Exfoliants 101
Did you know that young, healthy skin naturally sheds built-up dead skin each day? However, with age and environmental damage such as unprotected sun exposure, your skin’s natural ability to exfoliate can become faulty.
That’s why gentle exfoliants are the most skin-transforming step in any skincare routine. It helps to safely remove dead cells from the surface of your skin, allowing radiant new skin to shine through for a healthy and youthful glow.
Practising a good skincare routine, especially one that includes exfoliation, can help you maintain healthy skin no matter your age.
Read on to learn more about how and why you should use exfoliants, and the ways they can improve your overall skin appearance.
Why Do I Need to Exfoliate?
There are two key reasons why you should exfoliate as part of your regular skincare routine:
- To help your skin remove excess dead skin cells
- To reveal the clear, renewed, smoother, and younger-looking skin underneath
Built-up skin cells can cause dry skin, dullness, clogged pores, breakouts, and more, which is why it’s so important to renew your skin by exfoliating.
Simply put, a skin-softening (not abrasive) exfoliator helps encourage your skin to work the way it did before age and sun damage slowed down your skin’s natural rejuvenating abilities.
However, it’s important to use a gentle exfoliant that can remove those built-up skin cells without being too harsh, as this might cause damage to your skin instead.
Types of Exfoliants
There are various types of exfoliants available on the market, each of which has its own benefits.
Scrubs are a type of physical exfoliant that relies on the grittiness or texture of its ingredients to manually exfoliate your skin. While they can leave your skin feeling soft immediately after application and rinsing, scrubs that are too rough and abrasive can cause tiny micro-tears that aggravate your skin. Long-term use of harsh scrubs can result in damage to your skin barrier, which may lead to skin dryness and other issues.
Leave-on exfoliants are typically chemical-based, meaning their ingredients react chemically with your skin to exfoliate your pores and remove dead skin cells. The two most common ingredients used in leave-on exfoliators are alpha hydroxy acid (AHA) and beta hydroxy acid (BHA), which can have additional benefits such as clearing clogged pores, reducing visible pore size, and anti-aging effects.
There’s a time and place to use gentle scrubs or leave-on exfoliants. However, AHA and BHA exfoliants are a safer alternative to physical exfoliants as they don’t risk aggravating your skin when used properly.
Which Exfoliant is Best for You?
Both BHA and AHA exfoliants work to diminish the appearance of wrinkles and improve the look of plumpness and firmness. However, they’re suited to different skin types and can have different additional benefits.
So between BHA and AHA exfoliants , which one is best suited for your skincare routine?
BHA (Salicylic acid) is:
- Preferred for oily skin
- Able to relieve clogged pores and white bumps
- Skin-calming and hydrating
AHA (Glycolic acid and lactic acid) is:
- Preferred for dry skin
- Able to exfoliate the surface of the skin
- Able to improve your skin’s moisture content for extra smoothness
Shop our best-selling AHA and BHA exfoliants on Paula’s Choice Singapore.
