3 Signs You May be Over-Exfoliating Your Skin

Now that winter is over, it seems like one of the most common springtime beauty tips is to exfoliate, exfoliate, exfoliate! While no one wants to hit the beach with flaky, dry skin, over-scrubbing your skin can be more harmful than helpful. If you’re noticing some changes in your skin, chances are you may be exfoliating more than you should be. Here are 3 skin changes that are surefire signs that you’re overdoing it with the exfoliating.

A Forehead that Shines

If your forehead could double as a mirror, you’re definitely over-exfoliating. Too much exfoliating can cause the natural texture of your skin to become too smoothed out, which makes it easy for light to reflect off of it.

Puffy, Swollen Skin

While you may love how soft and smooth your skin feels right after an exfoliation, exfoliating too frequently can cause skin to become irritated. Repeated harsh scrubbing of your skin can lead to inflammation and may even damage your skin’s natural lipid barrier overtime.

You’re Breaking Out

It seems logical that scrubbing your face would help to keep it clean and healthy, which would keep annoying acne at bay. However, too much scrubbing can have quite the opposite effect. When you are exfoliating properly, you can help eliminate acne by clearing out the dead skin cells that are clogging your pores. But if you’re overdoing it, you are likely also scrubbing away healthy skin cells that are meant to protect your skin’s natural barrier.

How to Prevent Over-Exfoliating

If your skin is exhibiting any of the above symptoms, it’s best to stop using your exfoliator immediately. Once those skin issues have subsided, you can slowly re-introduce exfoliating back into your regular skin care regime. You should not be exfoliating more than once every other day. Your new scrubbing mantra should be: “scrub soft, scrub often”. If you’ve been swearing by using a skin brush to exfoliate, I would suggest switching to a soft scrubber only. They are a great way to deeply cleanse sensitive skin and other skin types without scraping away healthy skin.

Are you struggling with getting your skin back into a healthy balance? Come into Botanica today and discuss your skin care issues with one of our skin care experts. They will help renew and revitalize your skin so it can radiate with glowing healthiness again.

Love,

Gen