Your Pre-Summer Skin Detox Starts Now!

I have a friend with perfect skin. Her bare skin looks like she's wearing high-end foundation.  She doesn't even own foundation. She wears eye makeup, lipstick, and a little under eye concealer yet it looks like she's wearing a full face of makeup.   Part of the reason why her skin is so pretty is because she never has breakouts.  She doesn't have to worry about covering blemishes or scars.

Recently she really increased her water intake.  Not too long afterward, she started to break out.  A little confused, she reached out to talk about how her skin was behaving out of character.  But I wasn't all that surprised.  Then I went on to explain my theory about why her skin was freaking out.
In the past, I constantly broke out.  I tried everything imaginable to keep my skin under control.  One of my strategies was to study the behavior of my breakouts to help prevent them.  I noticed that my skin behaved pretty well when temperatures dropped.   But in spring & summer, everything went down hill. After observing the skin of countless others that I came in contact with, I realized that I wasn't the only one experiencing this.

That's when I came to the unproven conclusion that "warm weather breakouts" were commonplace.

During winter, everything is at a standstill. We don't sweat, our circulation slows and the rate at which our skin sheds is nearly at a standstill.

Then suddenly, our environment warms up. We start sweating for the first time in months causing our largest organ to start the elimination process.   Unfortunately, our pores are clogged from being inactive for so long.  When things ramp up again, we experience "summer breakouts."

In the past, I've actually been able to avoid summer breakouts.  But it required preparation that began long before summer.  Basically, I activate the internal cleansing process prematurely so when summer hits, all of that excess sweating and sebum doesn't spark crazy breakouts.

The idea for the pre-summer detox came after my first exposure to a steam room.  I could barely keep my eyes open because the sweat was so salty that it burned my eyes.  But after a few sessions, my sweat was "clear" and didn't irritate my eyes.   That's when I realized that I could detox pretty quickly if I took the right steps.

Karrueche flaunting her summer glowy skin

This year, my pre-summer detox will look something like this:

1.  At least 1 sauna session weekly.  I jumped in the sauna for the first time in forever so I can try out Karrueche's sauna routine.  It took me forever to start sweating.  Why?  Probably because my pores were backed up.  Next time I go in, I anticipate the sweating process to begin much sooner.  After jumping out, I used my Korean exfoliation mitt l and combined it with Shea Hut Sugar Scrub.  The end result was magical.  My skin was so soft that I couldn't stop touching it.

2.  Regular consumption of internal detox tonics.  My go-to detox tonics are lemon water/ACV and any liquid laced with chlorophyll drops.

3. Increase water intake.

4. Regular facial steam sessions.  This really helps keep my pores from congestion especially if I mask on an almost daily basis.   Once upon a time, I steamed pretty much every morning while massaging my face with coconut oil.  The combination of massaging the skin while steaming would draw out whiteheads like nobody's business. My skin was extremely smooth because of it.

5.  Lastly, I'll do a few mild peels with mandelic acid to remove dead surface skin.

This detox process will continue throughout spring and summer.  If done consistently, I should be able to avoid summer breakouts altogether.

Since our conversation, my friend's skin has started to settle down and go back to normal.   Her pre-summer skin detox is now complete thanks to the spike in water intake.  My skin is a bit more finicky which is why my detox routine is a bit more elaborate.