Taking care of your skin is like taking care of your teeth. When caring for your teeth, experts recommend you visit the dentist once every 6 months for a checkup and a deep cleaning. Then, you support your dental health at home by brushing and flossing every day until your next appointment. If you visit the dentist to get a deep cleaning and then never brush your teeth, the work your dentist puts into your dental health won’t matter.
The same logic applies to caring for your skin! If you visit an expert for skin treatments without using at-home skin care, you won’t see the full benefits of the in-office care.
In this blog, we’ll describe the importance of using skin care from Harbour Direct Primary Care. This blog will serve as your guide for skin care in Jamestown, RI, showing you how to find the best skin care products, when to apply them, and more.
Why skin care Is Important
Our in-office treatments can help you improve your skin’s appearance, but those results won’t last long if you do not support your skin health with an at-home care routine.skin care skin care products help improve the overall health of your skin in many ways, including by:
- Removing dirt, debris, toxins, and pollutants from your pores.
- Improving your skin’s ability to absorb and retain moisture.
- Providing valuable vitamins and nutrients your skin needs to function.
- Clearing dead and damaged skin cells and stimulating the production of healthy cells.
Our skin is more than a part of our appearance—our skin is an organ. It helps protect the rest of the body from pollutants, extreme temperatures, UV damage, and more. And when our skin is not healthy, it shows. But by using skin care in Jamestown, you can give your skin the care and nourishment it needs to look and feel its best.
But before you can find the best skin care products, you first need to understand the type of skin you have.
Understand Your Skin Type
The type of skin care products you need depends on what your skin needs, which you can better understand through analyzing your skin type. There are 5 different skin types you can have.
Sensitive Skin
Sensitive skin has stinging, burning, or itching sensations when you use skin care products. While you can have this skin type naturally, we see many patients develop it over time after excessive exposure to extreme temperatures, moisture, sun, pollution, and other environmental factors.
Normal Skin
We characterize normal skin as skin that does not have any specific reaction when you wash your face. While your face may become slightly red after washing, it otherwise feels normal and not dry, itchy, greasy, or dirty.
Dry Skin
When you have dry skin, your face typically feels itchy, flaky, scaly, or rough after you wash it. You can have this skin type naturally, but you can also develop dry skin after over-washing or using harsh skin care products. Dry skin can also develop after excessive exposure to environmental factors like heat, cold, dry weather, and sun.
Oily Skin
Another skin type that influences your selection of skin care in Jamestown is oily skin. With oily skin, your face feels greasy, dirty, or looks “shiny,” even after you wash your skin. Oily skin overproduces an oil called sebum, which can also cause issues with acne.
Combination Skin
You have combination skin if certain parts of your face feel oily, while other parts feel dry. Those with combination skin typically experience excessive sebum production around the forehead, nose, and chin, also known as the “T-zone.” While this skin type is purely genetic, it can also change with seasonal or hormonal shifts.
How to Discover Your Skin Type
While you most accurately understand your skin type by undergoing a skin exam with one of our providers, you can also use “the wash test” to discover which skin type you have.
For the wash test, clean your skin using a mild cleanser, and then do not apply any skin care products afterwards. Then, go about your normal day, not washing your skin or applying any products throughout. At the end of the day, you examine how your skin looks and feels to determine your skin type.
We recommend doing this when your skin is calm—not when you have irritation from a sunburn, skin rejuvenation treatment, or a skin resurfacing treatment.
| Your Results After The Test | Your Possible Skin Type |
| Oily skin | |
| Certain areas of my face are oily (like my nose and forehead) but the rest of my skin looks pretty normal. | Combination skin |
| I have minimal oil or flakiness, and my skin does not look inflamed or red. | Normal skin |
| My skin feels tight and looks flaky. | Dry skin |
| My skin is itchy, red, and inflamed. | Sensitive skin |
Once you understand your skin type, you better understand your skin’s needs, and you can begin searching for your ideal skin care in Jamestown, RI.
Your Basic Skin Care Steps
While your skin care steps can vary slightly based on your individual needs, every person should have a morning and evening skin care routine with a few basic steps.
Morning Routine
We recommend you follow these steps for your morning skin care routine.
Cleanser
Cleansers work by removing the dried sweat and dead skin cells that collect into your pores during the night. This helps your skin “breathe” and improves its ability to function.
Serums
To target specific concerns, serums use ingredients and nutrients to improve individual issues. Whether you want to target hyperpigmentation, wrinkles, dull skin tone, or something else, serums can help you achieve the complexion you’re looking for.
Moisturizer
Moisturizer helps supply your skin with the moisture it needs to function. Your skin needs water to function properly, as it improves its ability to heal and repair damage. Moisturizers attract water to your skin to aid in that process.
Sunscreen
Sunscreen is probably the most important part of your morning routine. Sunscreen protects your skin from the UV rays of the sun, which break down the structural collagen and elastin that keep your skin smooth and healthy.
Evening Routine
Before bed, we recommend a few steps for an evening routine for your skin care in Jamestown, RI.
Cleanser
You should start off your evening routine by using a cleanser to wash the dried sweat, dead skin cells, and other pollutants from the surface of your skin. Cleanser also helps remove most of your makeup and prepares your skin to absorb the other products in your routine.
Toner
Toner uses unique ingredients to provide a deeper cleanse for your skin. Good toners remove dirt and debris from your pores, hydrate your skin, and improve the pH balance of your skin.
Exfoliator
To remove dead and damaged skin cells, you can use a chemical exfoliator like salicylic or lactic acid. Some cleansers or toners already include these active ingredients, which can help combine certain steps in your routine for skin care in Jamestown, RI.
Serums
After cleansing and exfoliating your skin, you can use serums to target specific issues like hyperpigmentation, wrinkles, dull skin tone, and more. An expert can recommend serums personalized to your needs to help with specific issues.
Night Mask
Once you apply your serums, you lock them in with your night mask. This works similarly to a moisturizer, but it typically contains more ingredients that help heal your skin while you sleep, setting your skin up for success the next day.
Product Highlight: Sunscreen
One of the most important steps in your overall skin care routine is sunscreen. Of any factor, the sun does the most damage to your skin—specifically the UV rays from the sun.
While you need some direct sunlight for your skin to create vitamin D, you truly only need a few minutes each day to make all the vitamin D you need. After those few minutes, the UV rays from the sun begin damaging your skin’s cellular structure.
That is why we emphasize the importance of including sunscreen in your skin care in Jamestown, RI. Sunscreen can use either chemicals or minerals (or both) to protect your skin from sustaining UV damage and preventing you from developing issues like wrinkles, fine lines, sun spots, and more.
While both chemical-based and mineral-based sunscreens are safe for use, some ingredients in chemical-based sunscreens can cause acne. When we recommend sunscreen options, we typically suggest choosing mineral-based sunscreen of at least 30 SPF.
We do not suggest using a sunscreen with a higher SPF than 50, as studies have shown that sunscreens that go above 50 SPF don’t significantly increase benefits—even though the cost continues to increase.
Begin Building Your Skin Care Routine
Ready to build up your personalized skin care routine? You can start by scheduling an appointment with our skin experts at Harbour Direct, or you can use our complimentary treatment planning tool to start exploring your best options for skin care based on your individual needs.
We do everything we can to help you find the best products for your skin care in Jamestown, RI.
