Here is a list of some unfortunately common habits that damage the skin.
- Constantly touching your face and removing pimples. Your fingers are full of germs -even if you’re cleanest person in the world, no one is sanitising their hands every three seconds. Leave your face alone as much as possible to minimise breakouts. If you really have to squeeze out a blackhead don’t do it with your bare fingers: you could wrap a clean napkin around them. A much better option would be to schedule a mechanical extraction with an aesthetician, but I understand that sometimes it’s almost impossible to resist the temptation.
- Refusing to wear sunscreen. No, having a dark complexion doesn’t mean your skin won’t get damaged. And no, wearing some other “natural alternative” won’t protect your skin. No matter your ethnicity sunscreen is necessary to protect your skin from UV damage. Of course ten minutes under the sun might not cause much of an issue, but if you spend hours outdoor or tanning at the beach you have to wear it, 30 SPF or higher. There’s no getting around it.
- Eating too much dairy. Listen…I am Italian. I know that dairy is delicious and it’s pretty hard to shut it off your diet, but dairy has been proven to cause acne by increasing insulin levels. Besides, most people in the world are lactose intolerant and simply can’t digest it, which alone is a great reason to avoid it.
- Putting weird kitchen ingredients such as lemon on your face. I have written so many answers about this topic so I won’t get into it too much this time around, but believe me, using these ingredients is damaging for your skin. Just because a lot of people do something it doesn’t mean it’s beneficial! If you’re wondering, I am a professional cosmetic chemist but I also have a degree in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology. This means that I have an understanding of the skin’s physiology and when I say something could damage your skin I base it off scientific research.
- Using natural skincare only. Not only truly natural skincare does not exist, in the rare cases when someone can actually say “there are no weird ingredients here, no preservatives, etc” this actually means the product was very poorly formulated. If it doesn’t have preservatives you’ll have to throw it away very fast, and are you sure the person who sold it to you did any stability tests to make sure it’s safe? “Chemical” ingredients (I REPEAT, everything is a chemical including water) such as hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, salycilic acid, petrolatum etc have a proven record of safety and efficacy and are much better for your skin than just slathering some coconut oil on it. Did you know coconut oil is comedogenic? It’s great for hair, though.
Hope this helped! Let me know if you need any more information.