What's my Skin Type?
1. Sensitive Skin
What does it mean when we say you have sensitive skin? It usually means your skin has strong reactions to cosmetics, chemicals, fragrances and temperatures. You may not even know your skin is sensitive until it has a reaction to one of these triggers. The reaction could be redness, inflammation, irritation, itching, and dryness. There is usually an underlying condition that has set off your sensitivity. Figuring out which condition you have is key to helping it keep it at bay. Most often if you have sensitive skin, redness occurs around your cheeks, nose and chin. Redness could flare up when eating certain foods or putting products on with strong ingredients in them. But that is not the only reason for redness and sensitivities. You could be a different skin type such as dry or oily/acne prone and you can develop sensitive skin as a side effect. There are also skin conditions that will cause your skin to become sensitive as well.
2. Acne/Oily
Acne is a skin condition that causes spots and oily skin usually around the face, neck and chest. It tends to be mostly linked with hormone changes. Your hormones can cause your oil glands to start to overproduce and clog your pores. Your skin's reaction to that is usually spots and breakouts. This can happen anytime as our hormones are always changing but most commonly starts at puberty. From then many factors can cause breakouts such as the time of month for women, seasons changing, and genetics also can play a role.
There are 3 levels of acne.
Mild
Which usually is just a few whiteheads and blackheads. You may also get the odd papule and pustules.
Next level up is Moderate.
You will see quite a few blackheads and whiteheads, with many papules and pustules appearing.
Then lastly we have the Severe level.
This is when acne becomes painful. You will have lots of large papules and pustules as well as cysts and nodules appearing. These can scar and be very painful to touch.
3. Dry/dehydrated
You will know if your skin is dry when it starts to feel more rough, then soft and notice flaking. This means your skin is underproducing oil and needs more intense moisturisation. You will usually start to see signs of this around the nose and chin. When your skin is dehydrated it will feel tight and often look dull. Often it will start to emphasise any signs of aging such as fine lines and wrinkles. This means your skin is lacking water. The main reason these two skin conditions are talked about together is because when you put oils and moisturisers in your skin to help with dryness, your skin needs to be hydrated with enough water to help the products bind in your skin for a longer lasting effect. It also works the other way, if your skin does not have enough oil for the water to bind to it will just escape from your skin. For a soft, brighter and smoother complexion, products and water need to work together to beat the dryness and dehydration.
4. Hyper Pigmentation
Now more than ever we know how the sun affects our skin. SPF has become all the range and for good reason. The sun is one of the biggest factors that causes pigmentation changes on the skin, but not the only factor. There are a lot of talk about how there is no hope to reverse it, once you get it. Well that is not true at all. Let’s look into exactly what hyperpigmentation is, the ways to help reverse it but most importantly how to prevent it.
Lets first learn about Melanin. This is the natural pigment in your skin, hair and eyes. The colour of your skin changes when the body starts to produce more melanin. Reasons why the body might produce more melanin would be over exposure to the sun, hormonal changes such as pregnancy, and trauma to the skin such as burns or cuts. When the body starts to produce more melanin and you can visibly see the changes such as dark patches appearing, that is when it becomes hyperpigmentation. This is a very common skin condition and it affects everyone, no one is immune to this.
There are a few different types of hyperpigmentation. Most common one is sun spots/damage, also sometimes called age spots. There is also melasma, which can appear when a woman becomes pregnant. Then there is post inflammatory, this usually happens when you have had an injury that has affected the skin, like burns, cuts or even acne and lupus. For the most part having hyperpigmentation is not harmful to you, we just don’t want it!
5. Ageing
Aging is inevitable, maturing is optional. We have so many options now to help prevent and reverse the signs of aging. There are no more excuses for not being able to keep a youthful look because we know all the secrets now. Your skin starts to try and age as early as our mid – 20s. We start to get a few fine lines across the forehead, eyes and neck. If you do not do anything to help prevent this then these fine lines just keep getting worse, turning into wrinkles and then you may notice some sagging of the skin around your jawline when you are in your late 40s or early 50s if you're lucky.
This happens because as we get older our collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid start to breakdown and diminish. Our cell turn over slows down making it harder for your body to produce more and as quickly as it used to. When the process of the breakdown happens is when we start to notice that our skin structure, tone and texture are drastically changing. There are many factors that contribute to when the aging process starts to happen to you and how quickly it will proceed.
6. Combination
Does your skin feel oily one minute and sensitive the next? Oily T-zone and dry cheeks? Yep, most of us suffer with combination skin. It can be very confusing on what to use at home regarding skincare and where to even start.
Combination is usually a definition of dry, sensitive skin on cheeks whilst having an oily and congested T-zone ( forehead, nose, chin). The key to helping this skin type is balance and the correct hydration. Not over hydrating the skin whilst also not stripping too many essential oils from the T-zone. Remember that you can mix and match products at home and treatments in clinic for specific areas.
For example, more exfoliation on the T-zone and add more hydrating agents into your regime.
Unsure, on your skin type or want advice on what products are best for you? Book a complementary Virtual Consultation with one of our Skin Specialists.
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