Annie Palmer

So you have been getting your facials in, every service was a relaxing, rejuvenating experience that left you glowing and eager for the next facial but what’s this?

Soft skin, a nice glow but now your face looks like someone has been depigmenting patches of your face at random?!

You have not been picking at pimples, you have not been hanging out unprotected in the sun so what now? How did this happen?

Some fungi naturally occur on human skin. They occur naturally elsewhere but as this is a skincare blog I will stay local to skin.

Fungus on your face? Eww! Not a pleasant thought but it is real. We are awash in spores and microbes if we are diligent and lucky our microbial environment is always balanced and all the good bacteria keep being good to us and all the bad ones are kept in check.

If we are not diligent, if we are unlucky or careless however, the bad microbes can run wild, give us some nasty manifestations of diseases and frankly freak us out.

Which brings us to the point: Skin care is an art and a science. Choosing products and services for your skincare needs requires that your skin-care artist is knowledgeable about the science behind the protocols and products being used to provide for your skin’s needs, even if your needs is just a quick cleanse, some quick hydration and a barrier top-up.

This brings me to my point. Barrier care is an essential part of facials. In the treatment room and at home we insult the skin to make the barrier more permitting of actives. If we are being diligent we also take equal care to ensure that we are restoring that barrier with the right restoratives. For example, niacinamide and ceramides signal skin cells to mature, differentiate and move up to the topmost layer of the skin. Part of that migration sees increased lipid secretions meant to shore up the skin barrier and tighten up that selective permeability returning that suppleness, smoothness, glow and protection from invasion of foreign matter organisms back to the skin.

So what’s the problem? Too much of a good thing can be too much of a good thing. The lesson here is that excessive ‘emoliaton’ and ‘lipidation’ of our skin in an effort to restore the lipid barrier can back-fire and instead of making our skin soft, glowy and protected we can over-feed a very nasty little fungus called Malassezia or more specifically, Pityriasis versicolor. This fungus thrives on super emollient occlusives such as olive oil and castor oil (some clinicians use these as topicals and this is correct in the right amount and contexts). p.Versicolor also thrives on sebum produced naturally in the skin.

Putting it all together. Stimulating the skin to produce more lipids must be done in moderation, according to the needs of your skin type and with professional guidance. As in all things too much can be too much and the ramifications of over-doing isn’t always an easy fix.

If you think that you have p.Versicolor, talk to your dermatologist who will most likely, after professional diagnosis put you on a regiment of antifungal. Incidentally, it is common knowledge that p. Versicolor on the body can be treated using a typical antifungal shampoo such as Selson Blue, which has Selenium Sulfide, the key antifungal active.

Until next time,

Take care of all your skin and follow the science

Sincerely Annie