Cleansers are probably the least glamourous of our skin care products. In over 20 years of talking to people about their skin, it is never cleansers that we look to to make the changes in our skin.
However, what if I told you that your cleanser is the most important foundational product you are using on your skin?
Cleansers have the potential to cause a lot of damage to the skin. Get cleansing wrong, and your other products will be damage control. Get cleansing right and the rest will fall into place. I’ve been saying this since I created my own skin care line in 2011.
Our skin is a highly complex organ with its own continuous processes of repair and rejuvenation.
Unlike most of our organs it has to contend with both the inside and the outside world of our body, and the outside world is constantly changing; temperature and humidity, sunlight and darkness, moisture and dryness etc. Add onto that all the products we put onto our skin; cleansers, moisturizers, eye creams, serums, lip balms, make-up, the list can be long. Not to mention treatments like botox, retinols and fillers. Our skin has to adjust and process all these things.
Our skin has a very thin layer on its’ surface called the acid mantle.
When we hear about pH balanced products this is why. It is a slightly acid layer, a mix of oils, sweat, enzymes and bacteria. It has one job as a first defense - the acidic nature will kill many foreign bacteria preventing them from penetrating the skin.
It also has another job, a very important one. The acid mantle sends “messages” into the skin, to the deeper layers where new cells are being made to tell our skin what it needs. More oil, please. Less oil, please. Faster cell replication to heal this scar, please. White blood cells to clear up this pimple, please - you get the idea. I like to think of the acid mantle as the brain of our skin, or it’s ever-changing instruction book.
The acid mantle is there for an important reason; so our skin can grow, heal and function as it should, all by itself.
So back to cleansers. What makes them so important? Most cleansers are made from soaps, detergents and alcohols, because these ingredients effectively remove the dirty oils and make-up we are cleansing our skin to remove. However, these ingredients are too effective at their job as they also clean away the acid mantle plus the oils in our living cells, which we want to keep. In healthy skin it can take 6 hours for the acid mantle to be replaced, that’s 6 hours with no “brain” or instructions, and if you cleanse morning and night, that’s 12 out of every 24 hours! This makes it very hard for our skin to function as it’s meant to, creating all sorts of skin issues from premature aging, oil imbalances, pimples and acne and sensitivities. I see this all the time in our studio here in Vernon.
The good news is that our skin is very adaptable. If we switch to a cleanser that supports how our skin functions these imbalances and issues often reverse and our skin looks and feels great – just as it should!
At Helena Lane Skincare all our cleansers are oil cleansers. We believe cleansing with an oil is the only way to effectively clean our skin without destroying the acid mantle and interfering with our skin’s own processes of growth, repair and rejuvenation. We use jojoba oil as the base as it has the most similar fatty acid profile of all the plant oils, helping to nourish dry or balance oily skin. Our cleansers are removed with a cloth and warm water so you are left with clean, happy skin and feeling refreshed.
Whatever changes you wish to see with your skin, getting the basics right is the best place to start. Switching to an oil cleanser will likely be the most effective change you can make.
