Pay Attention!
You should always pay attention to something… You should pay attention to cars when crossing a street, to angry dogs when they bark and seem to want to attack you and so on. But you should as well pay attention to several things with which your skin interacts while physical exercising. It could be your clothes, or your skin lotion that may trigger your acne’s growing more severe, but you may mistaken very often this cause with the most obvious thing you make, the physical effort.
But we’ve showed in the previous post that it is not the physical exercise that causes acne or acne breakouts. And we also promised a list of things to which you should pay attention before, when and after exercising.
So these things are:
• Don’t Wear Make-up!
You should always pay attention to this aspect and you should try to wear as little make-up as possible when exercising. You should not use either oil-free or non-comedogenic (non-pore-clogging) cosmetics, as they have the ability to clog your skin’s pores if worn during heavy physical exercise. You must as well wash as soon as possible, after you have done your working out.
• Wear Sunscreen, if Going Outdoors!
If you’re doing your physical exercises outdoors, you definitely must wear sunscreen. Although it has apparently a good result against acne, the sunlight is in fact a real enemy for your skin condition.
Studies show that prolonged exposure to sunlight promotes comedones or clogged pores, as much as sun damage. So, you must protect your skin and you should be also aware of the fact that there are some kinds of acne medication that make the skin even more sensitive to sunlight and in these cases a sunscreen is even more important.
When you choose a sunscreen, you should look for products that are oil-free and have also a protection factor of at least SPF 15 for both UVB and UVA rays. After you’re done with you exercises, you should wash immediately your skin because, similar to make-up, sunscreen could travel across your skin’s surface and lodge in the pores.
• Change Your Wet Clothes!
Although this seems to be a very old piece of advice, it is still true: you should not wear the wet clothes in which you made physical exercises, after you’ve finished training. No matter how you train yourself – treadmill, tennis court, trail or anywhere else – you should not sit around in your sweaty clothes or wet bathing suit after you’re done.
You should shower off immediately and change into dry clothes before going home. If this is not possible, you should at least change into dry clothes and wipe down as well as you can. When you towel the sweat off your face, you should always use a clean towel and rather blot gently than wipe. If you wipe vigorously, you will drive the make-up or sunscreen deeper into your skin’s pores and this is not a good thing.
So, these are three things to which you should pay attention. Although they don’t seem to be major secrets, most of us usually don’t take them seriously. And the stake is our skin’s health, and this makes them important…