Good deeds or sins?

You clean your face, apply tonic, cream, then once or twice a week you have yourself a facial mask. You wash your hair, you dry it, then you style it. You wash your body, shave, apply a lotion. All these cleansing and beauty rituals are part of your daily routine and you wouldn’t dream changing any of them. But are you sure you are doing the correct things or do you just think so? Here are some of the most common beauty sins we make.

Too much moisturizer: if you have a dry skin and you want it smooth and silky, applying heavy layers of moisturizer won’t help you. Your skin will only absorb the first layer of cream you apply, the other layers won’t penetrate deeper or improve the cream’s efficiency, they will only clog the pores, causing breakouts and even dermatitis. Just apply your moisturizer once or twice a day at max, ideally after you’ve bathed or showered. Make sure your moisturizer is adequate for your skin type.

Too hot for hair: you’ve just washed your hair and you want to dry it as fast as possible so you maximize the power on your hairdryer. Wrong. Drying your hair for ten minutes at a top heat level will deteriorate your hair, leaving you with split ends, dry hair and possibly irritated scalp. If it burns your hand when you hold it 4-5 inches from it then the heat is too much for you. Set your hairdryer at a medium level and use it for 20 minutes instead. It will take longer, but you won’t have as many bad hair days as before.

Body scrub for face: your skin is in dire need of an exfoliation so you just use the same exfoliant you do on your body. Huge mistake. Your face skin is very delicate compared to that of your body. The use of an aggressive exfoliant, even a home-made one, like a sugar or salt based exfoliant, will irritate your skin and destroy the very fragile capillaries underneath it. In time your skin will become more and more sensitive.

Conditioner all over: your hair is out of volume and shape. Ask yourself: do you apply the conditioner the full length of your hair? Because this is your mistake. Your roots don’t need the conditioner because we are talking about young, healthy hair here. It is your dry hair at the end and the split ends that really need the extra care your conditioner provides.

Forget the neck: the neck is one of the first body parts on which the aging signs appear. If you regularly forget about it, you may have a youthful complexion, but your neck will reveal your true age. Whenever you take care of your complexion, always include the neck in your treatment whether it’s a tonic, a moisturizer, a face mask.

Washing face before hair in shower: this one may come as a surprise to you, but dr. Oz says to always wash your face after you’ve washed your hair. This way you will wash away all the shampoo residues that have dripped onto your face. These residues may in fact be the cause of your breakouts, dry skin, sensitive skin, prematurely aging skin.

Tell us: are you guilty of these sins?