How Much Skin Care Is Needed?
How much skin care is needed? That’s the question I was asking myself after I attended last weekend’s Integrative Dermatology Symposium(IDS) in Reno, Nevada.
The symposium was pretty good. There were wonderful speakers who were naturopaths, acupuncturists, and dermatologists talking about how they treated various skin diseases such as acne, rosacea, and psoriasis
Is Less Skincare Better?
I collected bagfuls of skin care goods from the conference. Stuff that I don’t even know what they are.
There were facial cleansers in different forms, anti-acne products of all kinds, and more moisteurizers than I can even name. I was thinking that it was good that I had access to these products which I never use.
Then when I was driving back from Reno I listened to a podcast from learnskin.com who puts on the IDS. They were interviewing a dermatologist Dr. Yuval Bibi who is a M.D./Ph.D. (he likes studying) who had written a book on skin care
He had interesting thoughts which I listened to carefully because they made sense. And also because I had been doing what he suggested for different reasons. So if he was advocating for something that I was doing I had to listen to it!
He started off with an interesting point. There is a point in the middle of our back which never gets skin care of any sort. And that is because it’s at a point where we can’t reach it with our hands so however old we are, that’s how long that point in the skin has never had skincare.
And how is that part of the skin doing? It’s doing fine, it’s not red or irritated , it is just being there and not being noticed like what our skin should be doing.
He wrote a book on skin care and the top myths he wanted to put down are these.
1)Skin doesn’t have to be slathered in skin care products for it to do well.
2)Hot water should be below 104 degrees (F) otherwise it would hurt the skin.
3)Cleansers strip the skin of its oils and if the skin is now dry then what happens next?
4) We have to use moisteurizers next which are used way more than they should.
No problem = no skin care
So here was this dermatologist who was saying that we don’t need all these products. That one product – cleansers causes dryness which needs to be helped out by another product – moisteurizers. It was an unique perspective which makes sense. If our skin is doing well and isn’t bothering us, why should we put products on it?
So I , for one, will continue to do not that much skin care. Because I don’t want to put stuff on my skin and because a dermatologist who is also a Ph.D. told me that I shouldn’t 🙂
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To your health!
Dr. Richard Chen
Focused Wellness Author,
A New Way to Health: Wheel of Health
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