Showing posts with label skin analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skin analysis. Show all posts

3 Jul 2012

Skin Analysis (Douglas)

Douglas offers a skin analysis in their stores. I didn't know that before I got this coupon for a free skin analysis with one of my orders at Douglas earlier this year:
I am not sure but I think you can get such a skin analysis also completely for free, i.e. without such a coupon.

At first I doubted that this skin analysis would be useful for me. My odyssey of trying to find out what kind of skin type I have lasts years now. Why should such a skin analysis be more helpful than all the skin tests and skin discussions I had before? I made different tests you can often find in women's magazines (no insights gained - just a lot of additional confusion), I discussed my skin with a MAC employee (he was sure my skin was dehydrated and recommended me Dermalogica products ;-)) and even with a dermatologist (she was sure my skin was normal and did not want to recommend me anything).

My skin is not acne-prone and although it tends a bit to redness, it is also not eczema-prone. I usually do not get any spots and have only very few and small blackheads. As a teenager I also did not have too many spots, just one or two here or there and also the amount and size of my blackheads were rather small. My pores also have always been rather small. But I always had the feeling that my skin was drier than the skin of other people my age. At a very early age, I already discovered a tendency to get wrinkles and I also always had some kind of light redness in my face. Only recently, when I started to use skin care more regularly (i.e. last summer when I decided to use up the huge amount of beauty products I had accumulated in my bathroom), I discovered that my skin redness is associated with skin dryness. When properly cared for, my skin colour is even and radiant and really beautiful.

While last summer I surprisingly was able to get the most beautiful skin of my life with rather light face creams like Weleda Almond Soothing Facial Lotion (in german Weleda Mandel Wohltuende Feuchtigkeitspflege) which targets combination skin - but only after 1 month of regular use (morning and evening), a few applications did not change anything and each time I skipped a treatment, it got worse again -, during last winter I was not able to manage my skin properly at all. It was very dry and sensitive although I used skin care for dry and very dry skin. With the skin care of last summer, it was even worse. Nothing helped my skin to look as great as last summer. So, I was and still am asking myself whether there is something I can do to better soothe my skin in winter too.

My skin also does not like being not cared after at all. It tends to become very dry also in summer and I get wrinkles and redness due to dryness. For the Douglas skin analysis which I did last weekend, I stopped using face cream and makeup for two days in order to get my most natural skin state analyzed. Hence, my skin looked really terrible when I did this test. It was very dry and wrinkly. After the analysis, I hence immediately started using my skin care again (which unfortunately is not a good skin care for my skin but this will be discussed in another post ;-)).

At Douglas, the skin test is performed with a specific kind of small device which is standing on a table. A tube is coming out of the device with a sensor at it's end. This sensor is put your skin and when the test is performed, it feels a bit tingly on the skin. During the test four things are tested: hydration of the skin, fat content of the skin, pigmentation and elasticity of the skin. Afterwards you are given a general recommendation for skin care and sun protection - in my case they didn't give me any product recommendations (as mentioned on the coupon) which I appreciated a lot, however.
My results were as follows:
  • Hydration: the device measured 50% to 60% which is not much hydrated but kind of okayish - at least it is not dry either. Interestingly, my skin on the forehead was a bit drier than on the cheeks. Hence, I seem to not have a typical t-zone of combination skin. 
  • Fat Content: this was my worst result. The device measured nearly nothing at all anywhere in my face. The employee asked me even whether I had put some powder on but I hadn't. As mentioned above, I hadn't used any skin care and any makeup for 2 whole days before that test. Finally she said I should have used skin care in the morning but I think that this would have measured the effect of the skin care and not the basic state of my skin itself. What do you think? This result however shows that my skin seems to not be able to protect itself even in summer (and it's really warm at the moment). How vulnerable must it be in winter? :-/
  • Pigmentation: I am not very pigmented and need very light foundations anyway, so it is no wonder that the device recommended me an SPF of 40. The employee suggested to use something between SPF 30 and SPF 40.
  • Skin Elasticity: This was my best result. On very dry areas like the forehead it was a bit more than 70% and on a bit less dry areas it was 80%. The employee said that this is a great result. I don't know whether this is true since I don't have a clue how the device works. The employee was not able to explain it herself either but I guess she compared my result with the results of her other customers. I wonder whether there is a correlation between dryness and elasticity. Do you happen to know whether dry skin is also less elastic? 
I might do this test soon again with skin care applied in the morning - just to see whether the result changes - and I also plan to do this test in Winter again, because my winter skin is incredibly dry and I just cannot get it in proper shape, i.e. healthy glowing without any redness and dryness. As mentioned above, in summer, my skin is much easier to manage.

Have you already done such a Douglas skin analysis? What were your results?

The face mapping approach by Dermalogica seems to be interesting as well (see more information here), but do they explain the results in way that does not depend on Dermalogica products? Do you happen to know whether there are other, possibly better skin tests available that reveal much deeper insights about our skin (independent from product recommendations)? The Douglas skin analysis helped me a lot to gain more information about my skin but I'd like to learn even more about it. If you know about better skin tests, I'd appreciate it a lot if you would share that information.