If your skin were perfect, you wouldn’t be wondering where to buy skin care products. But because it’s not perfect — and not getting any younger – you need to find a skin care regimen tailored to fixing its imperfections and slowing down the signs of aging. And — if you’re like most of us in this “it-needs-to-happen-yesterday” world, you don’t have a lot of time to spend on your skin.
What’s the Answer?
So what’s the best way to buy skin care products that are truly effective, time-saving and proven to help minimize the signs and slow the rate of aging? It begins with research. Skin care marketers can make as many glowing claims about their products as they like and price what they sell accordingly.
It’s up to you to find out if any of those claims are true. If they aren’t, it’s certainly not wise to do business with those marketers. And based on your skin type, their pricey products might not help and could even hurt you. So the first thing to research is what type of skin you have.
Testing Your Skin Type
Identifying your skin’s type puts you one step closer to finding the skin-care ingredients to protect and renew it. Your skin may be normal, dry, or oily — or a combination of two or all three.
For the most accurate results, test your skin with blotting paper. It’s available in almost any cosmetics department. Just pat the blotting paper gently on one area of your freshly washed and dried face. Then hold the paper up to the light and examine it for oil.
If there’s very little or none, your skin is dry. Oil only on your nose and forehead indicates normal or combination skin. But if your skin is oily, the paper will soak up oil wherever you place it it.
Skin Type and Skin Care Products
As a living organ, your skin reacts to whatever you put on it. Sometimes, the reaction may be the opposite of what you expect. Overusing heavy moisturizers may stimulate dry skin to excrete even less oil. Too-frequent washing with an oil-free cleanser or rinsing with an oil-cutting astringent may kick your oil-pumping pores into overdrive.
Don’t, in other words, don’t rush out to buy skin care products right after determining your skin type. Your research isn’t quite done!
Researching Skin Care Ingredients
All skin care products list their active ingredients on their labels. But because they aren’t considered drugs, many of these ingredients haven’t been tested to prove how effective they really are.
Take wrinkle creams, for example. They’re sold at drugstores, cosmetic counters or online for prices ranging from a few to hundreds of dollars per ounce. The most expensive ones contain exotic ingredients such as blue-green algae, Harungana leaf extract and even white gold.
The catch is that few of these ingredients have undergone independent scientific testing. While many marketers hire their own consultants to test their products, that’s not the best way to get an impartial result!
Skin Product Research You Can Trust
When it comes to skin care, the only ingredients your can trust to work as advertised have been proven through several independent clinical trials. You don’t need to understand all the scientific jargon in the test results but you should be able to find the results in respected medical journals.
Want to be sure you aren’t wasting money on things that won’t help — and could hurt — your skin? Then buy skin care products from a company that uses only independently researched active ingredients in what it sells!
Infographic provided by The Better Skin Co.