If your skin is feeling more irritated than usual, it might not just be the colder weather and dry heat that winter inevitably brings.
If your skin is feeling more irritated than usual, it might not just be the colder weather and dry heat that winter inevitably brings.
Your skin’s acid mantle may be compromised—and that can lead to more inflammation and irritation down the line. Read on to learn how to protect your skin’s acid mantle with MASK Skincare, and a few tried-and-true, easy skin maintenance tips.
What is the acid mantle?
Though it’s a naturally existing invisible layer that each of has on top of our skin, the acid mantle is an unsung hero in skin health.
In short, it’s a layer of our skin’s sebum—or oil—mixed with sweat. A healthy pH for the acid mantle is slightly acidic, and should range from 4.7 and 5.75, according to mindbodygreen.com. If skin’s pH stays within this range, the acid mantle will stay in tact.
What does my skin’s acid mantle do?
While the acid mantle may not sound like a big deal, it actually protects our skin barrier, which guards skin against loss of moisture, and protects us from environmental hazards such as irritants, bacteria, allergens, and more.
When the skin’s acid mantle is disrupted, our barrier function breaks down, often resulting in red, irritated, dry, and reactive skin.
And that may be bad enough, but Dr. Hadley King tells mindbodygreen.com that in addition to how our skin appears on the outside, a compromised barrier function is actually a health risk. A healthy skin barrier “protects us from mechanical injury, low humidity, cold, heat, sun, wind, chemical exposure, bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other pathogens.”
In fact, having poor skin barrier function can lead to inflammation not just topically on the skin, but systemically throughout the body.
How can I protect my acid mantle?
-Avoid harsh products that strip skin
It’s human nature: When our skin is breaking out or feeling oily, we tend to reach for harsh cleansers and astringents to try and “dry up” the oil and acne that has surfaced. But doing so disrupts the pH balance of our acid mantle, and often creates a vicious cycle of skin becoming dry, skin overcompensating by producing more oil to try and moisturize itself, and excess oil resulting in breakouts.
Instead, using gentle products to cleanse and tone skin—products made with moisturizing and anti-inflammatory natural and botanical ingredients, for instance—will help break the perpetual irritation cycle and protect your delicate acid mantle.
-Use a natural serum to help hydrate and balance
Keeping skin hydrated is key in helping to promote and protect a healthy acid mantle. Ingredients like hyaluronic acid, found in MASK Skincare serums, help the skin maintain moisture, protecting the acid mantle and in turn, helping to create a healthy skin barrier function.
Calendula, the foundation of all MASK serums, delivers powerfully effective cannabinoids to skin, helping to calm irritation, reduce inflammation, and regulate oil production to prevent breakouts.
Ingredients rich in antioxidants, like the calendula and green tea extract also found in MASK skin care products, protect skin against barrier-damaging free radicals and pollutants that cause inflammation and disrupt the pH balance of skin’s acid mantle.
-Don’t over-exfoliate
While exfoliation is an important part of keeping skin healthy and helping your skin care products to work to their highest levels of efficacy, overdoing the exfoliation can strip your skin’s acid mantle and result in skin that’s red, flaky, broken out, and inflamed.
Try limiting exfoliation to 1-2 times a week, and be gentle when physically exfoliating your skin. The trick is to softly slough off dead skin cells to reveal soft skin underneath, and to prep skin for maximum product absorption. You can be gentle and effective…we promise!
-Add a CBD MASK to your skincare routine
To boost your skin barrier function and keep your acid mantle operating at full capacity, consider adding MASK Skincare sheet masks to your natural skincare regimen.
With natural and botanical ingredients that mimic those found in MASK face serums, these sheet masks are a great way to supercharge your skincare routine while delivering healing and nourishing ingredients that care for and support skin’s acid mantle and skin barrier function.
With MASK Skincare promoting a healthy acid mantle, your skin can feel, look, and function at its best—naturally.