Exfoliation: The Key to Healthy Skin

Do you exfoliate your skin regularly?

Exfoliation is often skipped during cold weather months by clients and consumers, as it’s a common belief that it’s more suitable for warmer months, although it is the KEY to excellent skin health!

Contrary to this ‘common belief’, exfoliation assists in hydrating the skin – rather than dehydrating – when and if - performed correctly.

Our skin's natural exfoliation rate (desquamation) slows down with age, environment and lifestyle factors and an excess of dead-cell build up on the stratum corneum (outer dead cell layer) leads to a loosely packed, imperfect skin surface that reflects and refracts light differently from a compact, smooth surface (healthy skin).

A smooth surface radiates a youthful healthy glow to the skin, whereas a rough surface looks dull and grey, not to mention that the stratum corneum harbors all sorts of transient hyperpigmentation, all of which can be eliminated with exfoliation.

Burnt toast is a perfect analogy of why exfoliation is essential to a healthy skincare routine. If you imagine this: Burnt Toast. You cannot butter burnt toast very well – the butter simply sits on the surface; but if you scrape the ”burn” off the surface you can butter the toast properly, and the butter will absorb into the toast nicely. It’s actually no different with skin!

What is the point of applying a moisturizer, serum, treatment, mask or other skincare products to your skin if they cannot be absorbed? The skincare products simply stay on the top of the layer of dead skin cells, sitting there on the surface, rather than being absorbed INTO the skin, where they need to go to be effective.

Additionally, exfoliation is key to the ageing process. We know our cells naturally ‘shed’ off the surface. We shed our skin on average, every 28 days.

However, do you know by the age of just 30 it starts slowing to average 30 days? This doesn't sound bad, however, by the age of 40 the average natural cell renewal is 60 days and by the age of 60 our skin can take up to 90 days for your cell turnover to happen ‘naturally’! Three full months for this natural process that was once just a one month cell renewal!

So, clients in a certain age group that think they will invest in a more suitable ‘anti-ageing’ product, need to be educated to know it will not work as effectively as it should if they are not exfoliating within their skincare routine. In fact, it can be seen as a waste of money if it is sitting on 3 months of “dead skin cells” as then, the only place that nice anti-aging product is going is on their pillowcase at night!

Using the correct ingredients to exfoliate will help to stimulate skin’s hydration from within and will remove dead skin cells leftover from winter, which in turn enables hydrators to penetrate more effectively while also helping to improve cold weather skin conditions.

Exfoliation can come from various forms:

1. Mechanical

2. Chemical

3. Enzymatic

Mechanical

This form of exfoliation will work from the top, outermost area of the skins’ surface. Typically, these are the scrubs and ‘particles’ we use for friction exfoliation. Most common these days has to be the ocean-friendly biodegradable wax beads since recent legislation prevents the use of plastic micro-beads that infiltrate the waterways and marine life. Also, natural exfoliators such as crushed seeds and beans fall into this category. And as the name suggests these particles ‘mechanically agitate’ the surface of the skin. You can remove dead skin cells by rubbing them onto the surface of the skin to lift and mechanically remove dead cells that are lying over the skin like a suit of armour.

It is important though to consider not over-using these with force and certain crushed particles may look like tiny shards of glass under a microscope so let the product do its job, do not apply further force with this style of product to respect the integrity of the skin. Additionally, loofahs and exfoliating mitts etc. fall into the mechanical form of exfoliation too, as well as microdermabrasion – as this dermabrasion effect is surface exfoliating with friction.

Chemical

An exfoliator that falls into the chemical exfoliation category will use ingredients such as AHA’s (alpha hydroxy acids) and BHA’s (beta hydroxy acids) to dissolve and break down the intra-cellular bonds that hold all our dead cells together – like ‘skin glue’. This glue is dissolved by the chemical used and will shed the skin from the inside-out in the case of AHA’s and outside-in, like confetti, in the case of BHA’s.

Chemical exfoliators can come in very many strengths and it is hugely important to know the pH of your particular chemical exfoliator. The more acidic the pH the more intensive the action. This is where the popularity of chemical peels has come about in the past 3 decades of skincare and has been a real skincare revolution within the cosmeceutical world. Whilst they do not ‘mechanically agitate’ the cells off the surface, they can equally be as aggressive - if not more-so - if the pH and concentrations are created in high strength and low, acidic pH.

Clients can also use various forms of chemical exfoliation at home too in the form of chemical peel pads or solutions sold via their professionals, up to superficial chemical peels performed by skin specialists and right up to highest grade deep peels performed by a medical practitioner.

Enzymatic

Enzymes are very respectful on the skin and work similar to a chemical but less aggressive on the skin.

Enzymes love dead skin cells! In fact, all enzymes go after are dead keratinized cells, and break down keratin bonds whereas AHA’s will also remove healthy, living cells too if concentration is low enough. Enzymes are more specific to dead cells and help create a balance of skin removal that is more suitable to all skin types with less potential for any down time of reactions. Natural enzymes that are great for the job come from pineapple (bromelain) papaya (papain) and pumpkin enzymes and all are dramatically brightening on the skin due to removing pigmented dead cells.

Sometimes we need to consider how frequently we exfoliate and with what form. Will it be a scrub, chemical or enzyme? A protocol combining the 3 forms works very well for most skins, to get a complete benefit for great skin health. But the key thing to do is NOT over-exfoliate. This can be as bad as not doing it at all.

We do not want to cause inflammation or erythema that will give us a secondary skin problem.

Some people with acne may be inclined to scrub the skin too frequently to ‘control oil’ but in fact the opposite can happen. If you over scrub the skin, you will over-stimulate the sebaceous glands to produce more oil, therefore making the skin oilier!

Additionally, some people with dry skin may not like to exfoliate as they feel ‘dry’ but again this customer needs to probably exfoliate gently a little more to produce a little more natural oils but also allow far better absorption of their moisturising creams and serums. So, check your client is using the right product at the right frequency.

So - what have we got to lose? Just dead skin cells!

Let’s all get exfoliating – correctly - to prime our skin back to its best, radiant state – exfoliation really is the very heart of excellent skin health!