply products in the right order
If you are layering creams or different products, here’s the most effective sequence. Cleanse your skin thoroughly, then apply eye cream first. Serum comes next, and then any moisturisers/hydrators. Sunscreen (if mineral-based, which is what I prefer and recommend to my patients) comes last.
4
We don’t go up to the forehead/hairline with sunscreen
I take photographs of all my patients using a special facial analysis scanner, and 8 out of 10 have increased pigmentation (due to sun damage) on the forehead. That’s simply because they haven’t been applying their SPF all around the brow and hairline diligently – we tend to take care with the cheeks but be casual with the rest of the face.
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5
We don’t give products a chance to work!
It takes 6-12 weeks before you will start to see a difference in your skin when you switch to something new. That means to really see any results, give your products at least 3 months before you trade them in for something else.
By Rabia Malik
