It has become mandatory to wear a mask in enclosed public areas, but how is this affecting our skin underneath?

The team at Essential Well-being, 9 London Road Spalding have received increased queries regarding breakouts, spots and sensitivity due to prolonged mask wearing. Prolonged mask wearing on a daily basis can have a very adverse affect on your skin, leading to Skin dehydration, sensitivity, breakouts, blackheads and cysts.

Think about how hot your skin gets underneath your mask, visor or both. Heat is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria 🦠the additional heat will increase your oil production and decrease your hydration level disrupting you protective skin microbiome. If your skin is oily and prone to breakouts, you are likely to experience more bacterial spots and blackheads than usual.

How can you avoid extra breakouts or Maskne? (rhymes with acne, the new term for breakouts under the masked area)

We recommend that you do extra cleansing to remove the excess oil ridden with bacteria. Cleanse twice when you remove your mask to ensure that your skin is really clean. If you get the chance, add in an extra cleanse during the day if you are particularly oily.

Essential Well-being recommended Skin health routine;

Step 1 – Dermalogica Pre Cleansing
This is an oil based cleanser, oil attracts oil, bacteria lives in the oil, massage it over the skin well and add water to emulsify the cleanser to lift the oil away from your skins surface. Rinse with water and a clean cloth to remove the residue.

Step 2 – Cleanse
Cleanse with your regular cleansing product to clean your skin throughly. For the best cleansing results use a cleaning brush, this will enhance your cleansing and ensure you get a deeper cleanse. Like cleaning your teeth, your cleansing should not be a rush job. Check the ingredients in your cleanser, many companies add stripping ingredients to their products because customers like their skin to feel oil free and Matt, however, stripping the natural oil from your skin is unnatural and alters your skins PH leavening your skin open to infection and inflammation. We recommend our range Dermalogica cleansers, they are PH balanced cater for oily, dry and sensitive skins.

Your skin will react to the oil loss and produce additional oil to rebalance its protective lipid barrier, resulting in oiler skin.

Step 3 – Exfoliation
Ensure you are exfoliating regularly to remove sticky dead Skin cells from the surface of the skin, reducing the risk of blockages and breakouts, especially during the summer months as the cell production increases. We recommend Daily microfoliant, or Daily superfoliant for daily use and Rapid reveal peel, Thermal foliant or our new Hydro masque exfoliant for weekly resurfacing.

Step 4 – Hydration
Use an hydrating spritz, multi active toner, hydra mist or ultra calming mist and a hydrating lotion such as calm water gel. The heat under your mask will evaporate your skins natural water. Dehydration leads to sensitivity, a dehydrated skin has micro cracks in its surface, these micro cracks allow bacteria to enter the skin, increase further water loss and results in irritation. If you picture the bottom of a dried up river, the water has gone and the soil has dried and cracked, this is true same principle as your skin.

Step 5 – Prevention
If you are experiencing breakouts, apply products from Dermalogica’s Active clearing range, this range has preventative ingredients such as Niacinamide and Salicylic Acid.

Step 6 – ProtectIon
Apply a moisturiser which will prevent water loss and creates a protective barrier between you and the mask, book a skin health check to make sure your moisturiser is suitable for your skin.

Sensitive Skin

If your skin is sensitive, wearing a mask is going to aggravate it and cause additional sensitivity. Behind the mask, your facial expressions create friction between your mask and your skin leading inflammation, dehydration and redness. To reduce the redness and inflammation, use products from the Dermalogica Ultra calming range, these are made with calming and soothing ingredients such as oats, cucumber and lavender.

The range consists of:

  • Ultra calming cleanser, cooling calming cleanser
  • Ultra calming mist, soothing cooling spritz
  • Redness relief essence, reduces redness
  • Ultra calming serum concentrate, reduces skin sensitivity
  • Calm water gel, hydrates, cools and soothes
  • Barrier defense booster, oil booster for a dried and damage skin
  • Barrier Repair, a silicone barrier to shield and prevent the skin from water loss and being aggravated by the mask

For further advice please don’t hesitate to contact the team at Essential Well-being on 07960003061 For a Skin Health check.