The Skin Care Routine

In My Humble Opinion
1

I always hear stuff like, “Soap dries your skin out” and about people who have vastly different hair care routines than I do. What I want to know is how anybody figures out what their skin or hair is. I grew up in a household that knew jack squat about beauty care or anything like that. You washed your face with a bar of soap like the rest of you, and that was it. You shampoo your hair every other day, that’s how it works. There wasn’t any, “Ooh, your skin is dry, we should put on some lotion!” or, “Your hair is dry, maybe you need to condition more or shampoo less!” So I had no idea how to gauge what sort of skin or hair I had, and that’s probably why I looked awful as a kid until I started learning about this sort of thing on my own and started changing that routine.

But regardless, it’s still a routine. So how the heck do you figure out what you’ve really got? They say drying out your skin too much causes your skin to overdrive on oil production. If you’re doing that without knowing it, you’d think you had oily skin, not dry or normal skin. Your routine would stay as-is, despite being the exact opposite of what you need. So how can a person tell? And if that also applies to your scalp, then wouldn’t it also hide what cleaning routine is best for your hair? What do you do, just stop all soap products on your head for a month and see what your skin reverts to and start your routine fresh based on that information? I just can’t fathom letting myself go that long. Is it all small changes in routine until you finally, finally, figure out what works for you? Do you go to a dermatologist and have them figure it out?

2

Small changes in routine until you figure out what works for you. Also spot solutions. I have a lot of dry skin in the winter, and am still figuring out ways to make it stop. Allergy pills help, but I don’t want to take them, I am taking shots and they’re helping with my actual allergies, so why take pills too? I did change my detergent and that helped.

You wash your hair every day. Too dry. So you wash it every other day. Try washing it every three days, too oily.

Head itches? Probably too dry.

Skin doesn’t need to be soaped up every single day. Just wash the important bits. Arms and legs will be OK, unless you work in a job that gets extra dirty.

But yes, you keep trying things until you hit upon something that works right! I have thin curly hair and grew up in an era of 80s hair bands, so no one knew what to do with curly hair. Black hair products don’t work for me because my hair is so thin. White-hair products don’t work because it’s not silky soft and will never be. So I had a hard time as a kid and as a teen.

Now there are curly hair products everywhere. And stuff for thin hair!

3

What’s your ethnicity and what climate do you live in? Both contribute to your skin type. For example, I’m a fair-skinned person with Northern European ancestry who lives in a dry and windy climate. I’m already predisposed to having dry skin and hair, but exposure to the sun and wind makes it worse.

You probably have dry skin if you sunburn easily, your skin gets easily irritated, you have flaky, rough patches, and your skin feels tight after cleansing.

You probably have oily skin if you sweat a lot, your face looks like an oil slick and/or you get a lot of blemishes.

A lot of people have combination skin. Their T-zone (forehead, nose and chin) gets oily but the rest of the face does not. There are plenty of skin care products marketed towards combination skin.

Curly hair tends to be drier than straight hair. I can go several days without washing it and my scalp won’t become greasy. Washing it too often makes it look dull and frizzy.

4

Something else to keep in mind is that 95+% of the beauty industry is BS.

They’re trying to sell product. If they can convince you that you need three different products instead of just one, they make three times as much.

Regards,
Shodan

5

Yes, I always felt that beauty care was over-the-top. I had acne as a teenager and didn’t understand that lotion had an actual use and it wasn’t just that women used it because they liked it (didn’t help I didn’t like the feeling or the scents, either). After I went to college I had the bright idea that maybe all the flaking skin caused by my acne wash drying it out was in fact what was causing my acne. One less acne wash later, and my breakouts were cut in half…I felt really cheated because everyone had said that obviously you use acne washes for acne. But really, it was because I had no clue that my oily but flaking face was due to my acne wash destroying my skin. Even later I tried actually putting some dreaded moisturizer on my face and things cleared up more.

Even today though, I still get more zits than the average adult and wonder if I’ve “really” found the correct care routine for my skin now, or if I’m “just like that”. And I don’t really feel like going through the 8 million different skin care products out there, but I guess trying it out and waiting is just how you do it.

6

I feel for you. I always had acne as a teen and young adult too. I finally broke down and went to a dermatologist (and I hate going to doctors)! But he put me on a pill that did miracles. I took it for a couple of years and then the doctor took me off it. I didn’t want to let it go! But lo and behold, I was “cured”.

