Toothpaste on a pimple? Cucumbers for eye bags? When it comes to beauty, folklore and myths abound. How do you know what’s true and what’s not? Well, here are three top beauty myths – DEBUNKED! so you will be in the know!
Number one Myth: it is crucial to clean your face really well with soap and water to help prevent breakouts and acne.
Truth: Actually, overdoing the cleaning and scrubbing with soap can remove the beneficial oils that you want on your skin. These good oils don’t cause acne --and they protect your skin from irritation. Over-cleaning with soap and water can strip your skin so badly of ALL oil that you end up with rashes and increased breakouts! All that scrubbing also can irritate and further inflame acneic skin. Additionally, some soaps have caustic ingredients, such as fragrances or preservatives, that can irritate and even burn sensitive skin causing intense redness and inflammation.
For all these reasons it’s much better to clean oily, acne prone skin with a product designed to dissolve pore-clogging sebum. (It’s the sebum that causes blackheads and pimples.) The best agents for this job aren’t soaps at all! They’re special mild acids such as salicylic, lactic, or glycolic acid (think fruit juice, not chem lab fire!) that work to gently but effectively to unclog pores and remove excess sebum. One of the best around is a 10% Salicylic acid treatment by MEDPEEL. You’ll see and feel the difference right away and see much clearer skin after 2 weeks.
Myth number 2: The more expensive a skin care product is, the better it works.
Truth: The efficacy of a skin care product has much more to do with the ingredient list than the price tag. There are good and bad products at both ends of the price spectrum. The most important thing to know is that you want to look for products with high levels of active ingredients, and these actives should be listed among the top 10 ingredients on ingredient panel. Two great examples are MedPeel Daily Collagen Complex and MedPeel Vitamin C30X Retinol Serum – both really effective products are chock full of retinol and other skin goodies, making them great choices with a minimal price tag.
Myth number 3: lack of sleep causes dark under-eye circles
Lack of sleep can temporarily make these suckers look more pronounced, but the actual cause of dark circles is multi-factorial. This means they can be from a combination of thin skin in the eye area, allergies, excessive eye rubbing, sun damage, blue-tinged veins in the under-eye area, and even deep-set eyes. The best approach is to tackle each one of these factors, sooo, wear sun block and sunglasses outdoors, see an allergist for seasonal eye allergies and try using a powerful under-eye product every day for several weeks to see a difference.
If your problem is a bluish tint from tiny blue vessels showing though the skin, choose a cream with caffeine that can constrict the blood vessels beneath the eyes. If your color is more reddish you may benefit from a serum with high levels of vitamin K, which reduces puffiness and redness.
And if your eye serum contains retinol, vitamin A, vitamin C and peptides it can strengthen the existing fragile skin making dark circles much less visible while ALSO prevent further damage! YAY!
So there you have it, 3 big beauty myths debunked. Don’t you feel better? And by the way, toothpaste can irritate pimples (the menthol ugh!) and cucumbers cool and sooth mostly because a cucumber from the fridge contains 90% cold water which does most of the work! Ha!
