5 Tips for Calming Sensitive Skin

It’s a harsh world out there: just ask your skin. It reacts and responds with itchiness, redness, stinging and dryness. What causes it, and what can you do about it? Here’s our advice on how to keep sensitive skin healthy and better defend it from frustrating flare-ups.

Sensitive Skincare Tips

Keep it simple
Less products may equal less risk of reactions. So, keep it simple: start every day and end every night with a gentle cleanse, toner/treatment, and soothing moisturiser. SPF is essential in protecting sensitive skin from agitating pollutants and UV light. Sensitive skin fares better with mineral sunscreens that lay on the surface of the skin to reflect UV light, rather than chemical sunscreens that absorb into skin and release UV light by converting it into heat.

Take it slow
If you want to add more products to your regimen, ease them in slowly and one at a time. Do a patch-test on the inside of your arm of the back of your neck, then wait 24 hours for a reaction or response. If there’s no response, slowly and carefully add the new product into your regimen.

Keep your water luke-warm
Nothing feels better than a hot, soothing bath or shower after a long day. But, there’s nothing worse when addressing how to keep sensitive skin healthy. Hot water sucks hydration from your skin that can trigger a sensitive skin flare-up. Keep your water luke-warm, always pat your skin dry with a soft towel when you’re done, and apply serums and moisturisers to your skin as quickly as possible to help prevent dryness and redness.

Keep over-cleansing in check
We’re all practicing good hygiene to keep ourselves and our loved ones protected from the coronavirus. When it comes to how to keep our sensitive skin healthy, over-cleansing strips skin of essential moisture. It can also lift away essential bacteria that act like a protective second skin. Keep up the good cleansing habits, but remember to support your skin’s protective barrier after cleansing by applying a moisturiser. You can also cleanse with a prebiotic-based cleanser, like Prebiotic 4-in-1 MultiCleanser, to help balance your skin’s microbiome while maintaining good hygiene habits.

Be aware of stress
This is one Murad’s most vital skincare tips for sensitive skin. When you’re stressed, every part of your body takes a hit—including your skin. Our hyper-connected, fast-paced society triggers a constant flood of damaging stress hormones, like cortisol, that fatigue our bodies and could show in our skin as dehydration, flare-ups, and sensitivity. Managing stress internally can help regulate these kind of skin reactions as much as a dedicated skincare regimen.