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Why City Living Might Be Affecting Your Complexion
Although city living has its perks, it’s not doing your skin any favors. With a growing body of research pointing to how living in a city can damage the skin, more and more people are now taking measures to city-proof their complexion.
What, exactly, is your city lifestyle doing to your skin and, most importantly, what should you be doing to get your skin glowing once again? Keep reading as OROGOLD explains.
Cities = Pollution
While this may not apply to every single city in the world, the vast majority of them are polluted to a level that would be deemed unsafe by the World Health Organization. Not only does this have serious implications for human health, but air pollution significantly harms the skin, too. Here’s how:
- Pollution triggers an inflammatory response in the skin. This causes inflammation, irritation, and sensitivities, while also exacerbating inflammatory skin conditions, such as acne and eczema.
- Pollutants, from dust to particulate matter, can quickly build up on the skin. They soon enter the pores, where they mix with sebum and dead cells to create blockages that lead to acne breakouts.
- Exposure to pollution takes a major toll on the skin’s natural protective barrier. Once this barrier is damaged, which can happen quickly in a polluted environment, your skin will struggle with moisture retention and environmental defense.
- The oxidative stress that pollution causes in the skin, combined with how pollutants break down the skin’s proteins and lipids, accelerates the skin aging process. Numerous studies back this up, showing that city dwellers tend to experience fine lines and wrinkles much earlier in life than those living in less polluted areas.
- The oxidative stress caused by pollution also interferes with melanin production, which is the pigment that gives your skin its color. The result of this is an increase in dark spots and discoloration.
- Pollution increases how sensitive the skin is to UV rays. This means that living in a city could leave your skin more susceptible to sun damage.
- Pollutants deplete the antioxidants in the skin. This means that your skin is even less capable of defending itself against all of the other damage that pollution causes.
Add in Stress and Blue Light Damage
If the skin problems caused by pollution weren’t bad enough, there are other ways in which city living could also be affecting your complexion. Stress, for example, tends to be much more prevalent among city dwellers. The noise, pollution, over-crowding, higher cost of living, and higher crime rates have been linked to mental health problems, including stress, anxiety, and depression.
This has a knock-on effect on the complexion. Stress triggers the release of cortisol, aka the stress hormone. Like pollution, this hormone damages the skin’s proteins, triggers inflammation, and interferes with sebum regulation.
Your exposure to blue light will also be much higher if you live in a city. With blue light being emitted by the types of lights used in streetlights, commercial lighting, digital screens, and indoor lighting, it’s almost impossible to get away from it in a city. Why does this matter? Because blue light exposure has been shown to accelerate the skin aging process, cause hyperpigmentation, and even damage skin cells at DNA level.
City-Proofing Your Complexion
Although many aspects of city living may be disastrous for your skin, there are a few steps that you can take to city-proof your complexion:
Cleanse Thoroughly at the End of Each Day
Over the course of a single day in a city, your skin will end up covered in pollutants. Not only will these clog up your pores, but they also trigger oxidative stress in the skin. The longer they’re allowed to linger, the more damage they’ll cause. This is why it’s important to thoroughly cleanse your skin at the end of each day to ensure that you’re going to bed with pollutant-free skin.
If you live in a heavily polluted city, you may want to consider double cleansing. This is as simple as it sounds – cleansing your skin twice instead of once. The key to this, however, is using two different types of cleansers. The first is an oil-based cleanser – they do a great job of tackling oil-based impurities. This is followed by a water-based cleanser, like the OROGOLD 24K Mousse Cleanser. This will remove any remnants left behind by your oil-based cleanser while also sweeping away water-based pollutants. The result is a cleanse that pretty much guarantees that no pollutants have been left behind.
Layer on the Antioxidants
Every skincare routine should contain plenty of antioxidants, but this becomes even more important if you live in a city. Not only does pollution and blue light damage sap away your skin’s antioxidant reserves, but antioxidants are essential if you want to counter the appearance of the oxidative damage caused by city living.
Which antioxidants should you be using? Vitamin C is famous for being one of the best. It neutralizes the visibility of free radical damage, keeps the skin barrier feeling supported, and evens out the look of the skin. This single ingredient is able to counter many of the visible skin concerns exacerbated by living in a city.
