When to Quit Your Skin Care Routine

As you know, a daily skin routine is a great way ensure your skin’s natural, everyday, overall health – provided it works, that is.

Not all skin care routines or their products are created equal. All the necessary cleansing, nourishing, and protecting steps – not just about protection against excess sun exposure – should be present in every skin care routine. These products need to work together as an effective routine and on their own as well. Finally, they should work harmoniously in tandem with your skin’s natural processes.

When you put it the time, effort, and work, but when your skin care routine is not showing the expected results, there should be a “breaking” point where you move on and cut your losses.

Breakouts

As we mentioned in our discussion of purging, no skin care product should make your skin worse on its own. However, some products have accelerating agents that may speed up your natural cycle and cause breakouts to occur all at once and faster (these would have happened anyway but not all at once).

If you are experiencing an usually high amount of breakouts not tied to specific ingredients meant to speed up your skin’s natural renewal process, you should probably reduce the level of accelerating agents or stimuli. Otherwise, you may want to quit or rethink your new regimen. If you are still experiencing regular breakouts well after a full cycle of your skin’s natural renewal process (typically one to two months), there’s something about your new routine or products used that requires an adjustment as it may be hurting and not helping your skin.

Bad Reactions

Skin care is designed to improve your skin, so if it’s making it consistently worse and causing you to have a reaction, it likely never will. Any negative reactions to products should be taken seriously and navigated very carefully. Consult a dermatologist or skin care professional if you are unsure about what’s causing any adverse reactions.

Are You Doing Everything Else Right?

No skin care routine or product is a magic cure all. If you are living unhealthy, other outside factors can exacerbate your problems. If you are not sleeping enough, eating badly, being medicated, smoking, not hydrating properly, or doing many other bad habits, your skin care is probably only one of many problems. However, if you are living a fairly balanced life in tandem with your new skin care routine and continuing to experience negative reactions, it might just not be working for you.

While all skin is essentially the same, factors like age, health, other conditions, environment, stress, etc. can contribute to different dynamics in you that will affect your overall skin health in addition to introducing new products into your life.

Consistency and maintaining your skin care routine on a regular, daily basis is essential to helping your skin adjust to any routine to bring about positive, long lasting results.

How Long Does it Take for Skin Care Products to Work?

Keep it mind, the skin’s natural turnover process is about one month as mentioned earlier. If you don’t start to notice any improvement compared to before you started after 6-8 weeks, you may want to rethink things. Depending on your skin’s history, more time may or may not lead to the improvement expected. When the skin naturally renews itself, it’s a good opportunity to mark and judge what the initial results are of any new skin care regimen. Based on this, you will hopefully have the visual results to decide for yourself. Make sure to take close-up photos of yourself right before you start using any new product to make any comparison easier.

Like any endeavor, when you don’t feel you are getting enough of the intended results compared to the time, effort, and resources you are putting forth, then it may be time to quit. Taking care of your skin can be time consuming. That’s why we recommend regular but simple systems that show gradual but identifiable results long term. Be skeptical and weary of any product that assures quick or life-changing results. Always know what you are using and putting into or onto your body. Be patient with results but know when something isn’t working and stop.