Scrubs rock. You can moisturize, you can tone, and you can wash with as many gentle cleansers as you want. But if you really want to get into the elbows and grease parts of getting the gunk out of your face, you have to call in a scrub.
Why? Because scrubs are like a universal truth of skin experts, kind of like gravity is to physicists. “Are you using a weekly scrub or exfoliator?” a concerned facialist will ask me seconds after turning the magnifying light on my skin. Years of brightly-lit shaming by skin experts finally moved me to pick up my first scrub a few years ago. Now I am a scrub-a-holic, and my skin has never looked better.
We are covered in dead skin cells – in fact, 90 percent of the dust in our home is our dead skin flying around. The key to healthy, smooth skin is to literally scrub off the dead skin cells. This allows for smooth skin and brighter appearance, as your healthy skin cells are now front and center. However, be careful not to over exfoliate. You can irritate your skin and actually stimulate oil production. Be sure to scrub at least once a week, and move up from there as your skin reacts.
Luckily, there are a ton of great body scrubs on the market. Recently, I had to opportunity to review a brand new natural body scrub on the market – YOUTH Skin/care’s Sugar Jojoba oil body scrub ($35.00 for 16 ounces).
This scrubs looks, feels, and even taste just like brown sugar. (Yes, I tasted it.) YOUTHskin/care, according to their press release, “is a natural beauty brand created by, and for, the young, informed, and connected consumer generation.” Despite being over 30, I ventured forth to try the scrub anyway.
How did it work? After slathering on the scrub, I found that it does the job quite well. The sugar granules are big and extremely exfoliating – it is a fantastic scrub if you really want to “go big” with your exfoliation. It leaves your skin feeling tighten and hydrated, as the jojoba oil seems to remain on your skin. Because of this, you may fight the urge to wash with cleanser after application. So I recommend this scrub more as an at-home spa treatment, possibly followed by cleanser and toner. Also, be careful when applying, because it doesn’t congeal very well and I felt like more was going down the sink than onto my skin.
My favorite part about YOUTHskin care’s exfoliator is that it is extremely simple and natural in its ingredients. It literally contains just sugar, jojoba oil, apricot kernel oil, and orange oil. (See why I wasn’t afraid to taste it?) You can read more about YOUTHskin/care and their youthful philosophy here.
Image: taimanu