Why Using a Toner as Part of Your Skin Care Regime is Important

As women are experiencing ever increasing demands on their time, many have opted out of using a toner in their skin care regime and only use cleansing and moisturising as the key steps to keeping their skin looking healthy, vibrant and young.

This is however a big mistake, as toning is a very important part of a daily skin care regime. Toning follows the cleansing routine and actually serves some important functions.

1. Toning closes the pores of the skin. Once cleansing of the skin has been completed, the pores tend to be open and therefore slightly enlarged. As a result, moisture can leave the skin, which in return dehydrates the skin. This is not a desired effect on the contrary loss of moisture from the skin is highly undesirable.


2. Closing of the pores has another benefit. It stops dust and other air born particles from settling in the pores and potentially causing problems. In addition, good quality, natural toners are anti-septic and provides moisture and nutrients to the skin, preparing the skin for the third step in a skin care regime - Moisturising.

Some skin care companies have tried to eliminate the need for this step combining the cleansing and toning steps into one step and formulated their cleansers to include toning functions.

Now think about this for a second and you will realise how ridiculous this concept is. A cleanser is supposed to open the pores and remove dirt and stale natural oils from the pores and thus cleansing the skin. A toner, as we discussed above, is designed to close to pores... See the contradiction? It cannot possibly work.

Any astringent (substance that closes the pores) cannot be applied to the skin at the same time as a product that is supposed to open and cleanse the pores. It just does not work. The whole idea is just to market a product to time-poor women by telling them they can combine these to steps and thus save time.

Unfortunately most women do not fully understand just how their skin care products work. They like them, their skin may even look good and the products therefore appear to be doing their job. In reality however, these types of skin care products are only doing a moderate amount of caring for the skin and the bulk of the products do very little at all except look good on the shelf and cost money.

The three steps in any good daily skin care regime must include cleansing, toning and moisturising. In addition, you should always consider using natural skin care products, as there are too many synthetic and artificial chemicals in commercially made skin care products which may actually do you harm.

Let’s look at a natural toner and it’s ingredients to understand how they actually work.

The Wild Herb Toner from Wildcrafted Herbal Products is used for oily skin and has a number of specifically chosen ingredients, which include:

Rosemary, Witch hazel, Juniper Berry and Peppermint. These herbs and essential oils are chosen for their toning and invigorating effects on the skin, while Grapefruit, Niaouli and Sweet Orange refresh the skin and combine to maintain normal sebum (oil) secretion.

Rosemary oil is effective in the care of oily and sluggish skin being rejuvenating and promoting circulation. The herbal extract of Witch hazel is strongly astringent and anti-inflammatory. Juniper berry oil has a tonic effect on oily skin, while Peppermint is used for its cooling and refreshing actions on the skin.

As with most of the citrus oils, essential oil of Grapefruit has a cleansing and toning effect on the skin and is particularly good for oily and congested skin. It tightens puffy skin and reduces enlarged pores and helps to disperse pockets of accumulated fluid and impurities. Similarly, the Hydrosol of Niaouli is tonic and antiseptic to the skin and is particularly good for use on oily skin types. The essential oil of Sweet Orange is added for its fragrance and its gentle action on normalising oily skin.

Now you might have noticed, that several of the citrus oils are indeed also cleansing in their actions. Do not confuse using cleansing in conjunction with a toner as meaning cleansing of pores. Pores will close as soon as an astringent is used, however, the area of skin that is not a pore, will get a cleansing effect and removing of stale, natural oils.

The distinction must be made between what you want a product to do. You may be able to use similar oils or herbal extracts, but there are specific actions that must be focused on. If you are formulating a cleanser you cannot use herbs or essential oils that have an astringent action or else you will not be able to cleanse the pores of the skin.

If on the other hand you are formulating a toner, an astringent action must be one of its key actions and thus it is formulated to closing the pores, preventing cleaning of the pores.

It is really quite simple and once you know what each of the steps are designed to do, it is easy to see why the 3-Step daily skin care regime is important.

 

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