How to prevent and help a festive breakout.
Christmas is a time of the year for a lot of things. It’s a time for giving, a time for getting, and a time for eating and drinking pretty much everything in sight. December is a time for complete indulgence. Unfortunately, with that indulgence comes inevitable skin related consequences. With plans throughout the whole month and every social event becoming an occasion to drink and stay out late, our skin (and sometimes our head) is the one thing that tends to suffer.
A combination of more-than-normal-amounts of sugary foods and drinks with the winter weather in general can cause havoc for our precious cheeks. We look into how you can prevent a festive breakout from happening and what to do when they occur at the most inconvenient of times.
Why do we get festive breakouts?
There are a few reasons why our skin might betray us over the festive season. A whole combination of factors that we probably wouldn’t even think twice about if it wasn’t for our skin making a big deal. The run up to Christmas can be, while mostly enjoyable, a little bit stressful. Whether you’re hosting and are worried about getting everything together in time, or if you’re financial situation has meant that the majority of your money has been spent on gifts and you’re struggling to survive on the remainder of it. For whatever reason you might be feeling the pressure, no matter how hard you try to cover it up, your skin is probably exposing you.
Along with that comes the imminent issue of cold weather. It’s unavoidable, but there are ways you can help and protect your skin from the cold weather. We’ll come onto that later. Other factors might include the extra sugary festive cocktails that you bought mainly to show off on your Instagram story, or the inevitable enjoyment of Christmas food (and lots of it). We already know what alcohol and sugar can do to our skin, so we can only
While we’re out and revelling in these festive treats, the chances are that we’ve dolled ourselves up more than usual, popped on a little extra makeup and tried out that new contouring technique that we watched on YouTube last week. The point is, we socialise more which tends to mean that we put more makeup on which can lead to clogged pores (ESP. if we forget to take our makeup off after a night out – eek), and can result in us breaking out.
How to prevent one.
There are in fact ways to prevent a winter breakout without cutting out the treats we love to spoil ourselves with and it mainly relies on your skincare routine. It might be tempting to go a bit OTT the minute the cold weather hits and of course it’s important that we do switch up our skincare products and regimes to fulfils our skin’s winter needs, but it’s also imperative that we don’t do anything so drastic that we could damage our skin.
This means not over exfoliating or over cleansing. It can be easy to assume that exfoliating a lot is what we need to be doing because our skin is dry or oily. However, the reason that our face, especially areas like the T-zone can be oily or flaky due to the fact that it’s dehydrated. Extra cleansing and exfoliation will only add to the issue.
You need to develop a good skincare routine that works well for you and particularly takes care of your skin at night. The nighttime is when our skin works the hardest to recover itself from the day before, so if you’ve got a good selection of products on your face before you go to bed, they’ll generally be absorbed and used better than during the day.
What to do if you can’t stop it.
Unfortunately, we can’t always get there before the breakout does. They always happen at the worst time (probably on Christmas Eve when you’re preparing to see the entirety of your extended family the following day), and we just have to make the best out of a bad situation. This means that while we can’t stop the blemishes that have already appeared, but we can help them by keeping them clean, hydrated and healthy.
In order to do this, ensure you cleanse properly to get all the leftover makeup and dirt from every crease of your skin. This will prevent any other blemishes from appearing, but just be careful not to overdo it or you could end up stripping your skin of it’s natural oils, which may cause an overproduction of oil in your pores, ultimately leading to the possibility of a continued breakout.
You also need to make sure that you’re using toner and your normal serums, oils and moisturisers. Although it might be tempting because you’ll be willing to try anything to vanish the impurities on your skin, it’s probably not the best time to try something new. On the off chance that it reacts badly with your skin, any skin issues you’re having will essentially worsen.
We hope that you don’t need to use this advice over the Christmas holidays, but if you do we hope it helps. If you have any of your own tips on how to rid yourself of any seasonal skin issues, please let us know in the comments!
Feature image: The Independent
