Four Golden Rules for Beautiful Skin
Rule Number 1 |
- Less is more
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
- Ingredients are the only thing that matter
- Always look for product reviews
Rule No. 1: Less is More
Why “less is more”? The idea of "less is more" is to use the simplest products for your skin whenever possible. Most of the time, people use all sorts of things to try to make their skin look better, only to make things worse in the long run. Using too many products or using products that are too harsh can sometimes cause irritation that wouldn’t be there if you had just stuck to the simple stuff in the beginning. A good example of how doing too much can be bad is my aunt and her vitamin C skin care product.
I have an aunt; we call her Aunt Greg. She is a striking woman, absolutely obsessed with having porcelain skin. She sees all these commercials advertising vitamin C as an antioxidant and skin brightener. Talk shows are talking about it and to top it off, one of her close friends even uses vitamin C with great results. This is enough to convince my Aunt Greg to run out the next morning and purchase a C serum. She ends up trying to use this supposedly amazing product for two months, only to turn red and itchy from it. No skin brightening at all! Her skin was actually pretty good to begin with and didn't need any brightening, but after trying to force her skin to like a product it didn't like, her skin has never quite been the same. So what’s the moral of the story? Less is more.
It’s okay to use different products and experiment with different things, but when you use too much or keep trying to use something that just doesn't agree with your skin, sometimes you can really put your skin into overdrive and make things worse than you expected.
Besides my Aunt Greg, I am the perfect example of putting my skin through much more than it needed. Looking back, even when I first started breaking out, my acne really wasn't that bad. Of course I thought every single pimple made me look deformed, so I started to use all these treatments that ended up making my skin worse. I can't go back in time, but I can't help but think that if I had just calmed down and not bazooka-ed my skin over a few zits, maybe it would have cleared up a lot faster than it did.
In the heyday of my skin's nastiness, I continually chose to use oil-free foaming cleansers because I thought those were the only kinds of cleansers that would clean well, not leave any residue behind, and not break me out. With very acne-prone, zitty skin, I thought I needed some super good cleaning!
However, even the gentlest foaming cleansers dried out my skin and made it worse. After I switched to a oil-based cleansing balm, my skin stopped breaking out in new pimples every day and started to look healthy. From personal experience, less really is more. You want to use the least amount of products possible and even then, only products that you actually need. No wonder there are people who clear up their skin once they stop doing everything to it.
Often you’ll find that when you’re stuck in a skin rut, laying off of all the different treatments and sticking to a no-frills moisturizer and gentle cleanser will help your skin bounce right back. The is truth to using simple products on your skin.
Last updated: October 9, 2012
Rule #2: If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
