Acne Alert! Your Bed May Be The Culprit

StyleCaster


You can do everything right: wash your face twice a day, scrub a few times a week, tone, moisturize, apply treatment…but acne still rears its ugly head! There may be just one tiny, missing link in your quest for clear skin: your pillowcase.

As non-skincare-related as your linens seem, they absolutely affect your skin's health: they are what your face is making intimate contact with for eight hours (if you're lucky) each night. When it comes to your appearance, washing your face and washing your sheets are about even.

It is important to wash, or at least change, your pillowcase every week, to prevent your precious skin from rubbing up on dirt, bacteria, dust, oil from your hair, and old make-up. These are the agents that can cause acne despite your best (and expensive) efforts to prevent it with a slew of beauty products.


A few more tips for eliminating acne:

1. Clean Your Cell Phone:

Like our pillowcases, cell phones are seemingly innocent (on the skincare front, at least) objects in our lives, but things that we in fact press up to our face every day. Old makeup, oil from our hands, dust, dirt, and food particles are all furtively camping out in our phones, ready to jump-ship from our keypads to faces. To thwart acne, wipe down your phone every day with an anti-bacterial wipe. It will take one second, and save you time, money, and sanity. While you're at it, give your keyboard a wipe-down, also.

Wet Ones, $1.29, at playtexstore.com


2. Don't Overdo It:

Sure, it is tempting to treat your acne with a near-religious fervor-- but you shouldn't. While you may want to dedicate each evening to scrubbing away problem areas, it is important to give your skin and pores a break. In fact, this mistreatment can dry out your skin, causing your body to over-produce oil to compensate, thus causing even more acne. Take it easy, and limit your exfoliating to just twice a week. (Think of it as the economical approach.)

The Body Shop Seaweed Pore-Cleansing Facial Exfoliator, $14.50, at thebodyshop-usa.com


3. Take Care Of Your Tools:

You don't exactly expect beauty products to threaten our beauty, but that is exactly what they can do if you don't take care of them. Beauty tools come into contact with our face everyday, and when they're not being used, they are busy harboring month-old foundation, weeks worth of blush, and whatever else they find while being cramped in your makeup case. Wash your brushes, sponges, and applicators at least once a week with baby shampoo.

Johnson's Baby Shampoo, $5.49, at drugstore.com


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