Skincare for Dry & Sensitive Skin

I don’t write about skincare just because even though I have a skin care routine I don’t really dabble in trying new things or splurge on it. However, in mid-April (yes, I know it’s the end of June) something happened to my skin that has never happened before, and that was that I had an allergic reaction, and all my skin flared up. A week previous to that flare up I had started using two new serums –  a day one and night one – which to this day I’m still afraid to retry again because I don’t know which one triggered it. Nothing like that has ever happened to my normal to dry skin. At first I thought it was a bit of sunburn on the tops of my cheeks but then it spread across my face. It was red, and then it developed little bumps, and then it became so tight and dry that my face literally hurt to move. To touch it felt rough and anything I put on it made it sting like a b*tch. It literally threw me out of my skincare depth and into a whirlpool of skincare drama. So I had to not only go back to basics but use products that would pretty much resurface the top layer of my skin.

The Vitamin E Facial Oil. (Sorry for that there isn’t any pictures of the other products they got lost in a digital data black hole and couldn’t be recovered.)

The first product I turned to was The Body Shop “Vitamin E facial oil”. I literally slathered this on my skin multiple times a day because my skin was so dry and it would drink this stuff up so quickly and then dry out again.  However, I really believe that the water-retaining qualities in vitamin E oil helped my skin restore itself because as my skin slowly got better I applied this fewer and fewer times through out the day and it was able to keep my skin moisturized. The first few times my skin did sting for a few minutes because it was so dry and tight, but afterwards my skin didn’t have the texture sandpaper.  This oil really helped calm down the inflammation and redness, and even though I used it so much, especially at night time before going to bed I’d apply it twice (once half an hour before going to bed, and then just before getting into bed), it would never block my pores or leave my skin greasy.

During this flare up I felt that I should only use products with simple ingredients. Cue: Lush Oatifix facemask. This mask is made to moisturise, soothe and help exfoliate dry skin, and it did just that. The first ingredient in this is glycerin which helps attract and lock in moisture, which meant that my skin wasn’t drying out as quickly as I used it more and more. I was using this face mask every other day which I wouldn’t normally do with a face mask but because this face mask helped my skin in two ways it became a necessity; the glycerin in the face mask (along with all the other moisturising products)  really helped soften the dead scaly skin sitting on the surface whilst the crushed almond pieces exfoliated them away allowing the new skin to reveal itself and breathe. After I used this product and moisterised with the vitamin E oil I felt like that skin was drinking  up the moisture more effectively as all the dead skin had been exfoliated away.

The last product that I used on my skin was the 9 to 5 cleanser from Lush. I know this product isn’t particularly targeted at extremely dry skin but I used it anyway and it helped. I would apply a thick layer all over my face and put a hot towel over just to steam my pores a little and soften the scaly skin on days that I didn’t use the face mask. I found it’s lotion-like consistency felt really nice on my rough dry skin and afterwards left it feeling softer. This cleanser is super gentle which made me feel confident it using it over any other products.

So these were the products I used pretty much up until the last week of May. I really feel like using only these three products got my skin feeling back to itself again and what I really loved about all three products I’ve mentioned above is that they didn’t break the bank, and I know if I have skin problems again that leave my skin very dry and sensitive I will return back to these products.

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