The relationship between beauty and skin health

Beauty and skin health are never parallel or even opposing options. The essence is the binding relationship between "effect" and "cause" - all beauty behaviors that can produce long-term positive effects must be based on skin health. On the contrary, beauty operations that are divorced from the premise of health, no matter how amazing the short-term effects are, will eventually backfire on the skin.

A while ago, I received a consultation from a 22-year-old girl. In order to meet the whitening KPI for her graduation photo, I applied a whitening mask + two high-concentration nicotinamide essences every day for a week. As a result, the photo turned out to be white, and her face was swollen into a "pig head". It was red and itchy and there was a dense rash. I went to the hospital to check for contact dermatitis. It took almost three months to return to the original state. When she first came to see me, she felt aggrieved and said, "I just want to beautify my face, but why am I ruining my face instead?" In fact, the order of the two is reversed: she first set the beauty goal of "whitening", without considering that she has dry and sensitive skin, and her tolerance to nicotinamide is low. It's strange that such a drastic operation does not ruin her face. To put it bluntly, the skin barrier is like a city wall on your face. When the wall is strong, any good thing you put into it will be able to be retained. If the wall has holes, no matter how many functional ingredients you pile on, it will not only be unable to retain it, but it will also be easy for external irritants to get in and cause damage, causing redness and acne breakouts.

The two factions that have been quarreling most fiercely in the skin care industry in the past two years, the Ingredients Party and the Streamlined Skin Care Party, are actually fighting over the issue of "should beauty give way to health?" Most of the senior players in the ingredients party have healthy skin with good tolerance. When seven or eight essences are used stacked together, including vitamin A and proto-vitamin C, the skin will still be translucent and delicate. The prerequisite for people to be able to play this way is to have a good understanding of their own skin, which ingredients will irritate, and which ingredients will be inactivated when combined with each other. The tolerance has been established for more than half a year. The essence is to expand the boundaries of beauty in a healthy and safe zone. But many novices who follow the trend don't understand this, and they copy other people's "strong medicine formulas". Isn't it wrong?

The streamlined skin care party on the other side shouts the slogan "In addition to cleansing, moisturizing and sun protection, it is all about IQ tax." I have a sister who has been practicing it for ten years. She is 42 years old. She doesn't even have a few spots on her face, and her fine lines are half that of her peers. Do you think she hasn't done any beauty treatments? No, sun protection itself is the most cost-effective anti-aging beauty behavior. She just cut off all the redundant steps that may damage the health of the skin, fulfilled the basic health needs to the extreme, and the beauty effect came naturally. It’s hard to say who is right or wrong between the two views. They are just about choosing the most suitable path based on your skin condition. The core of it does not bypass the logic of “health first”.

Talking about medical beauty that everyone is more concerned about, many people think that medical beauty is a "shortcut" and has nothing to do with health, but this is not the case. I have an oily-skinned friend who suffers from acne scars all the time. I couldn’t control the concentration of household acids before. Later, I went to a regular hospital for photorejuvenation three times. Not only did the acne marks fade by half, but the secretion of sebaceous glands was also stabilized. The acne that would break out every month rarely grows. This is formal medical cosmetology. It helps you adjust the health of your skin. The beauty effect is a bonus gift after improving your health. But if you go to Sanwu Beauty Salon to get the kind of whitening injections, peeling and spot removal that "works in one go", that's a different story. Some time ago, there was news that a girl did "freckle peeling" in the circle of friends, and ended up with post-inflammatory pigmentation all over her face, which is uglier than the original spots. This is a "pseudo-beauty" that completely puts your health at the sole of your feet. It has no meaning except to steal money.

Speaking of which, I have been in this trap before. When I first got into skin care, I followed the trend and bought anti-aging essences from Internet celebrities. I saw bloggers saying that "you should fight the first signs of aging when you are 20 years old." I didn't care that my face was a little red when the season changed, so I applied it all over my face. As a result, it broke out all over my face the next day. From then on, no matter what new beauty products or programs I tried, the first question I asked was always, "Will it damage my barrier?" Can I handle it with my current skin condition? ”, after all, your face is yours, and it’s really not worth it to have a “glass face” that turns red and itchy just for the sake of temporary whiteness and firmness.

By the way, there are still many people who think, "I have good skin without makeup, so I don't need to do any beauty treatments." This is actually another extreme. Think about it, if you are exposed to the sun every day in the summer, even if you don’t get sunburned or tanned at that time, the free radical damage caused by ultraviolet rays has already been deposited in the dermis. It will be difficult to repair spots and fine lines after three to five years when they appear. At this time, apply sunscreen appropriately and use antioxidant essence every now and then. This kind of slight beauty behavior is actually ensuring the health of your skin. The long-term difference is really obvious.

In fact, in the final analysis, how can the relationship between beauty and skin health be so complicated? When you are fine, touch your face. It is not tight or red, it is soft to the touch, oil is evenly distributed, and there are no inexplicable pimples. This is the best health state. On this basis, if you want to do some whitening, you can do it. If you want to do medical beauty and anti-aging, you can do it as long as you want. If you mess around in pursuit of the perfect standards of "zero pores" and "cool white skin" and ruin your good skin, then you are really putting the cart before the horse.