Monday, January 19, 2015

Are You Using the Right Ingredients for Your Particular Skin Care Concern?

Korres, Neutrogena, Reviva Labs, L'Occitane, Kleem Organics anti-aging products group.jpeg
From left to right is  Reviva Labs Collagen Serum, Korres Greek Yoghurt Skin Facial, Neutrogena Rapid Wrinkle Repair, L'Occitane 28 Day Divine Renewal Program, Kleem Organics Vitamin C Serum, Reviva Labs 5 % Glycolic Acid Cream


When you’re shopping for skin care, you want the product that will be the most effective for your particular issue.  Trusting a fancy jar because you saw it endorsed by a celebrity is not reason enough because as wonderful as that product might be, it may not be the appropriate best choice for you.

Instead, you need to ask yourself what you are trying to solve first.  Is it dullness, dark spots, sagging skin, breakouts, lines and wrinkles, or redness?  Practically all anti-aging skin care products will benefit your complexion in multiple ways.  Concentrate on that one skin issue troubling you the most.  From that point on, the real work begins of reading labels and checking for certain ingredients.

For example, if your skin is skin is dull and yet aging, you want to look for ingredients like seaweed, algae, alpha or beta hydroxy acids, soy, papaya enzymes, lactic or glycolic acid, copper peptides, retinoids, and L-ascorbic acid, (vitamin C).  

On the other hand, if sagging skin is more your problem, then ingredients like hyaluronic acid, soy, copper peptides, and L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) need to appear on that label.  These are the top picks to help firm.

Perhaps, lines and wrinkles might be what you’re attempting to correct.  In that case, ingredients like plant oils, peptides, DMAE, seaweed, algae, retinoids, green tea, kinetin, hyaluronic acid, and L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) will do you the most good.

Dark spots call for kojic acid and licorice extract as ingredients since these are excellent for this purpose.

Still, your issue could be something like dealing with redness or a blotchy complexion.  In so, look for ingredients like green tea, chamomile, cucumber, or aloe as the lead contenders to rescue your skin.

Then again, your skin care problem might be completely different such as breakouts.  If so, look for ingredients like tea tree oil, citrus, mint, rosemary, retinols, salicylic acid, sulfur, resorcinol, glycolic acid, parsley, lycopene.  Those specific ingredients are the ones that toil hard for you for both fighting acne as well as aging.

Now that you know about the importance of specific ingredients to deal with your skin care dilemma, there is also one last thing to keep in mind when reading your label.  Product ingredients start from the most prevalent to the least.  In other words, if you are comparing a few products that will address your skin care issue, then pick the one with the highest concentration of those ingredients you will need, which you will find at the beginning of that list.

Jot down the ingredients that you’ll need to look for before you shop to make it easier on yourself than buying something you may have to return later.  

Good luck and stay beautiful!