Microdermabrasion is nothing new. I personally offered this service to my clients up until about 8 years ago. Why did I stop? Because I learned better.
This popular treatment literally scrubs away your stratum corneum (top layer of skin!) This can cause significant inflammation and generates free radicals that can damage the skin and reduce antioxidants. This type of exfoliation can cause a loss in the ability of the skin to repair itself! Especially with the raise in skin cancer, we must be careful about how many free radicals we expose our skin to.
Also, you cannot “scrub off” dry skin. In fact just the opposite happens. Microdermabrasion dehydrates the skin by removing much needed lipids and your barrier! By removing the skin’s barrier, we actually ALLOW moisture to leave the skin.
I totally get why people like the idea of scrubs in various forms…we look at dry scaly skin and think that we can just scrub it off. But understand that dry, scaly skin is a result of a damaged barrier, so damaging it further by scrubbing it is a bad idea. This is WHY we have become so addicted to the need to exfoliate and moisturize! It’s a vicious cycle and creates a lot of inflammation (which gives a temporary plumping effect…a very misleading side effect) and once that swelling goes down, your skin will look worse not better. What to do instead? You want to repair your skin in ways that are healthy and nourishing. You want to work WITH your skin, not against it. First step, stop exfoliating.
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