What To Do When Your Skincare Routine Stops Working?

The perfect skincare routine does exist, but it is forever changing. Sure you have a well-designed routine which is giving you all the desired results now however, what happens when all hell breaks loose and those skincare products suddenly become detrimental to your skin?

What do you do when your skin care stops working?

There are several factors that can cause your skin care routine to no longer be as effective, those being:
• Climate change.
• The amount of sleep you get on a daily.
• Your diet and health in general.

It is important to note that nurturing your skin is so much more than cleansing daily and the occasional face mask. How you treat and look after your body as a whole will manifest on your skin!

However, if you are generally healthy (mentally & physically) yet still experience redness, irritation and breakouts whlist implementing a routine or skin care products that usually work for you, don’t panic! You are most likely overtreating your skin or exposing your skin to too many products at once. Rectifying this is simple, all you need to do is partake in a skin fast.

Skin fasting is when you take a lengthy break from using skincare products in order to assist the skin in resetting itself. We tend to forget that the skin is a functioning organ, meaning it can function on it’s own. Skincare exists mainly to help finance and boost your skin’s health when necessary. Skincare is not designed to replace the natural cycles your skin goes through to support it’s health!

If you are using an excessive amount of products, skin fasting can help minimize the products you use which will allow the skin to repair and rejuvenate itself.

Please be advised, skin fasting does not mean you must dispose of ALL your skincare products!

Below is a straightforward guide to skin fasting.

• MINIMIZE YOUR ROUTINE
Use only the very basic products that are 100% imperative to a skincare routine, (e.g cleanser, moisturizer & sunscreen ). The goal is to minimize the products you use as much as possible, to reduce any potential sensitivities you may be having to particular ingredients in certain products. Doing this will decrease the risk of you having a reaction to something.
Use products that have very simple and minimalistic ingredient lists to reduce risk as much as possible.

• USE A LOT OF SUNSCREEN
Sunscreen is the most crucial part of your skincare routine. The sensitivity, irritation and breakouts your skin may be encountering will most likely be aggravated more and made worse by sun exposure! In this situation, overdoing the amount of sunscreen you use won’t harm your skin in at all.

• PUT A HOLD ON ALL SKINCARE TREATMENTS
Treatments such as exfoliants, retanols, anti-aging products, skin glowing and scrubs should be avoided during this time.
Normally these things are beneficial and good to implement in your routine, but they are also quite intense for the skin. In order for these treatments to be most effective, your skin should already be in a reasonably healthy state…. which if you are participating in skin fasting your skin is probably the opposite of that.

• CLEANSE YOUR FACE LESS
Whenever breakouts surface we often assume that cleansing more will fix everything……WRONG! What a lot of people don’t know is that cleansing can be the harshest part of a skincare routine. This is because you’re stripping off all the oils your skin produces naturally from your face, some of which are of great importance when it comes to helping the your skin repair itself. During the skin fasting period it is recommended to cleanse once a day, twice at most!

When skin fasting it will take 1-2 weeks to see and feel a difference. It is important and completely normal to give our skin a break from time to time and trust that it will restore itself.

Should you find that skin fasting fails to bring about some improvement, the next best step would be for you to visit a dermatologist for further assistance.