He skin care It’s fashionable. We have always washed our faces and used creams, but in recent years it has become quite common. ritual. It even reached the West korean routine, consisting of ten steps, the beginning of which is marked by double cleansing. You can skip many steps of the entire procedure, but the truth is that Facial cleansing in two stages is too good to ignore. With it, the skin becomes much cleaner and prepared for further actions. But there is a problem. And even in this case we do not avoid this typical feeling of tightness which we always have when we wash ourselves.
It is one thing to have smooth skin, for which people even go to the extent of injecting bacterial toxins, and quite another to have the tension that we usually feel after cleansing our face. In fact, when we see influencers from cosmetic assessing cleanersthe factor that is usually given the most importance is that it does not leave a feeling of tightness.
The problem is that this is very difficult to avoid; because, contrary to what we might think, this feeling it’s in our head. Yes, there is something in the skin that triggers it, but it is the brain that confuses what is happening and reacts exaggeratedly. So, delving into this neurological explanation may be the detail that cosmetic manufacturers are missing out on, so finally, facial cleansing is the enjoyable experience that our skin and brain deserve.
What causes facial cleansing to feel tight?
This curious phenomenon was recently discovered by a group of scientists from Stanford University. In his study published in PNAS Nexusdemonstrate with two-stage experiment reasons for tightness after facial cleansing.
The first thing they did was think about what might be causing this feeling. When we wash we remove dirt, pollution, sweat and other impurities. Most of these substances that we want to remove are fatty based, which is why they are used. surfactant soap, which help them become attached to the water and leave with it. But unfortunately, the skin is covered in oils that protect it, and some of them are also removed.
When this happens, the skin’s protective barrier, known as stratum corneum, contracts. On the other hand, if moisturizing creamthis provides water, which helps the stratum corneum swell, returning it to its previous state.
This happens on a microscopic level. How can we perceive this after cleansing our face?
This is exactly the question these scientists asked themselves, so they decided to conduct an experiment. On the one hand, they took lab-grown skin samples from three parts of the body: cheek, forehead and stomach.
They were exposed to both facial cleansers and moisturizers. different compositions and they set about testing the changes they made at the molecular level. As they have already felt, the stratum corneum has shriveled from cleansing agents. Some have more, others have less. And then the moisturizer helped increase its volume, and at different levels.
Human skin simulator
The next step was to enter the analyzed molecular data into human skin model, which allowed us to calculate how it would feel on the spot. Thus, they were able to see that when the stratum corneum contracts, a signal is generated that travels through the skin until it reaches mechanoreceptors. This Sense receptors that respond to mechanical pressure. They are closely related to the sense of touch; because, for example, they allow different surface textures to be distinguished.
When the stimulus caused by the contraction of the outer layer of skin reaches these receptors, sends a signal to the brain, which interprets this as pressure on the skin. More precisely, it is interpreted as if we are pulling on it.
The artificial model used by these scientists also helped them quantify the feeling of tightness after facial cleansing and recovery with hydrationusing different products. But there was still a second part of the experiment ahead.
Testing facial cleansing directly on people
Until now, everything has been hypothetical calculations carried out using cultured cells and an artificial model. Therefore, these scientists also wanted to test their hypothesis directly in People.
So they tested nine cleaning products with… 2000 women in France and six moisturizing creams with 700 women in China. The results were very positive for their research as the results clearly correlated with what they observed in the laboratory.
That is, when women were asked about their feeling of tightness after cleansing or moisturizing their face, they gave answers very similar to those obtained based on mechanoreceptor hypothesis.
This is a very important discovery, since they can help avoid the unpleasant feeling of tightness that occurs after cleansing your face. The study was conducted in collaboration with L’Oréal, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the brand soon began producing cleaning products that were more enjoyable to use. And there is nothing better than a deep study of the mechanisms of what happens to us. After all, almost everything, including cosmetics, controlled by our brain.
Source: Hiper Textual
