by Senior Skincare Specialist, Bernice Wolmarans
It turns out that your clothes, your foundation, and living room decor aren’t the only things you should relook when the seasons change; your skin requires some special attention, too.
Although Summer seems a little far away, Spring is the ideal time to get your skin glowing, prepared, and protected for the sunny season. Here are some spring skincare essentials to consider.
Table of contents
- HOW DOES SKIN ADAPT TO SEASONAL CHANGES?
- WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR SKIN DURING WINTER?
- CAN YOU CONTINUE WINTER SKINCARE INTO SPRING?
- WHAT DOES YOUR SKIN NEED IN SPRING?
- SPRING SKINCARE TREATMENT ESSENTIALS
- SKINCARE TREATMENTS TO AVOID IN SPRING
- HOW TO UPDATE YOUR SPRING SKINCARE ROUTINE AT HOME
- SPRING SKINCARE PRODUCT ESSENTIALS
- OUR APPROACH TO SUMMER SKINCARE
HOW DOES SKIN ADAPT TO SEASONAL CHANGES
Your skin is a voice/mirror of what is happening inside your body. During summer when your body goes through changes, you will often see physical changes on your skin too. For example, if you have gut problems, you might see breakouts on your forehead. When traveling, your skin might appear more oily or dry.
Why? Your skin uses certain responses to protect itself. During summer skin cells begin to make themselves thicker with pigment cells (making an appearance as a tan) to prevent UV radiation from penetrating deeper into the skin where it can cause damage to the DNA in your cells. During this process, our skin tends to lose more water too. And no, drinking more water alone is not the answer to this one.
It is important to guide and support your skin holistically through these changes to ensure you have consistently radiant skin.
WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR SKIN DURING WINTER?
During Winter your skin can become irritated, itchy, and even show redness overnight. This is due to cold air, dry indoor heat, low humidity levels, and harsh winter wind that can all zap your skin with moisture. This can leave your skin looking a lot less radiant than normal.
You might also notice more fine lines and wrinkles appearing, especially around the eye area as we don’t have the same oil secretions around the orbital eye area compared to the rest of our skins.
These changes in the skin during winter, cause us to approach our skin care differently during this time. The same goes for Spring skincare, and yes, eventually Summer.
CAN YOU CONTINUE WINTER SKINCARE INTO SPRING?
When following a skin journey, it is important to understand how the recipe of success works when it comes to working with an active treatment phase (as with most patients during Winter) and a maintenance phase (as with most during Summer). Each patient’s skin is different and that is why your detailed consultation is essential to understanding each individual’s lifestyle and how it will impact their spring and summer skincare treatments.
For one patient it might be perfectly fine to continue with more intensive treatments straight from Winter into Summer, but for another (with a more outdoorsy lifestyle for example) this approach will not be suitable and has to be adapted. As an overall rule of thumb, we encourage patients to end their active laser and deep peel treatments during Winter.
When designing your 6-month skin journey, your skin specialist will take this into account and work out a customised plan for your lifestyle and needs.
In Spring, we generally focus on spring skincare treatments that will strengthen your skin, maintain all the hard work that you have done during winter and prepare your skin for summer and all the environmental factors that await.
WHAT DOES YOUR SKIN NEED IN SPRING?
During Spring, most people tend to kick things in full swing when it comes to summer body preparations. The same effort needs to be applied when it comes to the ultimate summer skin glow.
They say that Summer bodies are made during Winter, but we say that radiant Summer skins are made in Spring! The support you offer your skin during Spring WILL show, and your Summer glow will thank you for it.
SPRING SKIN TREATMENT ESSENTIALS
In Spring, social lives start to lighten up again with the majority of people not wanting to explore further “hibernation rejuvenation” of flaking and peeling skin.
At Dr. Nerina Wilkinson + Associates we, therefore, like to focus on treatments that still actively feed the skin, but that don’t have the downtime or cause the skin to be sensitive to the sun. These treatments include our signature Glow Getter and Forma HydraLyft.
