What to Look for in Topical Skin-Care Products for an Active Lifestyle

Being active is a benefit you can enjoy when you eat properly, develop good habits, and have your training regularly. Don’t we miss anything? What about your skincare routines? Are they adjusted to an active lifestyle?

If you have some doubts about it, let’s consider the core principles of thoughtful skincare for active lifestyle adherents.

Why Active Lifestyles Demand Thoughtful Skin Care

When you are active throughout the whole day, your skin suffers from various causes:

• It quickly becomes dirty with dust, sweat, and sebum, which is actively produced when you walk, run, train, or work physically.
• An active lifestyle often leads to skin dryness. You lose moisture quickly, and without proper hydration, skin suffers first.
• Activities like intensive workouts, tracking, hiking, or camping when they last long can lead to blisters, lumps, and skin rashes.

Often, when you finish an active day, you feel the tiredness on your skin. That’s a sign that it requires proper care to remain healthy.

Different Products Have Different Purposes

The idea of skin care for an active lifestyle expands the range of skincare products to use. You cannot simply stop at conventional cosmetic products, but you need to enhance their action with specific topical medicated products. What’s the difference between them?

• Cosmetic products for skincare are designed to provide typical effects like cleansing, moisturizing, toning, and nurturing the skin every day. They do not contain medicated ingredients.
• Special topical medications are not designed for everyday use, but they help cope with specific skin issues like rashes, acne, redness, local inflammation, etc.

At once, there are also specific protective skin care products which are neither medications nor cosmetics. Such skincare products as sunscreens, cold-protective balms and creams can come in handy for an active lifestyle when you use them on purpose.

Understanding Ingredients Before Choosing an Ointment

The key difference between skincare cosmetics and medicated products for an active lifestyle is hidden in the composition of these products. Although some topical medicated products are designed as OTCs, their use should be thoughtful because of the potent effect they provide on skin.

While cosmetic products typically contain cleansers, emollients, surfactants, natural oils and extracts, in medicated topicals, you may find on their labels such components as anti-inflammatory agents, painkillers, antifungal, and antimicrobial compounds. For example, while a standard moisturizing cream is typically used to hydrate dry skin, products like Streptocide ointment have a different purpose and contain active ingredients intended for more specific skin concerns.

When Self-Care Is Not Enough

At once, even OTC topical products for skin care are not a universal remedy for everyone. When you have a specific skin issue, you need to select a product thoughtfully, regarding its formulation, scope of use, dosage, possible contraindications and side effects, and your health history as well.

It is especially important to consult a doctor (not a cosmetologist) if you are not sure whether a skincare topical suits your needs and is safe for use. It is not worth experimenting with such products in the following cases:

• You have sensitive skin, prone to allergies.
• You have extensive skin issues, which require preliminary medical diagnostics.
• You do not know whether the product’s components are safe.
• After you use a product, the symptoms of skin issues become more pronounced.

In all these cases, choosing a skin-care product should be based on medical evaluation and recommendations.

Build a Skin-Care Kit Around Real Needs

An active lifestyle requires active skin care strategies. You can build them with the help of a personal skin-care kit, designed according to your real needs. For this, you need first:

• to evaluate typical scenarios of your daily activities and their impact on your skin;
• select everyday skincare cosmetic products for cleansing, moisturizing, and nurturing your skin;
• add to the kit specific medicated topicals if you have skin issues caused by your active lifestyle, according to their labels, instructions, and medical recommendations;
• design the rituals for everyday and specific-based skin care.

Maintaining healthy skin is a part of an active and healthy lifestyle. Thanks to modern cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, keeping it healthy, tight, and moisturized becomes easier. All you need for this is to evaluate its needs, thoroughly select products, and incorporate them into your skincare rituals, making it a good habit.

 

 

Want to unlock greater wellness?

Listen to our friends over at the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast to unlock your best self with Dr. John Lieurance; Founder of MitoZen; creators of the ZEN Spray and Lumetol Blue™ Bars with Methylene Blue.