Op-Ed: How Beauty Editor Moh Shuying Almost Ruined Her Own Complexion
When it comes to your skin, there can be too much of a good thing. And unfortunately, my sensitive skin found this out the hard way.
By MOH SHUYING,
Anyone who knows me knows that I have slight OCB (Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour) when it comes to being clean. It’s nothing that really affects my daily life, just little quirks I have. For example, I need to wash my hands with soap before touching any part of my face (it’s a total pain when I have an itch on my cheek and have to run to the bathroom before I can scratch it), I won’t lay my head down on any hotel pillow without first covering it with a silk handkerchief that I bring from home, and once I shower at night, I don’t leave my room for fear of “contaminating” my cleanliness. There are a ton of other examples but I won’t bore you with the mundanity of my life.
Bearing this in mind, I ask for your patience in understanding the next part of my story. A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally fell asleep on the sofa in my bedroom while watching TV. So imagine my horror when at 4am in the morning, I had yet to complete my nighttime beauty routine of cleanse-mask-skincare. I had already removed my makeup – as I always do when I first get home – but that didn’t calm my panic. So despite knowing better, I decided to embark on a quest to rid my skin of all possible dirt. So what did I do? I did a quick double cleanse, followed by a manual exfoliation using a strong scrub and finished that with a deep cleansing mask. And as if the quadruple cleanse wasn’t enough, I added in a gentle peeling serum to my nighttime skincare regime immediately after.
Now the fact is, even normal skin would be affected by what I did (kids, don’t try this at home). But to make matters worse, I have extremely sensitive skin that is prone to eczema when irritated. So you can probably imagine what happened next. My complexion started to turn red, and after a few hours it begin to feel itchy, probably from dryness as I had happily – and aggressively – stripped my skin of a large amount of moisture with my excessiveness. After a few days, red patches begin to appear on my face with a slight peeling near my eye area. Pretty, I was NOT.
Thankfully, I’m an old hand at calming irritation. The first thing to do is always to strip down your beauty routine to its bare bones. After all, the less you put on your face, the less chance there is for your skin to come into connect with irritants. Think an ultra basic regime of cleansing and moisturising. Then, I brought out my secret weapon: La Mer The Concentrate. It has a high concentration of the brand’s signature Miracle Broth that helps to heal, calm and soothe irritation. I applied it to all the red areas on my face twice a day. I also switched my sunscreen for one that’s targeted for sensitivity, like the Shiseido Perfect UV Protector S for Sensitive Skin and Children.
It’s been about three weeks, and I’m happy to report that my skin is largely back to normal. I’m still avoiding overly harsh products but have finally returned to my nightly-masking practice. Honestly, it was a good reminder to myself to not take good skin for granted. I’ve been enjoying an unusually long period of good skin (No pimples! Dewy glow! Suppleness galore!) and forgot that it takes hard work to maintain a healthy complexion. Plus, I should have known better. Not only am I a beauty journo, I’ve had eczema for most of my whole life. But I’ve decided to look at it as a learning lesson: bad skin is always only one over-cleanse away.
Main image: Showbit.com
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