You may have heard me talking about my sensitive skin in my previous posts. Some of you may have assumed that sensitive skin is a skin type; however, sensitivity is more of a skin concern than a type. So I am going to go through some of the typical signs of sensitive skin and how it comes about. I also intend to break down some myths about it and ultimately help you determine if you have sensitive skin or sensitised skin.
What is Sensitive Skin?
Sensitive skin is in basic terms, skin that reacts too quickly. It often creates an allergic response even to products/ ingredients that you’re not actually allergic too. This typically occurs if you have a damaged skin barrier. Sensitivity can occur due to numerous factors. However, some of the main ones are: Genetics, hormones, a state of inflammation (perhaps due to medical conditions), stress, environmental conditions such as heat and light, laundry detergents and unfortunately your skincare routine. Having said that, if you have suffered with sensitive skin for years and have always been that way even before introducing a skincare routine you most likely do have sensitive skin; rather than sensitized skin.
What you may notice is changing or removing one or more of these factors may help your skin calm down and return to normal. There are of course numerous skin conditions that require a doctor to diagnose; such as rosacea, dermatitis and the one I personally suffer from, eczema.
What To Do If You’re Suffering from Sensitivity?
Sometimes with sensitivity it is easier to talk about what is best to avoid rather than what to include. As your skin may be reacting to a lot of products. When it comes to your skin routine I would first say avoid fragrances. Personally I don’t have a sensitivity to fragrance, I love fragrance in skincare but it is a common irritant. My other tip would be to proceed with caution when it comes to active ingredients such as Vitamin C and retinol.
You may also want to avoid natural ingredients. I know some of you think natural is better, however natural ingredients vary quite a lot and contain numerous ingredients which are harder to identify and eliminate from a routine.
One of my favourite ingredients to include into your routine when you have sensitive skin is vitamin B3. Which is also known as niacinamide. This is the perfect ingredient for soothing the skin. Plus it helps strengthen the skin’s barrier which is often compromised in sensitive skin.
What is Sensitised Skin?
Sensitised skin is skin which is reacting quickly to all products on the skin even including water. Typically a way to judge is if you have always suffered from sensitivity from being a child (like me). You most likely just have sensitive skin and can’t do much to change that. However, if you have noticed over the last few months/weeks that your skin is more sensitive since introducing active skincare ingredients into your routine; you are most likely sensitised and could benefit from taking a break from your actives for a while.
I think the biggest issue these days is that there are so many fantastic products on the market and we want to try them all in order to improve our skin and eliminate the signs of ageing that we can easily over do it. My advice would be to stick to a couple of active ingredients and introduce one new product at a time to identify the product(s) which are causing the sensitivity.
