If you suffer from impurities (or other skin problems), you usually look for skincare products that will fix that. Are we right? Unfortunately, it often happens that your skin has to get used to these new products and ingrediënts. Therefore, your skin goes into its 'detox mode', which is of course very positive but means you still have to suffer from the impurities at first. In fact, in some cases they seem to get even worse. This phenomenon is also called purging and we're going to dive a little deeper into that in this article. Are you reading along?
What's purging?
If lots of makeup or (skincare) products are being used on the face that contain pore-clogging ingredients (such as: mineral oils and dehydrating alcohols), the sebum production may increase. This is in many cases the cause of blackheads and pimples. Some sebum accumulations are still so deep in the sebaceous gland that they're not visibile for the outside yet. The moment you start using products that will stimulate cell renewal, this accumulation comes up faster and will unfortunately still manifest itself in visbile impurities. This skin reaction is also known as purging.
These ingredients provide purging in most cases
Luckily, not all skincare products provide such a cleansing reaction and you'll therefore only experience this with specific active ingredients. We listed the ingredients that can cause purging below:
- Salicylic Acid
- Retinol (Vitamin A)
- Vitamin C
- Niacinamide (Vitamin B3)
- Benzoyl peroxide
Do you experience breakouts after using our products on your skin yourself? If the product contains any of the above ingredients, then you know it could just be purging! Wait 3 to 4 weeks and see if the reaction decreases. Isn't this the case? Then you may be allergic to one of the ingredients in these products.
How do you tell the difference between purging or an allergic reaction?
It's very hard to notice whether the impurities are due to purging or from skin irritations. One thing is for sure, purging never lasts longer than 4 weeks. Do you still suffer from pimples or other irritations afterwards? Then you're probably allergic to one of the ingredients. But even if you notice that you get impurities in completely new places, it's probably an allergic reaction.
In many cases, skin irritations are caused by the following ingredients:
- Perfume
- Parabens
- Alcohol
- Chemical sunfilters
Luckily, we do everything we can during our product developments to minimize the chance of these kind of irritations. For example, we choose to leave the nasties such as PEGS and parabens out of all our products. Some products contain perfum and alcohol, but these formulas always use the least harmful form. For example, we always use allergen-free perfume.
