The skincare world has practically become a sub-culture. On all of the big social media sites you can find pages and groups full of skincare enthusiasts, both professional and, like me, interested amateurs. Whereas in the past most people just trusted in the expertise and advertising of their favourite brands, such is the thirst for knowledge concerning ingredients and formulation these days that it is becoming increasingly difficult for brands to use certain ingredients in their products. We saw it with mineral oil (Clarins even reformulated their infamous Double Serum and excluded it), SLS, certain types of formaldehyde, fragrance, essential oils, alcohol and silicones to mention a few.
While I think it's great that the internet and social media has lead to this democratisation of information, it does make it even harder to decide what's best for you. I've personally left a couple of skincare groups on Facebook as the utter hysteria that ensued after I mentioned that I liked Emma Hardie Moringa Balm (NOOOO NOT ESSENTIAL OILS!!!) or Korean sheetmasks (YOU CAN'T PUT ALCOHOL ON YOUR SKIN!!!!!). Rather than tell these alarmist know-it alls where to stick it, or demand to see their esthetician/dermatologist/chemist credentials I took the high road and clicked on Leave Group.
YES of COURSE there are SOME PEOPLE that are allergic to/react to certain ingredients. That does not mean ALL OF US. Some people are allergic to nuts, doesn't mean we should all bloody stop eating them 'just in case'. One lady, like me, an amateur - but one who made sure to comment on everyones posts berating them for their use of this, that or the other - went so far as to tell people to stop using the products they loved so much 'in case they developed allergies later in life'.
I mean, yeah OK - that can happen. But JHC, anything can happen. We don't stay in our houses covered in duvets for fear of having an accident, but nor do we dance in the road tempting fate - this is my approach to skincare.
Only you know your skin and how it feels and reacts after certain products. If it feels nice, your skin likes it and you enjoy it then carry on.
Personally I try to steer clear of high levels of alcohol in products, SLS and mineral oil. But again, I'm not an expert, just an armchair enthusiast, so as I come across more ingredients I don't like I'll add them to the list.
And you can rip my Moringa Balm and sheet masks from my cold, dead hands.
So when I started to see all this rumbling about dimethicone on social media beauty groups/blogs and pages, I was skeptical. Was it a genuinely bad ingredient or the new boogeyman? I noticed that it was on the ingredients list of my Clarins Multi-Active Jour, and apart from mineral oil (and some people are OK with mineral oil) I've never known of Clarins using cheap, dodgy ingredients. So I turned to Google.
My first stop was Paulas Choice, because while I admittedly hate the way her team review products on that site (see my post Facial Mists and a Rant for part one of this ingredients-related ramble), she's very well-educated on ingredients and formulation. Just don't get her started on sheetmasks - as I said, you can rip those off me when I'm dead.
So, dimethicone is a type of silicone. My other research turned up what I expected, it doesn't have any skincare benefits but does give a smoothing effect and is cheap, so you can see why it would be included in products such as a day cream. My skin has never had any type of problem with it, and this seems to be the case for many people.
However, acne sufferers beware. The very nature of silicones - smoothing, creating a barrier over your skin for other products to lie on (a lot of the most popular primers contain silicones for this very reason) and potentially blocking pores (eh, only if you're not washing your face properly...!) would be red flags for acne sufferes and rightly so. This doesn't mean that if you don't have acne your skin won't mind it, but all I can say is patch test.
Honestly I expected more from my search😂 I thought that dimethicone was possibly some kind of nefarious toxin that beauty brands had been stuffing their products with only for us to finally cop on, but all I found was silicone.
So no, not a boogeyman..! As with everything some people like silicones and some people don't. I don't mind it, I like the smooth finish you get with silicone products and it can also be a good way to stabilise unstable ingredients such as retinol. Although I did try The Ordinarys Retinol 2% which I didn't like, both for the red raw peeling skin it gave me and the fact that the amount of silicone in the formula made me feel like I was applying Maybelline Babyskin primer rather than a night-time retinol.
So that's it. As usual, I had planned on this post being short and to the point, and honestly it was more to satisfy my own curiosity as I just had to know what all the online fuss was about!
