Everyone Please Relax About Face Scrubs
If you’ve spent more than five minutes on a beauty forum, you’ve probably heard of the supposed evils of face scrubs—specifically, their alleged ability to tear up your skin. But no one can deny the enduring popularity of scrubs like these, from the classic St. Ives Apricot Scrub all the way to the brand new (and entirely sold out) Kylie Skin Walnut Face Scrub.
So how risky is it really to use a scrub like this? As usual, the answer is nowhere near as simple as it’s made out to be.
Let’s talk about exfoliation.
To understand the pros and cons of scrubs, it helps to know a little bit about the skin they’re used on. Your skin is like an escalator, Evan Rieder, dermatologist and assistant professor of dermatology at NYU Langone Health, tells SELF: Cells are constantly moving up to the surface, dying, and eventually flaking off. In healthy skin, this process takes about six weeks. At the top of the escalator is the all-important stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the skin. It’s made up of dead skin cells bound together by a mixture of lipids and has two main jobs: keeping water in and keeping irritants out.
You cannot have healthy skin without an intact, functioning stratum corneum. If it’s broken or too thin, it can cause dryness, irritation, and even infection. But swinging too far in the other direction is also problematic. If your skin doesn’t shed enough dead cells, they can build up, leaving scaly dry patches that you can see and feel. Excessive dead cells can also clog pores and feed P. acnes bacteria, both of which contribute to acne.
This is where exfoliation comes in. “By using physical or chemical exfoliants,” Rieder explains, “you're getting rid of the outer layers of the stratum corneum [and] giving the skin a fresher, glowier, more luminous appearance.” In terms of his escalator analogy, exfoliation breaks up traffic jams at the top so everyone can get where they need to go—and in some cases, it regulates the speed of the escalator to prevent future pile-ups.
So scrubs = prime exfoliation, right?
Scrubs are one way to exfoliate your skin, but they’re not the only way. The point of exfoliation is to remove dead cells from the stratum corneum, exposing fresher (but still dead) cells underneath. Chemical exfoliants (like acids) do this by dissolving the bonds between cells while physical exfoliants (like scrubs, washcloths, and brushes) use friction to physically scrape them off. Even retinoids like adapalene and tretinoin can aid in the process by speeding up the cell turnover process rather than washing dead cells away from the outside.
Aside from their different mechanisms, the main difference between chemical and physical exfoliants is potency. An acid’s strength depends on its concentration, pH, and inactive ingredients, but scrubs are an all-or-nothing deal—either you’re using one or you’re not.
But regardless of the exact method, all exfoliation is just intentional, controlled skin damage. If you overuse them, you’ll get more damage than you bargained for. If you’re exfoliating too much, you might notice redness, dryness, and increased sensitivity in the skin instead of that nice glow you were looking for.
OK, but what about micro-tears?
When overused, all exfoliants have the potential to irritate or straight-up damage your skin. So why do scrubs get so much hate? You can probably blame micro-tears, which have become something of a boogeyman in the online beauty community.
The reasoning goes that facial scrubs with large, rough particles (like crushed walnut shells) leave invisible cuts called micro-tears in their wake—and those tears allow all sorts of nasty stuff to penetrate your skin. The concept of micro-tears was at the center of a 2016 class action lawsuit against Unilever, which owns St. Ives. The plaintiffs alleged that, although any skin damage due to micro-tears “may not be noticeable to the naked eye...it nonetheless leads to acne, infection, and wrinkles.”
The case was eventually thrown out in 2018 after a California judge concluded that the plaintiffs hadn’t provided enough evidence that micro-tears were a safety hazard or that the scrubs actually caused micro-tears.
But whether or not micro-tears are a real threat, we know that many people subjectively find scrubs like this to be too harsh for their skin—especially when used too frequently. Over-exfoliation temporarily damages the stratum corneum, which can open the skin up to everything from mild irritants to staph infections. And as Rieder explains, those irritants and contaminants don’t just come from the environment: “Skin's full of little mites and bacteria that usually do nothing, but once the skin barrier is broken, anything is possible.”
If you’re worried about damaging your skin with a scrub, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, the potential for exfoliation-related damage isn’t exclusive to scrubs. In fact, it’s possible to experience the symptoms of over-exfoliation when using anything from washcloths to Stridex pads to Retin-A.
Second, there’s more to the equation than the size of your scrub’s particles—how you use the product is just as important, dermatologist Suzan Obagi, director of the UPMC Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Health Center and the president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, tells SELF. “If you scrub long enough [with anything], you're going to strip the skin,” she says, “[but if] you scrub for a second, you're not.”
Finally, remember that scrubs are ultimately superficial. Even if you do turn your stratum corneum to Swiss cheese, any damage would be shallow enough to heal quickly. Your skin is remarkably good at healing itself, Obagi says, so you’d have to ignore a lot of warning signs to get to a point where you’re in that much danger.
Here’s how to know if you’ve over-exfoliated—and what to do about it.
If you’ve damaged your stratum corneum, there are a few common signs. Many people experience redness and inflammation, but it you also have acne or rosacea it may be hard to know where those symptoms are really coming from.
That’s why the strongest indicator of barrier damage is actually an increase in your skin’s sensitivity, according to Obagi. “If you find that your skin sensitivity all of a sudden skyrockets, you're doing something wrong,” she explains. So if your usual moisturizer or sunscreen stings when you put it on—and it usually doesn’t—you may be over-exfoliating.
If this happens to you, don’t panic—your skin will heal in time. Until then, stop using everything except a gentle cleanser, moisturizer, and sunscreen. “You've got to be careful about what you're applying onto that compromised skin,” Obagi says. “If you [scrub too hard] and let your skin heal and build back up, it's OK—but if you do it every other day, that's going to put your skin in a chronic stage of low-grade inflammation and irritation, and that's not good for anybody.”
Moisture is incredibly important to the healing process, so use whatever you can tolerate; Obagi recommends moisturizers with ceramides and/or hyaluronic acid, which can accelerate stratum corneum repair and slow down water loss, respectively. If even moisturizer and sunscreen are intolerable, try Vaseline (petroleum jelly) or Aquaphor, and wear hats and sunglasses. You should be back to normal in six to eight weeks.
The bottom line is that with proper usage, scrubs likely won’t hurt you—even those with large, jagged particles. There are, of course, other ways to exfoliate your face, and derms generally recommend opting for gentler chemical exfoliants. But if the specter of staph infected micro-tears has you terrified to even look at a scrub, well, it shouldn’t. When used correctly—sparingly and with gentle pressure—scrubs aren’t inherently dangerous. They’re just another way to achieve smooth, glowing skin.
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Originally Appeared on Self
