Skin barrier is a real buzz phrase right now, and I agree, it’s really important, and summer is a good time to work on it, as most people are using less makeup, allowing their natural skin tone and texture to shine through. I just wish I had known more about it when I started working on my awful lock-down skin back at the end of March 2022.
Here is a check in photo I took of my skin at the end of March (I thought I had more photos, but the focus was out on most of them, so this is what is left. I may be many things, but a photographer is not one of them…) :
In retrospect it wasn’t so bad, but I was so unhappy about how my skin looked and felt.
:My pores felt really massive and cloggy, easily visible, and the texture was showing badly through my makeup. Not just on my nose, as I might have expected, but on my chin, my upper lip and above my eyes.
: I had dry patches either side of my nose, running into the patches of rosacea I suffer from sometimes. Not flaky, more corky, and feeling like sandpaper under my fingertips, along with dehydrated, tight patches down the sides of my cheeks.
:flabby, saggy patches under my eyes. Not dark circles, not puffy, just saggy.
So, I read up: I scoured Google. Oh! I found lots of advice, most of it reviews of how to use actives – hyaluronic acid! Niacinamide! Use lots of peptides! Use lots of ceramides!
I hit Sainsbury’s, as I also read that ‘drug-store’ budget skincare was just as good as expensive products, and I have a relatively small monthly budget for skincare and cosmetics.
I bought Revolution serums with Hyaluronic acid and with Niacinamide (each under £10) – they are really good for a lot of skins, but it was too early for me.
I bought CeraVe moisturiser (under a fiver!) to hydrate my dry patches – it didn’t like my skin and I was so sad as I’d heard such good things about it. I think I bought the wrong type for my skin, and I’ll be using this up for my body, as it is wonderful on the back of my arms.
I’d run out of balm cleanser, so I found Q+A Grapefruit balm cleanser. Sadly, the grapefruit extract didn’t like my rosacea, though the texture of the balm and the smell is delicious.
I’d recommend all these products, none of them are bad. But I have to scream it from the rafters.
Before you get with the active ingredients: Go Slow. Go Gentle. Go Bland.
Because if you don’t, you might find…
It was all too much, too soon. My face was worse than when I started. My rosacea flared up, I had large red bumps on my cheeks, and my forehead went lumpy. My dry skin started to soften, but my pores just got larger.
The thing I far too slowly came to realise is that a lot of advice out there is great for skin aged under 30, but not when it is double that. Because, no matter how much I want to be young again, I’m not.
So I stripped it all out again and went back to Google and read up on skin barrier repair.
I’d lost a month and I had to start over.