Everyone wants to look their holiday best around Christmas – a time when many of us see family and friends that we don’t see the rest of the year. So if you want your skin to be smooth and radiant all holiday season long, keep this motto in mind: exfoliate and hydrate. Learn how to get glowing skin for the holidays in two simple but important steps.
Exfoliation: What Is It?
Our skin undergoes a natural process called keratinization. During keratinization, new skin cells are made in a deeper skin layer called the basale layer. As those new cells mature, they are slowly pushed upwards toward the outermost layer of skin, called the stratum corneum. Here, the new cells push the old, flaky dead cells off and replace them. This is called desquamation.
Sometimes, dry dead skin heaps up on the surface of the skin during this process, making your skin rough and lackluster. For smooth, touchable holiday skin, you need to exfoliate. Exfoliation is essentially a way to speed up the natural desquamation process to get rid of those dead, flaky cells.
There are two ways to exfoliate: chemically and mechanically.
Chemical Exfoliation
Chemical exfoliation uses ingredients such as hydroxy acids or retinoids to loosen the lipids in between skin cells that hold them together. This helps them to flake away from the skin’s surface, leaving you with smoother, brighter skin.
I love Neostrata Problem Dry Skin Cream for this. It contains hydroxy acids and vitamin E to moisturize, hydrate, and soothe rough skin, and is suitable for all 16 Baumann Skin Types®. Don’t use hydroxy acids on freshly shaved skin, though, as it could cause irritation. Ouch!
Mechanical Exfoliation
This method uses physical friction to remove flaky cells from your skin, such as a scrub. For the body, I like the Pidanti Smoothing Face Polish, since it does not leave a residue in the tub like the St. Ives Apricot scrub does. For the face, I like the Clinique 7 Day Scrub.
There are also in-office mechanical exfoliation treatments you can get, such as microdermabrasion.
Save 20% on any Clarisonic brush at ExclusiveBeautyClub.com using the promo code DERM20.
If you have rosacea or other sensitive skin subtypes, friction-based exfoliation can irritate your skin and make symptoms worse. Infrequent chemical exfoliation is a better choice for sensitive skin types.
Hydration: Get Glowing Skin
Hydration and exfoliation go hand-in-hand. Once you have a smooth, fresh surface to work with, you want to keep it hydrated so your complexion stays smooth, soft, and radiant. Hydrate your skin all over your body with a barrier repair moisturizer. This will give your skin a plumped up glow so you can rock around the Christmas tree with rocking skin all week long.
Bottom Line
Getting glowing skin for the holidays doesn’t have to involve a complicated process. For soft, touchable skin under the mistletoe, add exfoliation and hydration to your skin care regimen. Just make sure you use the right methods and products for your Baumann Skin Type® to see the best results and minimize side effects like flaking or redness.
If you have questions about how to properly exfoliate and hydrate your skin, you can contact us online or call us at 305-532-5552. For more skin care tips and how-to videos, be sure to follow Baumann Cosmetic on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
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