CLEANSERS: Introduction

This is where most skincare goes wrong. It’s the chemistry at fault. Marketers instruct formulators to make foam. Foam sells. The formulator, who must work his hands in that foam, knows that foam is bad. It dries and defats the skin. Strips it. In a short time the skin is sub-clinically (as in not yet visible) or clinically (as in visible) inflamed.

The wrong cleanser can ruin your skin for everything you put on after that. It can turn the most promising active you have purchased into a time bomb because of a noticeable increase in histamine response. Alarm bells in the skin go off. You then put on an active and may be quickly thrown into inflammation. Over time the skin weakens, at best. You think it is the active. It’s the cleanser.

Cleansers today are stealth skin killers. Day by day. Smell great, too. But you’re choosing Hannibal Lecter.

Foam sells. The folks who lament the use of certain anionic surfactants like the arch villain Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) apparently ignore the real issue. And the real issue? Foam.

To get foam, big thick creamy foam, you must link together various surfactants. Chief among these are betaines. Look on any label proclaiming it is SLS free – you will find betaines. Look on any cleanser label for that matter. Betaines are serious skin irritants, far more so than SLS and they are used to link to primary anionics to form Big Foam. This is often augmented by the use of amides…anyway, the chemistry is involved, but you get the point.

Your goal in cleansing your face is to remove the bad and preserve the good. That cannot be done with long chain highly charged surfactants that make Big Foam. Try asking your dog to eat with a fork.

We have several lotion cleansers and a great FACE & BODY BAR and a cleansing helper of dry minerals. They are all very mild and give you the advantage of washing your skin without also setting up a first rate histamine reaction. No betaines, no amides, only ultra mild amphoterics and cationic surfactants in our lotion cleansers.

Read through each one. You won’t go wrong no matter which you choose – though our ACNE SULFUR CLEANSER is probably not for cool grandmas.

We recommend you have two and three cleanser alternatives. REVIVE is a cleanser and moisturizer especially formulated for unstable skin. It is not in the list here as a cleanser but consider that as your second cleanser. A third cleanser would be FACE & BODY BAR.

If you will rotate through these during the week the results of improved texture, resilience, tone and brightening are unmistakable.