Cleansing is the alpha and omega of skin care

The absolute beginning and end of proper skin care, whether you are an adolescent, a senior or anywhere in between, is cleansing. I doubt anyone will disagree with this statement – cleaning off the grime, makeup and other insults we offer our largest organ every day is key to having healthy, glowing skin. The question is, what should we use to perform this ritual?

The gentlest way is to use nothing but water and a microfibre cloth, but you will only clean the surface. The harshest is to use hand soap – guaranteed to strip off everything, including beneficial skin oils that protect your skin naturally. There are literally hundreds of products somewhere in between. How to choose?

One criterion would be to look at the ingredients of your facial cleanser and see how many of them you can pronounce. This is no different from choosing what to eat, and is indeed closely related. What is absorbed through our skin is second only to what we put in our mouths in terms of toxic load on our bodies. So, what’s in your typical drugstore skin cleanser?

Here’s a funny thing. I went to Neutrogena’s website, and it doesn’t tell you what the ingredients are, despite claiming that “transparency is at the heart of Neutrogena Naturals.” There’s a tab for the ingredients (about six clicks deep in the site), but it doesn’t work.

So I went to Burts Bees. Here’s the ingredient list for their Radiance Facial Cleanser, my favourite for years and years :

Ingredients: water, decyl glucoside, carthamus tinctorius (safflower) oleosomes, sodium cocoyl hydrolyzed soy protein, glycerin, royal jelly, simmondsia chinensis (jojoba) oil, hydrogenated jojoba oil,, vaccinium myrtillus (bilberry) extract, saccharum officinarm (sugar cane) extract, acer saccharinum (sugar maple) extract, citrus aurantium dulcis (orange) fruit extract, citrus medica, limonum (lemon) extract, fragrance, glucose, xanthan gum, citric acid, sodium chloride,, lactoperoxidase, glucose oxidase

Note the first ingredient. Otherwise it looks pretty good. But here’s my friend Frost from BlackBox Cosmetics. Click on the picture to read.

Click on the picture to read

You’ll notice some similarities in the ingredients – we aren’t inventing the wheel here, after all. But the really important difference is in the first one. No water in this baby – it’s based on aloe. It’s so concentrated, a drop or two is all you need to wash your face, so it lasts a long time. Follow it up with Infusion AM or Defiance PM to restore any moisture you removed. Feels so good. I’ll be talking about those guys at a later date.

Want to try it out for yourself? If you are local to me, you can borrow The Bag for a few days, and try out the full kit at your leisure. If you aren’t, I’ll be happy to send you some samples in the mail.

Borrow a full-sized Restoration Kit for a few days!

Just drop me a line.

Interested in getting these products at wholesale? Talk to me about becoming an ISA.