The Glow Getter Facial
The Glow Getter facial treatment combines a gentle Chemical Peel to remove dull, damaged skin cells with a Lumecca Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) photo facial treatment to enhance the skin’s natural glow and provide a more even skin tone. The treatment ends with a luxurious Crystal Fibre Sheet Mask to intensively hydrate the skin, plumping out fine lines for an instant post-treatment glow.
The Forma HydraLyft Facial
The Forma HydraLyft is a signature combination treatment that has been designed for clients who are wanting plump, radiant skin with the combination of skin tightening and the infusion of hydration. The procedure combines the brightening effects of a Chemical Peel with the deep infusion of Hyaluronic Acid using our Mesotherapy technique as well as the skin tightening and contouring benefits of the Forma Radiofrequency Skin Tightening.
You can see why these are two of our top treatment choices for the ultimate Spring skin glow!
SKIN TREATMENTS TO AVOID IN SPRING
in Spring, you want to avoid skin treatments that will make your skin sun sensitive. These include deep chemical peels, laser, and light treatments. When your skin regenerates after these invasive and ablative treatments, it will be very exposed and sensitive to the sun, and this is the last thing you want in Summer.
Spring is therefore the ideal time to move out of your active treatment phase and into your maintenance phase in order to strengthen your skin with all the armor it will need to survive the enemy = UV rays.
HOW TO UPDATE YOUR SPRING SKIN ROUTINE AT HOME
In Spring, your essential home care products will always be your basis for radiant skin! ideally, you want to focus on replacing your high percentage retinol (which will cause sun sensitivity) with products that will boost your skin’s hydration and combat oxidative stress caused by free radicals.
Spring skincare product essentials
You can now start to move from a hydrating cleanser to a light foamy cleanser, and also include an exfoliator 2 – 3 times a week. One of my favourites is the ZO Exfoliating Polish or for more sensitive and oily skin types ZO Dual Action Scrub. Both these products contain magnesium crystals for a safe glide over the skin. Another great option is for those who enjoy the feel of a mini peel; the QMS Active Exfoliant. This product you can leave on for 10 – 15min daily for the best results!
Overnight masks will also be extremely beneficial at this time! Two of my favourites are the Mesoestetic Anti-stress Face Mask (an anti-inflammatory mask aimed at soothing skin) and the Mesoestics Hydra-Vital Face Mask (a deeply hydrating at-home experience). You can also consider feeding your skin from within by supplementing it with ingestible collagen. We like ProActive’s Collagen as it also contains hyaluronic acid for hydration from within.
It is also important to start using internal antioxidants daily. Antioxidants fight free radicals that are harmful to our skin – causing oxidative stress. Free radicals are everywhere around us (think smoking, UV Rays, air pollutants, and industrial chemicals). A balance between free radicals and antioxidants is very important for our physiological well-being to protect our DNA and important cellular function. Great options to consider for an antioxidant boost are internal supplements such as the Heliocare 360 Capsules and external antioxidants, Vitamin C-based products such as NeoStratas Antioxidant Serum or the Mesoestetic AOX Ferulic (an advanced anti-oxidant and cell-protective concentrate)
Those who struggle with breakouts might hesitate to include Vitamin C at this stage, but the Matriskin Vitamin C Serum is ideal for them! This product contains a stable form of Vitamin C that aims to reduce cellular oxidation, increase collagen synthesis and strengthen the skin’s defense mechanisms against free radicals.
OUR APPROACH TO SPRING SKINCARE
Leading up to Summer, we head into our maintenance treatment phase with in-clinic treatments like our QMS Medicosmetics treatments and light chemical peels with Dermalux LED Light Therapy. With these treatments, we can focus on hydrating the skin and enhancing the skin with collagen. These treatments are also great for patients that would like an instant glow without any downtime. The bonus of Dermalux LED Light Therapy is that it can be added to any skin treatments to stimulate cellular activity, reduce any inflammation and also have an anti-bacterial effect on any breakouts.
Email us at skinclinic@drnwilkinson.co.za if you are interested in starting your journey to the ultimate summer skin glow!
Written by Bernice Wolmarans
