DIY Skincare Projects that You Should Avoid (Part 2)

• DIY Skincare Projects that You Should Avoid (Part 1)

5. Exfoliating with baking soda

There are plenty of household products that can double as inexpensive exfoliators. For example, making a body scrub with salt and sugar. But despite the sheer number of DIY scrub recipes suggesting it online, baking soda is not one of them. It has a basic pH much higher than where healthy skin should live. baking soda, on the other hand, is extremely alkaline and will disrupt the pH level of your skin. With the pH level of skin being slightly acidic at 4.5-5, applying ingredients that are highly alkaline is more damaging to the skin compared to ingredients with high acidity. Your skin’s barrier will be disrupted, resulting in severe moisture loss and actual skin damage. Furthermore, with the continuous use of baking soda, it could leave to irregulate natural oil production.

• Foaming Coco-Cocoa Body Scrub

• Minty Coconut Salt Scrub Cubes

6. vinegar or Lemon juice as toner and body deodorant

Some blogs recommend using apple cider vinegar or lemon juice as a cleanser or toner for acne or hyperpigmentation. However, despite having many healthcare benefits, apple cider vinegar and lemon juice are not good for the skin. Apple cider vinegar is very acidic, it has a pH of 2-3. Therefore it can result in inflammation and burns even with just one usage. Other potentially harmful effects range from exaggerated sunburn, superficial chemical burn, depigmentation, and permanent skin damage to our delicate skin tissue. Lemon juice has a pH of 2-3 as well, and it is photosensitive. It will often lead to skin irritation and inflmmation if you use it directly over your skin or acne spot. I would rather drink the lemon juice or use it for cooking.

7. raw food ingredients recipe

We all have one or two food ingredients that we love so much and that we believe that using them directly on our skin might give us extra benefits. Well, it is not so wrong. However, if a fresh food ingredient is not properly formulated, using them in our skincare products directly will actually promote microorganisms and bacterial growth. Fresh food ingredients are actually their source of food. Without proper formulation and preservation, you are just going to create a product that deem to be failed.

8. Recipes with unsafe portions of essential oils

It is not hard to come across various blogs propose essential oil recipes. But do you know that not all the essential oils have the same dermal limit? They all don’t have the same dilution rate to be use safely. More on this on my future blog post.

From building a beautiful fragrance profile to providing numerous health benefits, essential oils are some of the best things in a formulator’s toolkit. Many recipes found online or in outdated sources neglect to mention any contraindications that an essential oil may have. Are there any medical conditions or ailments which might be exacerbated by the use of a particular oil? Is the essential oil you are using photosensitive? Does the recipe call for too large of a number of essential oils, relative to the other ingredients?

There are many factors to be considering when it comes to formulating safely with essential oil. Essential oils are potent and I would suggest you to equip yourself by doing more research before start working and formulating with essential oil. Just don’t follow a recipe that doesn’t mention the percentage of essential oils. I realised just this section, it deserved to have a long blog post about it. I promise I will come back to this in my future blog post!

Below are my recommendations to learn about esssential oils:

• Essential Oil Safety Own Safety Profiles for 400 Essential Oils and 206 Constituents Authors: Robert Tisserand and Rodney Young
• The Complete Book Of Essential Oils & Aromatherapy Includes 125 Essential Oil Profiles Author: Valerie Ann Worwood

9. Butter instead of face Moisturiser

I often came across facial cream recipes on the internet that is an anhydrous product (meaning no water content) but claims that it is a face moisturizer. Although in the short-run products like shea or cocoa butter really deliver almost instant moisturizing and comfort, the long-term effect is precisely the opposite. 100% oil creates a film on the skin surface, which does not allow your skin to “breathe” normally and prevents the evaporation of water. As a result, metabolic processes in the skin slow down, it becomes dry and dehydrated. And if you have oily skin, most oils clog the pores so that you can get acne breakouts in addition to the previously described effects.

Botanical butter and oils are fine when appropriately chosen and formulated correctly. The idea is not to replace your daily moisturizer with an anhydrous product on a regular basis.

• Lavender Rose Facial Moisturiser
• Soothing Aloe Facial Cream

A good facial moisturizer recipe should contain emollients, humectants, and occlusives. Learn what are them here!

And finally, research, research, research….

Phew, this article is a bit longer than I thought I would write. So here comes the conclusion. Recipes gleaned from websites, blogs, YouTube channels, and even Pinterest links may have been created by well-intentioned people who are accidentally passing on inaccurate information. So before you get started, you should research thoroughly all the ingredients that you are going to use for your projects. Books and scientific websites can be great resources. Research takes time but it definitely worth it. Don’t create something just because a blogger, YouTuber, or any influencer tells you so or claims that it is great for this and that. Create it because you have done your research and know that doing so will benefit you and your skin. At the end of the day, you are responsible for what is putting on your skin. If creating skincare products can be done by using random household ingredients, the multi-billion cosmetic industry will not exist today.

To sum up, a good skincare product should be properly formulated with ingredients that are safe to use on our skin.

Perhaps I didn’t cover all the crazy ideas spread all over the web. Have you ever seen anything like that on social media or at “healthy” lifestyle websites? What do you think about it? I look forward to hearing your opinion!

I have gone lazy with my usual citing method, for you science nerd, below is an interesting article about pH:-

• Why the pH of Skin and Products Are Crucially Important from simpleskincarescience.com

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Calleigh

Hi, I am Calleigh, MEng Chemical Engineering and a process engineer, and I'm here to show you how to DIY your skincare and household products with the correct formulation and using only natural ingredients. I believe that eating good food (Yes I have cooking recipes too!) and living in a chemical-free environment are the keys to having a healthy lifestyle. And that doesn't need to be expensive.