You know the feeling; you wake up to a major zit just screaming to be popped – and just can’t help yourself, much as you know you shouldn’t.
And it doesn’t end there. Here are five more bad beauty habits that the experts are urging us we need to ditch now:
1. Pick at ingrown hairs
Oh, we know how tempting it can be to compulsively pick at ingrown hairs, but the truth is that doing it can lead to both infection and even permanent scarring. If you are troubled by one (or more) ingrown hairs, seek help from the pros and get your beautician to remove them for you.
To prevent it from happening, make sure you exfoliate when you shower, use a body brush or loofah, and apply a body lotion containing alpha hydroxy acids. This will help loosen dead surface skin cells and help prevent more ingrown hairs.
2. Sunbathing
You know it’s wrong, but it just feels sooo good. The thing is, though, that baking in the sun is incredibly harmful – even if you use a really high SPF. In trying to protect itself from sun exposure, the skin thickens and produces melanin, the pigment that darkens the cells. Any pigment change from UVA or UVB light can cause premature aging, and worse, increase the chances of skin cancer.
3. Frequently wearing very high heels
OK, so let’s all agree that wearing high heels makes us feel taller, slimmer and sexier, yes? The thing is, by doing so, you could be bringing some very un-sexy problems your way.
Heels will, if worn frequently and over long periods of time, gradually shorten your calf muscles and tendonitis, as well as give you bunions, clawed toes, corns, ingrown toe-nails and lower back pain.
*grabs the ballerina flats…
4. Sleeping in your makeup
This one is such a beauty no-no.
When you sleep, your skin is working very hard to renew itself, and your cell-turnover is at its peak in the middle of the night. If you go to bed in your make-up, you are essentially hindering your skin in shedding dead cells, which can explain how our faces often look a little dull and grey after a very late night – or when we have gone to sleep without carefully removing all our makeup.
5. Licking your lips
It’s a natural reaction, really. Your lips feel dry, so you lick them on order to moisten them, right? Wrong, says the beauty experts.
In fact, licking your lips actually has the opposite effect to moistening them, and will instead dry them out. Instead, make sure you carry a lip balm with you at all times and apply this the minute your lips start feeling a little dry. Another great tip is to apply a thick layer of rich lip balm to your lips before going to bed at night.
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