Most people turn to vitamin C serums for this, with serums known for having high absorption rates. Most vitamin C serums, including the OROGOLD 24K Vitamin C Booster Facial Serum, combine vitamin C with other antioxidants. This enhances the visible effects of vitamin C.
If the city you live in is extremely polluted, we’d recommend taking things further and adding vitamin C to other stages of your skincare routine. With the OROGOLD Vitamin C Collection, you’ll be able to cleanse and moisturize with the ingredient too!
Regularly Exfoliate
We’ve already talked about the importance of cleansing, but exfoliation is just as crucial. Although this isn’t something that you should be doing daily, exfoliating your skin ensures that your pores remain clear and clog-free. It will prevent any pollutants that have made their way into your pores from causing deeper damage.
While there are plenty of exfoliators out there to choose from, we’d recommend picking a formula that can also help with the other complexion concerns that come from city living, such as the OROGOLD 24K Multi-Vitamin Deep Peeling + Mandelic Acid. With a combination of both physical and chemical exfoliants, it effectively removes impurities from the pores. Meanwhile, it also gives your skin some extra antioxidants with an infusion of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and green tea extract. This means that in addition to exfoliating your skin, it will also help to fight the appearance of free radical damage while giving your skin a brighter and more radiant finish.
Nurture Your Skin Barrier
Pretty much every aspect of city living is unkind to your skin barrier, making it important to give this layer of skin some extra TLC. Your skin barrier performs some crucial roles, such as keeping moisture locked into your skin and preventing impurities from entering the deeper layers of your skin. Once your skin barrier is compromised, pollutants will have an easier time making their way into your skin, which then makes that damage even worse.
One way to keep your skin barrier feeling strong and resilient is by moisturizing it. A moisturizer acts in a similar way to your skin’s barrier. It forms an additional barrier over your natural one that seals in moisture and serves as an additional layer of defense against environmental aggressors.
Certain skincare ingredients, such as peptides, sodium hyaluronate, and plant oils, are known for leaving the skin barrier feeling better supported. So, try to find a moisturizer that incorporates these barrier-loving ingredients, just like the OROGOLD 24K Nano Day Recovery does. Not only will this cream keep your skin barrier feeling safe and intact, but it will also give your skin’s hydration levels a big boost while treating your skin to some powerful antioxidants.
Pamper and Purge With a Mask
When it comes to keeping your skin pollutant-free, regular cleansing and exfoliating are undeniably the best methods. However, some face masks can have a purging effect on the complexion too, making it worth adding one of these formulas to your skincare routine. As an added bonus, some face masks also feel incredibly soothing and relaxing when applied. A masking session at the end of a long day can help to relieve some of the stress that comes from city life.
The OROGOLD 24K Advanced Facial Mask does this particularly well. It contains two types of clay, kaolin and bentonite, with clay loved for how it purifies the complexion. The Dead Sea mud in this formula has similar effects, while the numerous hydrating ingredients in this mask prevent the skin from drying out while the other ingredients work their magic.
The OROGOLD 24K Termica Energizing Mask is another clay-based mask worth knowing about. This one contains thermal catalysts that cause the mask to heat up as it’s applied to the skin. This leaves the pores feeling more relaxed and elastic, enhancing the mask’s purging effect on the complexion.
Consider Your Commute
City life often comes with a rush hour commute, which is when pollution levels tend to be at their highest. This means that you could end up exposing your skin to severe amounts of pollution first thing in the morning, which then gives those pollutants all day to cause havoc before they’re finally cleansed away.
What can you do about this? Put together a quick post-commute skincare routine, such as cleansing your skin and then moisturizing once you get to work. Keeping some hand sanitizer with you at all times can be helpful too. Keeping your hands clean will save you from transferring pollutants, along with other impurities, from your hands to your skin each time you touch your face.
Summary
There’s no getting away from the fact that living in a city isn’t doing your complexion any favors. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to pack up for the country anytime soon! Instead, simply keep your city life in mind when putting together your skincare routine. Ensure that your routine caters to the high levels of pollution and free radical damage your skin will be dealing with, and you’ll soon figure out how to maintain your complexion’s glow.
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