Even now, I’m nervous about putting new products on my face. I probably need to moisturize or something, but I don’t want to risk starting a problem. Besides, who has the money to try this and that until they find the right one? I read a lot of product reviews and then wind up not buying anything.

7

The thing is a lot of those skin care products are really harsh on your face and strip away the natural oils and dry out your skin. My complexion is pretty good and I don’t put anything on my face but water. Like once a day I’ll just touch a tissue to my forehead cause it will get a tad oily but I don’t really get zits or anything. In the winter I can tell my skin gets dry, so right after a bath I use some Eucerin lotion to moisturize my skin in dry areas. Lotions like Eucerin are good because they don’t have the fragrances that are irritating to your skin. Sometimes in the winter I’ll just take a shower every other day, and steaming hot showers also strip the oils and stuff off your skin and dry it out, so should be avoided.

8

I listen to what the product manufacturers advertise and read the instructions. Then I buy the cheapest one.

9

I had acne as a teen and have cystic acne as an adult.

What has finally worked for me is a daily face exfoliation - I use Clinique 7 Day Face Scrub, as it is made to not be harsh and you can use it every day - and a gentle cleanser (Cetaphil daily). In cool water, not hot.

In the winter I use face oil which is literally a pot of oils (I use Bobbi Brown) before bed for moisturizer. My face is greasy when I first put it on but when I wake up it’s just moisturized. The brand First Aid has a good moisturizer that doesn’t make me break out, too. I just opted for the fancier oils in an attempt to minimize some scars.

If and when I do get cysts on my face - which, thank Og, is so less frequent now - I have a $300 tube of prescription-strength cystic acne medicine called Differin. It works in a few days. I also use salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide (Clean & Clear) for when I get a zit that is clearly not a cyst.

In short:

  • Gentle face wash, made for faces. Never soap.
  • Cool water, never hot.
  • Gentle exfoliation.
  • Hypoallergenic moisturizer

As for hair…I’ve heard that shampoo doesn’t matter as much (you can use the cheap stuff) but you should splurge on conditioner and product (if you need it). I always use Head & Shoulders shampoo because I’ve had scalp problems in the past.

This summer I went to Ulta (a big hair/makeup store like Sephora) and purchased a bunch of different conditioners when they had a hair care sale. Since my hair was shitty to begin with it didn’t matter if some of them didn’t work for me - my hair would just remain looking shitty as I got through the bottle. Anyway, out of 4 I found one that worked the best for me and will be sticking with that.

I also invested in a hair masque which is a more-expensive, deeper treatment conditioner that you use once a week or less. Since I swim and have very dry hair, I use it once a week. I use Bumble & Bumble but there are tons of different brands and types. I just kind of grabbed B&B and it seemed to work nicely for me so I stick with it.

I was having problems with my hair all last year. The back and bottom were all nice curls but the top was awful - dry, frizzy, different-sized curls. I thought it was just my hair changing with hormones. But I really started to pay attention to products and routines and stuff, and it turns out the problem was with my routines, not my hair. I needed to stop using cheap H&S conditiner and get something more professional, and add the masque. And stay on top of hair cuts. My hair looks and feels GREAT now.

I also found some product (leave-in conditioner) that greatly helps. It’s from DevaCurl.

I did try a bunch of drugstore products before moving up to the expensive stuff at Ulta. But it just wasn’t powerful enough for my enormous mop. Lucky for me I was able to sell the drugstore stuff as a reduced-price lot on a local Facebook sales group, and make $20 back (enough to buy one bottle of conditioner lol)

Ok that’s all I got to say. I’ve been working a lot on my hair and skin the past 2 years, so that’s why I am so verbose :slight_smile:

10

I’m not really looking for “what’s worked for people” to be honest, because everyone literally has something different to say.

I expected that humans are highly evolved creatures and our skin is our basic barrier against infection. So it should be an excellent organ that works great. But damned if our skin is apparently extremely fragile and can’t be touched by hardly any soap or heat according to some, or needs to be practically stripped off via acid according to the others. Basically, the messages received for skin care are so varied that I was wondering how anybody knows what’s going on and how they picked what they did.

