Basic Skin Care

Daily skin care depends on the basic skin type which is generally predetermined. By taking regular and proper care, the physiological character of the skin type can be checked.

There are 5 types of skin:

• Normal: Skin is neither oily nor dry. The moisture and oil content are well balanced.
• Oily: Skin has a greasy and shiny look. Pores are often enlarged with blackheads and tendency for acne. More common in adolescent as their sebum secretion is more.
• Dry: Due to lack of sebum and moisture, the skin looks and feels dry to the touch. Epidermal cells do not hold adequate natural moisture resulting in premature wrinkling.
• Combination skin: This is the most common type. It is partly oily and partly dry. The T-zone, i.e. forehead, nose and chin is oily, while the rest of the face is normal or dry.
• “Mature” skin: Skin starts maturing after 25 years of age. The natural oil and moisture level drops, the muscle tone is decreased, blood circulation becomes poor. All these lead to a dry, wrinkled and shallow skin. Decrease in metabolic rate gives a puffy look due to accumulation of metabolites.

Steps of basic skin care:

Cleansing

• Effective means of removing dirt, sebum, sweat, dead epidermal cells, bacteria and cosmetic.
• Normal and dry skin should be cleansed twice a day, whereas oily skin needs more frequent cleansing, i.e. 4-5 times a day.
• An ideal cleansing agent should have a neutral or a similar pH value of the normal skin, i.e. 5.5-6.5.
• Commonly used cleansers are soaps which have a pH value between 11-14. Soap and water are okay for oily skin, but they should be sparingly used in normal and combination skin and avoided in dry and mature skin.
• Alternative to soap and water are various cleansing creams milks, lotions, foams, oils, gels and liquids.
• These cleansing formulations have three main ingredients, i.e. oil, wax and water modified by manufacturers in varying proportion on to suit the skin type.
• Liquid paraffin / baby oil can be used as a cleanser for dry skin.
• Special treatment – a scrub cleanser which contains tiny particles of crushed nut shells or polished plastic in a cream base can be scrubbed for 1-2 minutes on the face once a week in all skin types and twice a week in oily skin. This cleanser exfoliates dead cells and mildly stimulators blood circulation.
• All type of cleansing is followed by thorough wash of face with tepid water.

Toning

• Usually toning follows skin cleansing to remove any trace of grease or dirt. It helps to restore the skin’s normal pH after cleansing.
• The active ingredients are alcohol and water.
• Skin toner, refresher, tonic and astringent are the same. They are available in varying concentration of alcohol to suit the skin type. Oily skin needs more alcohol whereas dry skin needs less alcohol content.
• Toning is an optional step between cleansing and moisturizing.

Moisturizing

• Skin is a reservoir of 20% of the body’s total water content.
• The water or moisture content governs the skin’s softness and suppleness.
• In normal environmental conditions the skin protects its water content by:
  1. The sebum which reduces water loss
  2. Natural moisturizing factors (NMFs) which retains moisture in the epidermal cells and
  3. Finally the cementing lipids between the cells which act like a water tight barrier.
• The natural water content is often threatened by environmental factors, hence the use of moisturizers.
• Moisturizers act as a two-way barrier, they replace source of the water loss from skin and also prevent its evaporation.
• They are used after cleansing the skin. Moisturizing products fall into 2 major category.
  1. Humectants/Oil in water emulsions – lotion form.
  2. Occlusives/Water in oil formulations – cream form.
• Lotions should be preferred for day time use and in normal and combination skin and very sparingly used in oily skin.
• Creams can be liberally used in dry skin 2-3 times a day. They may be used as night creams on normal and combination skin.
• These moisturizers get absorbed into the skin, plumping out the fine wrinkles, giving a false illusion of eradicating the wrinkles.
• Most moisturizers contain a sun-screen factor thus protecting the skin from the UV radiation while moisturizing it as well.

Facial skin care

• Facials are supposed to stimulate, relax, cleanse, tone-up and rejuvenate facial skin. Corrective facials are aimed at correcting common facial conditions like dry or greasy skin and superficial wrinkles while preservative facials aim to maintain the health of the facial skin.
• A facial is carried out in the following steps:
  1. Skin analysis to know the type of skin, selection of correct skin care product and the necessary facial.
  2. Cleansing
  3. Toning
  4. Steaming
  5. Blackhead extraction
  6. Massage – it stimulates the cutaneous blood vessels, nerves and facial muscles.
  7. Facial masks and packs-these cleanse, tone, dry or moisturize the skin. They are of 2 types – setting and non-setting.
  8. Toning.
  9. Moisturizing – this is usually the final step of a facial, but if the client wants can be followed by application of facial cosmetics.

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