Many people have an innate idea that a good skincare product is one that you can “feel” working. I’m sure you’ve heard people say things like: “The more it tingles the better it works”; “It stings a little, but in a good way”; “It’s stinging/tingling a bit, but for beauty’s sake, so I’m going to use it”; or “it tingles, but it’s fine”.
But should it really be like this though? Should your skincare products tingle? Why do they do so? And does tingling mean a product is working better than another that does not?
The world of skincare is full of misinformation and misconceptions, sometimes to the point that a typical consumer may have difficulty knowing what she/he can or should realistically expect from a cream, mask or serum. Let’s see if we can clear it up a bit.
First of all, to know if tingling/stinging is good for our skin, we must understand why it happens. Long story short, any kind of weird sensations like tingling, stinging, tightening or burning, happens because the skin’s barrier is being disrupted. Since your skin barrier is a kind of firewall that keeps the moisture in and the irritants out of your body, when you disrupt it, bad things happen.
Truth be told, almost all skin related problems have their beginning as a skin barrier disruption. Irritations, redness, dullness, flakiness, dryness, break-outs and rashes, could all be nonexistent if the skin barrier isn’t compromised. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t necessarily get all the above symptoms at once if you are unkind to your skin barrier. However, over time, your skin will get more sensitive and reactive. So now you can see that the tingling/stinging sensation is not something you should be looking for in your skincare.
Don’t worry, the fault of sabotaging your skin is not entirely yours. We all grew up being bombarded with advertisements about “tingling” and “energizing” skincare products that made us believe in the misconception that we need to “feel” the product for it to be working.
Now that we know that tingling/stinging is a no-no, what should we feel when using skincare products? I’m sorry to disappoint you here, but the sensation you should be looking for in your skincare is “nothingness”. A good cream, mask or serum should feel like nothing. I know it sounds boring, but sometimes less sensation means better long-term effects.
What I’m saying here may sound weird, especially if you have ever used products with, for example, prescribed retinoids, when the most common side effect is stinging and in general, skin irritation. However, the key word here is “side effect”. If your exfoliant with retinoids or alpha hydroxy acids stings, it means that most probably you need a lower dosage. It will also do its job, but without disrupting your skin’s barrier too much.
By now you must be asking yourself, how you can really know if a product actually works, since you aren’t supposed to feel it working? The only way really, is to give it time to act. There are products that can give you dramatic overnight results, but for the most part, it takes about a month or so for a skincare product to work its magic, if you use it consistently.
You didn’t suddenly wake up with wrinkles or hyper-pigmentation, these problems appeared over a period of time. Why then should you expect a cream or serum to give you immediate results? Just relax and give your skincare, and your skin, time to work and give you a brighter, younger and most importantly, healthier complexion.