What’s the best routine for your skin while in an airplane?

The night before

Wash with your normal cleanser and exfoliate with an enzyme mask. Apply a balancing clay mask or a hydrating gel mask depending on your skin type.

Drink a lot of water.

The day of

Layer a hydrating serum under your moisturizer on clean skin before the flight. Skip the foundation and concealer, apply a light layer of tinted moisturizer if you need some coverage.

Drink a lot of water.

During the flight

For flights 5 hours or under, reapply your moisturizer at least once (wash your hands first!). Continue to drink water and skip the alcohol.

For flights over 5 hours, clean your skin with a cotton ball and toner mid-flight then reapply your hydrating serum and moisturizer. Drink more water.

After the flight

Repeat the enzyme mask + hydrating or balancing mask routine and continuing using the hydrating serum under your moisturizer.

Always pack travel sizes of your regular products when traveling. A foreign climate is not the time to introduce a new product to your routine.

And have a glass of water!

President Obama recently signed a bill that banned the use of plastic microbeads in personal care products, this is great news for the environment!

How do plastic microbeads affect the environment?

This animation from The Story of Stuff illustrates it quite well. In short, the beads are too small to be filtered out of the water system and clog the gills of fish in the ocean or in the case of the smaller beads, become food for the fish and end up as part of our sushi platters.

What does this mean for skincare?

For many of us, nothing.

I’m not a fan of mechanical scrubs for exfoliation so I don’t retail any products that contain plastic microbeads. I prefer an enzyme or chemical product to exfoliate the skin.

Many companies are reformulating their mechanical scrubs to contain organic material. The downside to organic material is the pieces aren’t as uniform as plastic so they have a greater chance of causing micro tears to the skin.