A huge beauty trend that originated in Korea has taken off with slugging skincare. What it involves is locking in your clean, moisturized face with a heavy duty occlusive such as Vaseline, Aquaphor or CeraVe that has a lot of refined petroleum in their formulas before bedtime. The idea is that adding the final step of an occlusive will provide a protective barrier that will help the second stage of your moisturizer or anti-aging product to benefit more from the heat of your skin as well as that barrier to seal in those nourishing ingredients. In theory, this sounds like a wonderful solution. However, there are problems with this technique that you may want to consider first.
To begin with, creating a waterproof seal with an occlusive will shield in your moisturizer or anti-aging product but also trap dirt and toxins at the same time. So what is wrong with that you ask because you applied the products correctly to a clean face? Yet, there could be tiny of traces of makeup or dirt still imbedded in your pores that could fester beneath this barrier and later cause the skin to breakout.
You also may be under the impression that all petroleum products are the same. Again, you would be mistaken because there is unrefined petroleum used in some products and refined petroleum that is the purer form by seeing USP grade petroleum on the label. The problem is the unrefined petroleum doesn’t go through the vigorous tests for contaminants and has been linked to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) suspected of causing cancer. This is why it always pays to read the ingredients on your beauty products.
If you have an acne problem or an oily complexion, then you want to think carefully about slugging skincare. The reason this is a bad move is because you are locking in oils that could clog pores since your skin won’t be able to breathe beneath that barrier. Instead of helping your skin, you could actually be aggravating it. New or worse skin eruptions could emerge by the time you wake up.
This technique also is messy and uncomfortable when sleeping on a greasy pillowcase. If you don’t mind that slick, gooey feel against your cheeks if you’re a side sleeper or the fact that your hair could end up greasy by morning, then you may not have a problem with this skin care ritual. Besides, you also need to change your pillowcase each time that you are slugging and this means more laundry to do, which is another pitfall of this technique in my opinion.
If you liked what you saw here, I hope that you will want to follow my social media and subscribe. You can subscribe my email by going to my homepage right sidebar and adding your email address in the box form that you will find there. You can also subscribe through one of my feeds to keep us with all the new content.
