Navigating your way through a skincare regimen is no easy feat for the everyday consumer. The cosmetic culture has many people believing they need a 10-step routine to achieve glowing skin. From micellar water to cleansing oils to makeup wipes, it’s hard to understand where to begin.
Should I cleanse day and night? Does a squeaky clean feeling mean it’s working? What’s in my cleanser formulation, anyway? These are all valid questions, most of which are much easier to understand when we look at cleansers from a corneotherapeutic skincare lens.
Here’s a no-nonsense guide to the first step and the star in your skincare regimen: the cleanser.
Healthy-looking skin is dependent on a subtle cocktail of factors like genetics, hormones, activity levels, environment, and age. The latter ingredient being huge—once you hit 30, estrogen levels change which can have a hefty affect on the appearance of your skin. And what shakes up the cocktail is that traditional cleansers are made for the masses, not for you and your complexion’s unique alchemy. That’s why one-size-fits-all cleansing solutions are often ineffective.
Through this corneotherapeutic lens, we see that it doesn’t matter what the brand is, typical cleansers are always generic.
The job of a cleanser is (seemingly) simple: to remove unwanted dirt and debris from the surface of your skin. However, the ingredients in most cleansing formulations, especially surfactants, also remove the key defensive components of your protective skin barrier—lipids, enzymes and Natural Moisturizing Factor (NMF).
Even further, generic cleansers upset the skin’s natural microbiome.
This leads to the barrier not working as it should, inflammation and oxidative stress (free radicals), which manifest in your skin as redness, dryness, discomfort and irritation. Fan of acne cleansers? This is especially true in those antibacterial formulations. Have sensitive skin? Thank your cleanser because that’s where the condition starts.
With all skincare lines, including professional lines, the chemists create a cleanser, a toner and a moisturizer which are packaged together based on their chemistry. These products are meant to work together as a system, and as a system, they are also classic barrier disruptors.
It’s true that a dry skin formulation will include ingredients to hydrate skin but here’s the thing: a damaged outer layer cannot properly receive or process nutrients, so those key ingredients just go to waste. So if the formula is, say, for dry skin, they’ll add key ingredients for dry skin but it doesn’t look at what made your dry skin.
Low-maintenance women rejoice: Your skin really wants a simple, natural plan
Multi-step routines may seem like you’re giving your skin various powerful punches of nutrients, but it’s only raising your chances at exposing your skin to harmful ingredients like emulsifiers, preservatives, parabens, fragrances, mineral oils, silicones and amines. Even worse, using a cleanser, exfoliator, and peel until your face feels squeaky clean means you are likely stripping the permeability barrier—and the acid mantle—that control the key barrier balance. Do this enough and it may never recover on its own.
If there is only one product you care about using daily, it should be the cleanser—and the quality of the formulations. So how can you cleanse without wreaking havoc on your precious complexion?
Corneotherapeutic cleansers contain ingredients that respect the skin and omit the ingredients that don’t.
We understand that the skin must be in good condition to generate the unique lipids of the stratum corneum (the barrier). Therefore, with this understanding corneotherapeutic cleansers are designed to support, repair and maintain barrier function.
All dermaviduals cleansers respect the integrity of the skin barrier and support a healthy microbiome.
How do the dermavidualsⓇ cleansers do that? They wash away the debris and allergens that you come into contact with every day but come right behind the cleansing process with the Derma Membrane System (DMS) which completely mimics not only chemically but structurally that permeability structure in your skin. This fortifies the skin with nourishment it understands, and supplies beautiful homeostasis in the skin you can see and feel.
Dermaviduals cleansers also work in an ecosystem, much like we mentioned when chemists create with professional lines, but the dermaviduals can also be tailored to each person’s individual skin needs.
Here are the various cleansers dermaviduals carries:
Cleansing Milk with DMS: Gently removes dirt and debris while immediately replacing lost components of the skin barrier with bioidentical lipid structures (DMS).
Cleansing Gel: Made with sugar tensides in a vegetable base, it replaces destructive surfactants which degrade the skin barrier while giving a gentle cleanse.
Total Cleansing Cream: This natural cleanser doubles as a body wash and even shampoo. Containing vegetable oils and our signature DMS, it wipes away daily impurities without the harmful consequences associated with traditional cleansing formulations.
Bespoke Cleansers: A custom-made cleanser to target problem skin, it’s formulated with barrier components that are missing from your skin.
Here’s how to properly cleanse: Wash your face with cool, not hot, water once a day— preferably at night when your complexion is coated with the day’s impurities. Apply it in circular motions and then remove with a soft washcloth.
Are you a licensed skincare clinic, medical office, or medical spas in the New York state area? You can become an authorized dermaviduals stocklist for our gentle cleansers and product range—always free of emulsifiers & always backed by science. Get in touch today!
