The question we hear a lot is how often should you exfoliate your body? And what is the best type of natural body scrub? Before we get right to it, it would help to understand the purpose of exfoliating skin.
Exfoliating removes dead skin cells which have built up on the outermost layer of your body. If not removed, these dead skin cells can cause a variety of issues, including dull, rough and dry skin, clogged pores or ingrown hairs.
Exfoliating your body with a natural body scrub also promotes blood circulation and makes the protective layer of your skin more permeable, which improves the absorption of any moisturising ingredients of the scrub or moisturisers and oils you may apply later.
How often should you exfoliate your body?
While natural body scrubs have all these great benefits, there is such a thing as over-exfoliating and it’s important to establish how often should you exfoliate your body for the best skin health. While the excess needs to be removed from time to time, the layer of dead skin cells also acts as a protective layer that prevents it from being dried out or irritated.
It’s also important to keep your skin type in mind when deciding who often should you exfoliate your body. If you have normal or combination skin like most people, then exfoliating once or twice per week will likely be the sweet spot for you. Those with dry and dull skin may benefit from more frequent exfoliation, two to three times per week. Lastly, if you have very sensitive skin, you may just want to exfoliate your body once per week or every other week, as not to irritate it and strip it of that protective layer.
However, it’s also important to view these numbers as a place to start, rather than a frequency that’s set in stone. If you notice that your skin is getting irritated and red, reduce the number of times you’re exfoliating per week or choose a gentler natural body scrub. If your skin remains dull and dry despite exfoliating, try increasing the frequency.
Which natural body scrub to choose?
So now we've answered how often should you exfoliate your body, we can move on to what the best products are. When choosing an exfoliating product, it’s very important to choose a natural body scrub which uses sugar, coffee, or other natural ingredients as a scrubbing agent. This is because non-natural commercial exfoliants can contain plastic pieces – microbeads – as exfoliating agents. While these are banned in rinse-off cosmetics in some parts of the world (including most of Europe and North America), they’re still legal in other parts of the world or can be used in products that aren’t meant to be rinsed off right away – so keep your eyes peeled on the ingredient label.
Once you begin to search for the right natural body scrub, you will want to keep your skin type in mind again – to choose one with the best ingredients for you.
If you have normal or combination skin, you have more space to experiment to see what exactly works best for you. You can adjust your frequency of exfoliating based on whether you’re using a scrub more suited for dull skin (exfoliate two times per week) or one better for irritated skin (exfoliate three times).
If you have dull, very dry skin, you’ll want to look for scrubs which have strongly moisturising ingredients, such as shea butter or cocoa butter, as well as ingredients that further promote circulation (like coffee grounds). A coffee and cashmere body polish or the coffee body scrub with peppermint may be the right choice for you.
Lastly, if you’re dealing with irritated and sensitive skin, you’ll want to pick gentle exfoliating agents and soothing ingredients. Choose a natural body scrub such as the rosehip and Himalayan salt body polish, which refreshes yet soothes the skin.
And of course, not forgetting a natural organic body moisturiser the finish off with for the perfect body care routine.
Fragrance experts at Nuhr note that pairing your exfoliation routine with a soothing home scent for example, lighting one of their softly-scented oud candles can turn a quick scrub into a calming, spa-like ritual you actually look forward to.
