4 Sensitive Skin Reactions

Dealing with sensitive skin? There are 4 sensitive skin reactions to watch out for, especially when you are just trying out a new product.

Thinking about trying out some new products that you found? Aside from learning about ingredients in skin care (you can check out our skin care ingredient checker for some help), it’s good to understand some reactions your skin can experience before you decide to try something new. Plus, if you generally suffer from acne, there are ingredients you should avoid. There are 4 sensitive skin reactions you can end up dealing with and here they are…

Irritation / redness

Irritation and thus, redness, is a huge one for me. As soon as I put something on my skin that has fragrance in it, my skin turns bright red. I always try to avoid anything that has fragrance, but sometimes things happen – like when I forget to check a products’ ingredient list. Dumb mistake. This might happen when I want to put some lotion on my hands because they got too dry in the winter. I know better.

Piman Khrutmaan

Dryness

One of the other 4 sensitive skin reactions you might experience is dryness. If your skin starts to crack because it lost all its moisture, this is another sign that you’ve had a reaction to an ingredient in a product. Most likely, the product had some sort of drying ingredient in it like alcohol and too much benzoyl peroxide. Both of these ingredients could cause dryness, especially if you are using them multiple times a day or if the concentration is very high.

Flakiness

In addition to the dryness, you may also experience flakiness where your skin does exactly that – it flakes off. Not only is it dry, but it’s coming off like dandruff on your scalp or dead skin cells just coming off your face.

Breakouts

This one you probably know all too well: breakouts. When you start getting breakouts after using a new product, you know your skin didn’t agree with something. Now you’re dealing with trying to minimize the problem but sometimes you could be making it worse. This happens when you start using a drying ingredient, like benzoyl peroxide, and you use too much of it. It can be a vicious cycle.

Another way you can get breakouts is when you exfoliate. Sometimes, you start getting breakouts after you first start exfoliating. This is frustrating but the reason why this happens is because you are removing dead skin cells and the process could start an acne breakout. This is normal but I understand how you wouldn’t want this. My best advice here is this:

Exfoliating is great for your skin, so you should do it.
Always start slow. By slow, I mean, exfoliate one time per week for the first month, then gradually increase based on your skin type. You can get more info in our FAQ’s page.

So, there you have it: the 4 Sensitive Skin Reactions – know what to look for to decide if a product is right for you.

4 Sensitive Skin Reactions