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Does a Change in Weather Mean a Change in Skincare ?



This is SO typical me.  Yes, it’s confession time. 

About 5 weeks ago I spilled water on my modem.  It’s just for the phone.  The router for the internet was underneath and suffered no damage.  I unhooked the phone modem to air it out, and after shaking it out a bit and seeing no droplets, plugged it back in and went about my day.  

After an hour or so, I smelled something funny.  I ignored it because it was so damp outside, I thought maybe something from coming from outside, and my salon was so filled with the beautiful smells of aromatherapy, I thought nothing of it. 



When the day was almost over, I came out of my last facial and saw smoke coming from the modem.  OK !  Unplugged it right away, put it aside and thought, well, I never really answer the phone anyway, so I’ll just call Comcast when I have time and they’ll bring over a new modem.  I do pretty much everything by email, and even encourage my clients on my web site and voice mail to email for a faster response. Not that I discourage phone calls, it's just I'm either at my computer or with a client all day long.  As long as I can call from my cell for messages, what’s the harm?  

Yeah. That was 6 weeks ago.  I finally called Comcast yesterday.  “You pay a monthly equipment fee, you know.”  Oh.  *sigh* oy vey (face meet palm).

So yes, I do a WHOLE lot by email.  Half of my professional life is spent online as a Skincare Coach specializing in Adult Acne and Sensitivity.  My service is even called Eval by Email®.  That is how I notice so profoundly when I get more emails asking a specific question at any time of the year, and how it can be enough to write an entire blog post about it.


Question:  Now that it’s getting into summer, do I have to change any of my products?


Before I answer yes or no, I have to ask the client a few questions :
  • Do you tend to get more oily in the summer?
  • Do you work out more in the summer, or do you just change venue like being outside more?
  • Do you tend to break out more in the summer (which is not a no-brainer, since there are people, like me, who actually break out less in the summer and more in the winter due to more frequent washing plus higher humidity).

There are skincare experts who say unequivocally, yes, you need to change your skincare routine each season, but I don’t believe that’s necessarily true.  So how do you know if you should, and if you should, what do you need to change ?



Cleanser
There is one simple way that I can tell what cleanser to recommend to anyone at any given time : 

After washing in the morning, what time of day do you start to see shine or oiliness on your face? 

The shorter the wait time, the stronger the cleanser has to be (without stripping, of course), the longer the wait time the more likely the person needs a lotion cleanser rather than a gel one.  

However, I also have to take into account exactly how much oiliness they experience.  For instance, if they get just a little oily but start to experience this early in the day, this tells me their skin is actually extremely dehydrated, and the source of their breakouts could be backed-up oil and dead skin cells creating impactions that have to be loosened up by increased hydration in their skincare.  

But when the wait time changes, this is still how we gauge what cleanser you need at any given time.

In the summertime, just about everyone with oily skin experiences an increase in oil production.  Heat, heightened activity level, heightened humidity level, all these can make oily skin feel far more uncomfortable than it does in wintertime.  But we cannot assume that this means an increase in breakouts.  It can, but sometimes it doesn’t.  

I always had much better skin in the summer because I was more likely to wash my face consistently, and I would take the oil of my skin mid afternoon and literally wipe it all over my face with clean hands.  
Here’s a video of exactly how I did that!

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So, it can be necessary for someone with very oily skin to change their cleanser for summer to something even stronger, and for someone with much less oil to have to change from a lotion cleanser used in the winter to a gentle gel cleanser.  Let’s put it this way – I provide samples for a reason. ðŸ˜Š  But having said that, I do have many clients who use the same cleanser throughout the year.


Lotion
Whether someone changes from an SPF of 15 in the winter to and SPF of 30 in the summer all depends on outdoor activity level only, so I actually won’t touch on that, simply because the hydration and moisturization levels of the SPF lotions I carry in my web store are right for all seasons. 

So, I’d rather talk about nighttime lotions, since what we’re really concerned with is whether the skin is getting enough hydration, whether the skin needs barrier repair and/or reduction of inflammation to heal that particular acne problem.  Anti-aging needs will have to be taken into account with Adult Acne as well.

When it comes to oily skin, the real difference between a lotion that will be productive and one that will bring disadvantage will be how much it hydrates vs. how much it lubricates.  Sometimes even an acne skin will need to have lipids and fats replaced that have been lost due to aging and sun damage.  That's something that has to be determined with individual skincare coaching.

It can also be a matter of “heavy” vs. “light”, though too often that doesn't describe the skin's needs very well.  There are some really cool products and routines that can actually help the skin reduce its oil production over time while increasing hydration.  This is one of the main strategies in my method of Adult Acne treatment!

So how do you know if you need to switch?  We can go back to the question of what time of day your skin starts to get oily after washing in the morning.  We not only have to determine how oily your skin is but how dehydrated it is as well.  Do we need to take the oil level down and do we need to bring the hydration level up?  Let's figure that out together!


Fill out my Eval by Email® Online Skincare Consultation form designed for Adults 24+ living anywhere in the USA !


Want to get 10% off your purchase at my webstore? Pin this blog post to any one of your Pinterest boards by pinning any one of the photos above, and email the link from your board of the pinned post to skin911@daniela.com along with a question about your adult acne, Rosacea or sensitivity problem. You will get a personalized discount code along with a detailed answer to your question.  Up to three codes per person, with three different pins from different posts on my blog. 
So explore away and Happy Pinning!

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