If there’s one rule I’ve repetitively heard in skincare communities, it is the importance of protecting your skin barrier, well that, and wear your SPF. I think that can be grouped under the importance of the almighty skin barrier though.
What exactly is the Skin Barrier?
We learned in school about the different layers of the skin including the epidermis, the dermis, and the fatty layer. The outermost layer of the skin is the epidermis. The outermost layer of the epidermis is the stratum corneum. The stratum corneum serves as the body’s protective skin barrier against external conditions such as pollution, toxins, and ultraviolet rays.
Understanding how the skin barrier works can help you create a skincare regimen that actually works for you individually. Maintaining a healthy skin barrier is not only important for skincare, but for skin health overall.
The stratum corneum has several distinct functions including as a permeability barrier, an antimicrobial barrier, an antioxidant barrier, and an autoimmune response barrier.
How to Identify a damaged or compromised Skin Barrier
- Skin Sensitivity
- Dry Skin
- Redness
- Itchiness
- Excessive Breakouts
- Irritation
These are some general symptoms. You may only experience one or two symptoms, or all the symptoms combined. For me, I started realizing that my skin hasn’t really been improving despite all the various products I have introduced to my routine.
How to protect your skin
- Moisturize, Moisturize, Moisturize. Moisturizers serve many purposes. After cleansing your skin, moisturizers can keep your skin plump and hydrated. It can help the cell walls perform their various duties appropriately. It can reduce water loss, vital for already irritated skin.
- Stick to gentle cleansers and products in the meantime. Look, I get it. We now live in a world where exfoliation is everywhere. Tiktok and Instagram has made skincare knowledge more accessible by informing an audience more receptive to small spurts of information. People are intrigued by vampire facials, chemical and physical exfoliation. It is fine to experiment (smartly), but when your barrier is already damaged, going back to the basics can help heal it faster.
- Avoid over-exfoliating. As I’ve stated on the second step, this may not be right time to be trying out all the products. I think this may be the part that I messed up as well. I just get so excited about skincare.
- Do not introduce new products into your regimen. Although it may be tempting to solve the irritation by testing out new serums, it might not react the best with your already sensitive skin.
- Wear sunscreen, every single day. Sunscreen is definitely a habit that I have just started in the last year. I had my reasons, but now that I have found products that do not send me to the emergency room, I cannot live without it. Neither should you! I like to think of sunscreen as another layer of skin because of its importance in protecting the skin against UV.
My current skin problem
I have to admit it to the internet. I went a little bit overboard on my skincare journey. I am a researcher at heart. I have always been obsessed with skincare and beauty. I still remember being a teenager and watching hours and hours of Youtube beauty bloggers. I wish that I would have been able to start this journey then.
At the same time, the level of knowledge surrounding skincare and active ingredients today is distinctly different from today. We get information from licensed Dermatologists on social media, which was not the norm back in the day.
I used too many actives and now my skin is not only not improving but also highly irritated featuring redness galore. I’m definitely going to include more hydrating ingredients in my routine without exfoliating for a while which isn’t the easiest thing.