I mean, heck. My hair gets super greasy on day three if I don’t shampoo every other day. But how am I supposed to know if that’s because I’m stripping too many oils out by washing and therefore I need to shampoo less, or if that’s just how it is and I’m doing the right thing after all? I can’t come in to work looking like a slob with two weeks worth of unwashed hair to see which is true. Especially since I go to the gym. I can’t imagine not washing my sweaty self after a trip to the gym, and I go every other day. But there are people out there who only wash their hair once a week! It’s crazy to me.

I want to know if our hunter-gatherer ancestors had cystic acne!

11

I actually just asked in this thread about acne in more “third-world” cultures, where people aren’t babying their faces and not living in clean, sterile environments. We’ll see what even sven has to say!

12

You didn’t respond to the questions I asked in post #3. That would really help in determining what kind of skin you have.

As for your hair, it sounds like shampooing every other day is working just fine if it doesn’t get greasy until day 3.

13

I didn’t answer your questions because I’m not here for specific care advice. My original question was does everyone really figure out what’s best for them by winging it and changing their routine slowly, or is there a better way (doctors, starting over) to do it?

I’m basically tired of trying different beauty stuff. You’d think I could just sit back and let nature work, after all, we’re evolved to live as-is without soap, right? But I don’t want to be stinky, and apparently people need masques and moisturizers and lotions and special soaps and all this other stuff just to keep their skin in line. I always tried to get by with less but my routine adds in another product every year, it feels like. And it always feels like a crapshoot no matter which product I try, because everyone says something different about skin.

14

I’m not trying to give you specific care advice, I’m trying to help you determine what type of skin you really have. I thought that was the whole point of your OP. Now I’m not at all sure what you’re after, so I’ll bow out.

15

My absolute minimal beauty routine is what I have been doing since I was a teenager, decades ago. I discovered a drug store moisturizer that made my skin feel good and have stuck with it ever since. They now have different formulas, so I go with the (heavier) extra care formula in the winter when my skin is dryer and a lighter scent free formula in the summer.

As for hair, I am delighted, after many years of just buying whatever shampoo, to have found a brand that seems to keep my hair looking good even though I only shampoo every second or third day. Dumb luck and trial and error led me to this amazing discovery.

16

I am sort of pleased to know that we’re all stumbling through skin and hair care products together. I mean it sucks, but we’re all in the same boat. I just grew up so devoid of any beauty advice that I keep having this little thought that maybe other people had some trick to know what to do that I never caught on to. Or that maybe everyone went to a dermatologist at some point and just never mentioned it to anyone else because everyone knows that, and so on.

17

Most people are just stumbling through their physical care, to be honest. People who work in the makeup/skin-care industry, or in areas where they’re exposed to it (so dermatology, plastic-surgery, fashion, modeling, design sometimes, theatre/TV/movies sometimes) can get a little bit of a head-start because they’re around the products more often, and around more different types of options.

But yeah - it really is a personal, individual crapshoot.

As far as our hunter-gatherer ancestors go, I imagine that if you look at “primitive” cultures today, you’ll get pretty close. A lot of what is in fancy beauty products is just scientific or glossy presentations of natural materials; various oils and greases for skin and hair, clay for exfoliation and sun protection, various plant teas or tinctures for particular specific uses (drying zits, redness removal, skin-color alterations)…

So there’s no need to expect that our way-back ancestors were necessarily totally scummy and gross-looking. They probably didn’t have as much time on their hands to devote to it, nor as many products to choose from, but appearance is a pretty primal thing, so preserving or improving it probably goes pretty far back.

Also, back before mass media, the expectations were set a lot lower - we’re comparing ourselves to the people we see in media (who most times don’t even look like they are portrayed to appear) so we have a lot of deep cultural expectations of what our skin and hair SHOULD be doing in order to be attractive - which is used to sell us various products to try and meet expectations.

18

Probably the point is not to worry about the state of your skin while you’re young, but to prevent it from turning into a wrinkly mass worthy of National Geographic as you move into middle and old age.

To that end, I try to (1) prevent pimples that leave scars, (2) use sunscreen daily, and (3) moisturize when my skin starts to seem abnormally dry. And yes, it’s just been years of slowly trying things. Turns out my pimples, like ZipperJJ’s, were cystic and required prescription medication to clear up. Bummer.