10 reasons why your skin care products are not working
Has your trusty skin care products stopped performing? Is that top-notch serum you just bought not doing anything for you? “What’s happening? This is so frustrating! Should I just bin the products?”
Friend, if you’re asking that question today, I want to help you. Before you decide what to do with your products, I want you to take a look at some possible reasons why your products have stopped working or are not living up to its promises.
1. Your skin is not properly cleansed
Skin care experts always stress the importance of cleansing. Why? They know how important it is for skin to be well cleansed before other skin care products can work well on it. Imagine giving your walls a fresh coat of paint when it’s flaking and in poor condition. The newly painted wall won’t look its best unless you’ve removed the flaking old paint properly.
Likewise, you may be using a top-notch skin care product. But if your skin is not properly cleansed of impurities and dirt, the product is not going to do much for your skin. Worst, you are very likely to get clogged pores, acne and dull skin.
So always ensure your skin is well cleansed. If you’re unsure, check out the different ways to cleanse your face properly.
2. You have too much dead skin cells
Your skin cell renews itself every 28 days. When that happens, a new dead skin cell layer forms on the skin’s surface. But too much accumulation of dead skin cells will affect the performance of your products. It’ll prevent your skin care from being absorbed, no matter how effective they are.
Instead of letting your skin cells clump together and creating a barrier, exfoliate regularly using a scrub or exfoliant to help remove excessively accumulated dead skin cells before the natural turnover. This will definitely improve the efficacy of your products.
3. Your skin has reached its optimal level
Many women complain that their skin care products stop working after awhile. Some are even wondering if their skin has grown “immune” to the products.
Well, your skin cannot get immune to skin care products. Rather, you are not seeing any dramatic results with the products because your skin has reach its optimal level with the product. With ongoing use, the changes won’t be as apparent as they once were.
That’s the reason why your vitamin C serum doesn’t seem to yield any further skin brightening. That’s probably why your retinol product isn’t showing much efficacy.
If this is why your product isn’t performing, then switching products might be helpful. Just stop using the products for a period of time. Or just adjust your expectations and be more realistic not to expect too much from your products.
4. You have a build up of occulsive ingredients
Ingredients like mineral oil, petrolatum and silicones generally acts as a barrier and clogs the skin pores. My theory is that even though a product may not contain a lot of such ingredients but if you use the product containing them over time, these occlusive agents may build up on our skin and prevent active ingredients in the product from penetrating properly into our dermal layers after awhile.
If you suspect your products are not working for this reason, it’s probably time to bin them and switch to products with cleaner ingredients.
5. Ingredients of your products have degraded
If you’ve been using the products for some time, the ingredients in there could have degraded. This is particular with skin creams that are stored in jars or containers or with products that are stored improperly.
Also, some active ingredients have a limited shelf life which means they do degrade and lose their potency over time. Some ingredients like vitamin C can be so unstable that they oxidize when they come into contact with light and air, causing the product to become less effective.
If this happens, you can bin the product because the ingredients will no longer be potent and you will no longer enjoy any benefits from using the product.
6. Your products are contaminated
Sometimes products are not well handled and the ingredients could have been contaminated during usage. When this happen, the product will become ineffective and in the worst case, may cause problems when used.
Poor storage can also cause products to lose its efficacy. I have purchased products that turned rancid because they were stored inappropriately. What did I do? I had no choice but to bin them.
7. Your skin has changed
Any changes to your skin condition is going to affect how you react to skin care products—what used to work for your skin suddenly becomes ineffective. Could some hormonal changes be the culprit? Remember your skin changes as you age too.
If the reason is due to changes in your skin condition, you would need to switch to new products to suit the changes. You can always try to counter the change in your skin condition by making adjustments to your body conditions but that is definitely doing to take time. In the meantime, you’ll still need to change your products.
And as you mature, you will most definitely need to introduce products with different ingredients to your skin care routine. What works well five years ago is probably not going to cut it now. So always audit your skin care needs. Do it every year.
8. Your external conditions are changing
Related to the changes in our skin is the change in season, weather and the environment. Something that was rich and worked well during the drier months may suddenly break you out when used during the warmer summer. Likewise, a light moisturizer that worked well under hot and humid weather might suddenly be insufficient when you relocate to a country with colder weather conditions.
In this instance, you might not need to bin your products. Trying layering the products to see if they work better or perhaps just adding one more product to your routine when the weather turns colder.
9. You are not applying the product correctly
It’s always easy to blame the product but could the fault lies in you? Perhaps you did not read how the product should be used? Maybe the product should be used in the night instead of the day? Or you’ve got the order of the product all wrong?
Before you make any decisions, check up the instructions again, read reviews and find out how others are faring with the product. You might be able to save the product and your skin for all you know.
10. Your product contains little active ingredients
Finally, the product may not be working because the amount of active ingredients could be too low. This is typical of over the counter products. In this case, it’ll be hard to get the desired results even if the product is used for a long stretch. Solution? Time to switch to new products.
So the next time your products are not working for you, stop and examine the reasons before deciding if you wish to bin them. With some changes, it is highly possible for you to continue using the products and even reaping their fullest benefits.
Do these reasons make sense to you? What did you do when your products can’t deliver? Did you give them a second chance? Or did you bin them immediately?
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Most of the skincare products I have used hardly show any promising or visible results on me. For some I will noticed a temporary glow when I wake up in the morning but that usually lasted for a week or two only ?
If I’m using konjac sponge or clarisonic, do you reckon I still need to do a scrub weekly? I actually did not as I’m worried of over-cleansing my face.
If you’re already using a konjac sponge or clarisonic, then you don’t need a scrub cos you’re already exfoliating regularly.
Please tell me a product to lighten my face and around my mouth area
And whitening mask
And best vit d serum
Please
I need u pleassssssssssssss i swear
I am 22 years old
Please tell me immediately u seen my comment
I had been using Keto 4s cream as a fairness cream…
It has a lot of side effects, it contains steroids therefore I stopped using it..
Now my face getting thinner and thinner day by day. Even my nervous r visible on my face..
Can u help me out
I am using kojie san soap from 3 months..my skin had become fair but gradually it turns to darker again even I was preventing my skin from sun and using it regularly…this is frequently happening with me…for a week it looks fair then turns to darker and after 10 to 15 days start to work again…( My whole body is fair but face is darker )
Cream is not working on my body again pls
And I av use milk srub what should I so though I just brought sos yesterday
Butbam using organic cream before but its not working on me
Pls reply
This post has a lot of good points. You hit the nail on the head with this one! I’m gonna bookmark this for a future blog post.
On a related note, we just published a new post on our blog recently and I was wondering if you could take a look and see if we missed anything (click on my name to go there). Your feedback is much highly appreciated!