This is a video I have wanted to share with you for ages, but for whatever reason it's just not happened. Skin reactions, it is something I've experienced numerous times and I'm guessing you might have done as well. We're all kind of trying different things on a skin and a skin reaction is something that it can happen. I think I'm probably 10 when I had my first skin reaction. I know I'd saved up for, you know, back in the 80s, my first beauty product and the first one that I'd saved up and gone and re-bought. I had a reaction to it, so that was my first experience. As I've tried things throughout my career, I've had numerous issues and reactions and responses to things. So, you know, I have a personal experience of it, but also them from my clients and questions I get from you guys as well. So, I hope this is going to be helpful. So, firstly, why do we get skin reactions? It could be that it's an ingredient that your skin just doesn't love. It's a natural response that the body has. It's kind of to highlight to us, I'm not liking that. This is not kind of working for me. So, there's this histamine response within the skin, which is very obvious usually and it can be something really mild or something, you know, a little bit more aggressive as it comes out. It could be an ingredient that your skin isn't liking. It might be something new in a product. It could be a synthetic ingredient or it could even be a natural ingredient. It doesn't matter. It depends what your body and skin is not liking. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that organic skincare is going to eradicate any potential reaction. It might lessen the chance, but it's not going to get rid of it, okay? It could be that you've started some medication for every reason that might be and your body is just responding differently. And if that's the case, it might be a product that you've been loving and using for years and then just out of the blue, your skin starts responding to it. I know personally, I experienced that during my pregnancies, products that I'd been using forever, something I couldn't use on my skin. So, that was, you know, an example of hormones impacting on how that skin wants to respond. It might be something out of date. You know, you might have left it on the window sill in the sunlight and it's just kind of gone over its date. So, the formulation, it's not as clean and the skin is not liking that. So, those are a few reasons why. It might even be thinking about it from my client's point of view that actually within a facial, we've done quite strong treatment, maybe some kind of peel or, you know, maybe a fractional type of thing or a needling. You have to be really careful about what you apply particularly in that first 48 hours after some type of treatment like that. We don't want any of you kind of synthetic fragrance products or things on the skin because we've kind of done things and activated the skin. So, we just need to tailor it back with what you'll then applying to the skin. Okay. So, what does the skin reaction look and feel like? Firstly, it might look pink. You've got that extra blood flow and response going on in the skin. You might feel that there's an itchy area. You know, again, we've got the irritation within the skin. Excuse me, this is a dog chew, my makeup brush. So, it might feel itchy. You know, you might even feel tiny little bumps under the skin. If it's a reaction, it's not spot as in, you know, nothing coming out postulo. Often it's like an irritated tiny little bumps under the skin that can crop up. It might even be inflamed, you know, dependent on the severity of it, but all these are quite natural responses of the skin going, okay, I'm not liking this, you know, and I'm going to show you and tell you, I'm really not liking this. What do we do? So firstly, don't panic, okay? The skin has an incredible way of healing itself, you know, so this is not going to be long-term damage. It might be that actually just by simply removing everything from your face and doing a cool compress that that's enough to do to calm it down. That would be my first step, to be honest. So, remove everything. I'd use a damp flannel or clasp or something. We just need to get everything off the skin that might have caused that response. Cool compress, take that heat out of the skin. It might be then that we kind of leave the skin naked for a period of time. Let it just kind of, you know, breathe, do it thing, maybe night sleep and wake up the next morning, it might be fine. There are a couple of what I'd call rescue products. Ideally, now, because the skin has sparked off, I'd be advising that we drop everything out of the skin for a period of time. That might be just, you know, a 12 hours overnight and it's fine or if the response is stronger, we might actually have to knock everything out for a few days and I would go really minimum, tail of the whole routine back and that's including everything from a cleanse through to your makeup and your primers, okay? We need to take everything out. What I'd call my safe ranges to be using are serivane. This is a hydrating cleanser. This is just one of the products for their ranges. Really nice and affordable. You can get it in your local chemist and things. This is a bit of a go-to. You can nip out very easily, get hold of something like this. Another range that is widely available is La Roche Pauze. Often sit next, sits next to a van. The two ranges are similar in their formulations. This particular cream, it's called Sicca Plast, a balm B5. The zinc in it, this is that soothing repair cream. Again, a van have a very similar, I don't have one here to show you. Both of those ranges, they also have something called a thermal water. It's a fine mist. So if the skin is feeling particularly warm, it needs a bit of hydration when it's irritated. That fine mist is perfect for doing that with as well. So those are my high street go-to's. If you want something from professional ranges, there are a handful that I particularly like. There's a range I use within my treatments called Cosmetics. They have a product called CPR. Whole load of herbs and calming ingredients in their great for literally taking down redness and irritation. They also have, it's a hydrating balm. Can't read it because I've used it so much. I've rubbed all the writing off the front. It's a thicker ointment-me-kind of balm. So that's kind of, you know, for, to be honest, both of them for any kind of skin, but both rescue products. So same with kind of done all of that, and it's not working. I would then, if you are safe and I'm not a doctor, I'm not prescribing anything, okay? I want to make that clear. If you are fine taking something like a hay fever tablet, you might need to take that anti-histamine. We've got a family of hay fever sufferers, so we've always got a piraton in our cupboard. So, you know, as long as you are medically safe to take something like that, you might benefit from taking that maybe for about three days. That might in itself be enough to take down that histamine response within the skin, and then it's all fine. I also often will have a hydrocortisone type of cream in our cupboard, you know, we've got a family of kids and everything. We always need these kind of rescue products. So again, if you are safe using that type of thing, you know, if you've got any concerns, I'd always kind of consult you doctor or someone in a chemist first. What if that doesn't work? I was personally in that situation a couple of months ago. I've had a particular treatment from someone else, and I'd work on it the next morning. My face literally blown up. I know I'm not a panic. I'm more like, hmm, I wonder what's caused this? This is intriguing. But I've done my usual steps, but I actually then had to go to a dermatologist and get a prescribed stronger steroid cream. And I ended up taking that for, I think, is about three days, and that was what then knocked it on the head and took that heat out. But that is prescribed, you know, that's maybe from your GP or a dermatologist or something like that. They also prescribed a stronger corticosteroid cream. So those two are not for long-term use. They're kind of that, okay, we've tried everything else. It's not working. We need to kind of go a little bit stronger here. So those are potentially for maybe a couple of days' use. And for me personally, I found that enough to drop it all out. And my skin probably from reaction, I'm needed to write a blog actually, because, you know, I've had a number over the years for many different reasons. And I need to kind of share some of the pictures of the reactions that I've had. From reaction with this particularly severe episode that I had to actually healing was probably, I'm going to say it's potentially that seven to ten days, which is a long period of time. You know, it was calming down definitely from that seven days, once I kind of, you know, gone through all of my steps to try. And then, you know, the steroids started doing their thing. So those are all different options for dealing with the skin reaction. It does depend on the severity of it. You know, I think there's those baby steps that you can kind of take in the first place. Yeah, so I hope you found that helpful. You know, please do ask me any questions below.