The Skin Nerd: Does all of our skincare routines make skin lazy?

In the realm of beauty, there are both short term fixes and long term treatments for essentially any concern you may have. You apply your hyaluronic acid to plump and hydrate, your lactic acid to prompt your skin to exfoliate itself, your ceramides and facial oils to boost your skin’s barrier and so on.

Being a person who prefers preventative measures to corrective fire-fighting, I stand by this as an ideal form of a skincare routine. However, the question is raised by experts time and time again: is do-it-all skincare causing our skin to become lazy?

My motto is that the skin is an organ. As an organ the skin does its best to look after itself, carrying out a daily regimen of hydrating itself, nourishing and exfoliating itself without you lifting a finger. My theory would be that in the change of our lifestyles and the environment through the ages, such as pollution, changing climates, processed diets, wearing makeup and the damage to the ozone layer, our skin hasn’t been able to adjust fast enough.

There is little we can do to tackle all of this. We can eat a plant-based, nutrient-rich diet but we can’t stay inside to avoid pollution, nor, unfortunately, can we repair the damage done to our planet. Where skin hasn’t evolved, skincare has.

Sluggish skin proliferation (the official nerdie terminology for its own exfoliation process) has led to everyone and their aunt having exfoliating acids and enzymes in their cupboard, whether they know it or not — and that’s just one example.

The crux of the matter is that, regardless of extrinsic factors, not everyone needs a lot of exfoliation, a brightening serum and a moisturiser. Anyone with skin that isn’t actively dry (as in, not producing enough sebum due to the ageing process, genetic factors or medical reasons) probably doesn’t actually need a moisturiser and oilier, congestion-prone skin types will find that a heavy moisturiser could actually break them out and do more harm than good.

Beauty websites are obsessed with testing what happens to people’s skin when they go one week without their skincare or their moisturiser, for example, and sometimes the result is their skin improves. The conclusion shouldn’t be that we don’t need skincare - it should be more along the lines of we don’t need the wrong skincare, and that skincare when used correctly allows us to give our skin what it’s lacking.

If you’ve been using the same routine for months or years and your skin is suffering from more breakouts, more dehydration or any other concern, the likelihood is that what you’re using isn’t for you.

Even with this in mind, 99.9% of skincare ingredients only have day in day out benefits with continued,persistent, religious use. Case in point: salicylic acid. Salicylic acid does not necessarily work to correct the skin over time.

It works to improve the skin only when you’re using it. Does our skin become a little bit reliant on the exfoliating, sebum-dissolving ingredient to control oil and spots? Absolutely - but that’s just how salicylic acid (and other exfoliating acids) work.

To conclude, no, your skincare isn’t making your skin lazy — but if your skin isn’t hydrating itself without a super heavy cream, or barely exfoliates itself no matter how hard you try, it’s time to take a look at what you’re using, your diet, your hydration levels and other factors that could be contributing to it.

And by the way, the one thing that your skin definitely can’t do for you, no matter what your skin tone is or how you “do go very brown in the sun”, is fully protect itself from UV rays - so SPF every single day is entirely necessary.

Nerdie Pick

Evolve Beauty Gentle Cleansing Melt (120ml, €26.00, available on evolvebeauty.co.uk or from Arnotts, Dublin)

If you like an oily, emulsifying pre-cleanse, you will be a fan of the Evolve Beauty Gentle Cleansing Melt. This rich balm uses nourishing baobab oil which is rich in antioxidants and turns milky when gently massaged into your visage.

What I love about Evolve Beauty is the fact that the products are handmade in small batches in London, they’re actively eco-friendly and still incredibly effective, full of super antioxidant-rich and fatty acid-rich ingredients.