So, basically this kind of illustrates what I always say which is do your research, don't get pulled into the hype and patch test. Sorry, I thought I was going to be able to give you some illuminating information😂
If you've managed to read this whole rant I commend and thank you!
A x
Doyouevencleanse Instagram (daily pics and rambling IG stories posts...)
Doyouevencleanse Facebook Group
While I think it's great that the internet and social media has lead to this democratisation of information, it does make it even harder to decide what's best for you. I've personally left a couple of skincare groups on Facebook as the utter hysteria that ensued after I mentioned that I liked Emma Hardie Moringa Balm (NOOOO NOT ESSENTIAL OILS!!!) or Korean sheetmasks (YOU CAN'T PUT ALCOHOL ON YOUR SKIN!!!!!). Rather than tell these alarmist know-it alls where to stick it, or demand to see their esthetician/dermatologist/chemist credentials I took the high road and clicked on Leave Group.
YES of COURSE there are SOME PEOPLE that are allergic to/react to certain ingredients. That does not mean ALL OF US. Some people are allergic to nuts, doesn't mean we should all bloody stop eating them 'just in case'. One lady, like me, an amateur - but one who made sure to comment on everyones posts berating them for their use of this, that or the other - went so far as to tell people to stop using the products they loved so much 'in case they developed allergies later in life'.
I mean, yeah OK - that can happen. But JHC, anything can happen. We don't stay in our houses covered in duvets for fear of having an accident, but nor do we dance in the road tempting fate - this is my approach to skincare.
Only you know your skin and how it feels and reacts after certain products. If it feels nice, your skin likes it and you enjoy it then carry on.
Personally I try to steer clear of high levels of alcohol in products, SLS and mineral oil. But again, I'm not an expert, just an armchair enthusiast, so as I come across more ingredients I don't like I'll add them to the list.
And you can rip my Moringa Balm and sheet masks from my cold, dead hands.
So when I started to see all this rumbling about dimethicone on social media beauty groups/blogs and pages, I was skeptical. Was it a genuinely bad ingredient or the new boogeyman? I noticed that it was on the ingredients list of my Clarins Multi-Active Jour, and apart from mineral oil (and some people are OK with mineral oil) I've never known of Clarins using cheap, dodgy ingredients. So I turned to Google.
My first stop was Paulas Choice, because while I admittedly hate the way her team review products on that site (see my post Facial Mists and a Rant for part one of this ingredients-related ramble), she's very well-educated on ingredients and formulation. Just don't get her started on sheetmasks - as I said, you can rip those off me when I'm dead.
So, dimethicone is a type of silicone. My other research turned up what I expected, it doesn't have any skincare benefits but does give a smoothing effect and is cheap, so you can see why it would be included in products such as a day cream. My skin has never had any type of problem with it, and this seems to be the case for many people.
However, acne sufferers beware. The very nature of silicones - smoothing, creating a barrier over your skin for other products to lie on (a lot of the most popular primers contain silicones for this very reason) and potentially blocking pores (eh, only if you're not washing your face properly...!) would be red flags for acne sufferes and rightly so. This doesn't mean that if you don't have acne your skin won't mind it, but all I can say is patch test.
Honestly I expected more from my search😂 I thought that dimethicone was possibly some kind of nefarious toxin that beauty brands had been stuffing their products with only for us to finally cop on, but all I found was silicone.
So no, not a boogeyman..! As with everything some people like silicones and some people don't. I don't mind it, I like the smooth finish you get with silicone products and it can also be a good way to stabilise unstable ingredients such as retinol. Although I did try The Ordinarys Retinol 2% which I didn't like, both for the red raw peeling skin it gave me and the fact that the amount of silicone in the formula made me feel like I was applying Maybelline Babyskin primer rather than a night-time retinol.
So that's it. As usual, I had planned on this post being short and to the point, and honestly it was more to satisfy my own curiosity as I just had to know what all the online fuss was about!
So, basically this kind of illustrates what I always say which is do your research, don't get pulled into the hype and patch test. Sorry, I thought I was going to be able to give you some illuminating information😂
If you've managed to read this whole rant I commend and thank you!
A x
Doyouevencleanse Instagram (daily pics and rambling IG stories posts...)
Doyouevencleanse Facebook Group
Comments
Post a Comment