The Basic Tenets of Athletic Skincare
If great athletic skincare were already available, we wouldn't have needed to formulate our own products. But, alas! We found ourselves in a desert wasteland of badly formulated products. So, we decided to make our own!
Our main gripe with athletic skincare is that none of it uses the amazing innovations that skincare science offers us. Either products are lazy and unoriginal, or they are pumped so full of essential oils they are unusable. Just because athletes train hard doesn't mean they don't have sensitive skin. There are no products for athletes trying to solve tricky skin problems. We decided to change that. The basic tenets of caring for athletes' skin relies on repairing the skin barrier. We explain how we do that below.
Athletics regularly damage the skin barrier
The skin barrier is a barricade that keeps your bodily fluids inside your body, and it keeps foreign invaders out. When the barrier is compromised, you experience extreme irritation, pimples, itching, and other skin eruptions. In the worst-case scenario, you may even suffer from chronic skin infections that require medical attention.
The skin barrier is damaged by environmental, behavior, and internal factors. People often describe the skin barrier as a structure similar to a brick wall. The bricks are held together by mortar, which keeps them stuck together. In this metaphor, the bricks are your skin cells, and the mortar holding the bricks together is your skin's natural oils (also called "sebum"). There are also other components, including natural acids, electrolytes, amino acids, peptides, water, and humectants.
External environmental factors that damage the skin barrier may include sports equipment (helmets, headbands, shoes, waist bands, bra lines, hand wraps, boxing gloves, etc.), repetitive movements, and harsh training conditions. It's also possible that your sport of choice requires extensive contact with the ground (such as time on the mats), with a heavy bag, barbells, a bike, or even a body of water. Extreme weather can assault the skin, such as windburn from winter sports or excessive sun exposure. Combatting friction from sports equipment or the training environment can break down the skin barrier over time.
Behavioral factors that damage the skin barrier include over washing with cheap soaps and applying harsh essential oils. It's common for athletes to hammer their skin during training and then to punish the skin with overly harsh products after. Athletes often approach their skincare the way they approach their workouts - the more brutal, the better. Except an athlete's skin isn't the kitchen tile to be bleached and scrubbed. It's the body's biggest organ, and it's a sensitive one, at that. It's better for an athlete to approach skincare the way they might approach diet. Diet should support training. In the same way, skincare should support an athlete's outermost organ - the skin!
Internal factors include diet, age, and recovery. All play a huge role on the integrity of the skin barrier. When your body is recovering from a workout, that includes your skin, since your skin is an organ connected to the rest of your body. Lack of sleep will affect your skin's ability to heal. Excessive sugar intake, a junk food diet, and even dairy products might be problematic for some athletes' skin. Proper hydration with electrolytes is also really important to keep the skin functioning at peak performance. When the skin is dehydrated, the skin barrier breaks down. Some of these changes may seem simplistic, but an athlete demands a lot from their body. Athletes needs to make sure they cover their basics like sleep, diet, and hydration.
Stop wrecking the skin barrier
There are two strategies to fix the skin barrier: 1. Stop damaging it. 2. Rebuild it. To stop environmental damage, consider keeping your sports equipment as clean as possible. Make sure your equipment fits properly. Pay attention to your training environment and the factors that irritate your skin. If you train indoors, does the establishment keep the equipment clean? Are the floors/mats regularly sanitized? If you train in water, does your skin prefer salt water, fresh water, or pool water? Are there ways you can avoid extreme weather conditions if it is not integral to your training needs? These might be questions worth exploring.
Athletes that struggle with skin problems should also consider changing their hygiene habits. Cheap soap is bad. But cheap soap with irritating essential oils is the absolute worst. Not only is the soap (literally) washing away your skin barrier, but the essential oils are insanely irritating. It may feel like you are disinfecting the skin, but it's at the cost of your skin barrier. That "tingly fresh" feeling has nothing to do with being extra clean. It is a reaction occurring on your skin from being exposed to menthol. Companies sell this tingly reaction with cleanliness to sell their products. But the truth is, one has nothing to do with the other.
Rebuilding the skin barrier
The skin barrier is composed of proteins, peptides, amino acids oils, electrolytes, acids, and some other nutrients. These all form the Natural Moisturizing Factors (NMF) of the skin. Replenishing any of these NMF will restore the skin barrier.
Eating a diet rich in collagen (derived from cooked bones and tendons) will give the body the tools it needs to physically rebuild the skin. Vitamin C allows the body to use the collagen. Which means a balanced diet filled with whole foods - including fruits, vegetables, and plenty of protein - will help your skin recover. Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish will moisturize your skin from the inside out. Consuming electrolyte and drinking plenty of water will hydrate the skin. And adequate sleep and recovery help your immune system fight skin infections.
Supportive athletic skincare
Since skincare is applied directly to the skin, it has an enormous impact on skin health. As already discussed, cheap soaps and essential oils wreak havoc on the skin. Both soaps and essential oils have been studied and proven to disrupt the skin barrier. Cheap body washes are just as bad, especially body washes that contain sodium lauryl sulfate. These products have also been studied and proven to disrupt the skin barrier.
Lucky for us, there are also ingredients that have been proven to help the skin barrier. In our Char Goals Everything Bar Cleanser, our main cleansing ingredient is sodium cocoyl isethionate. This ingredient is derived from coconut and has been proven to be extremely gentle. Our secondary cleanser, shea butteramidopropyl betaine, is derived from shea butter. It produces a silky lather and helps calm irritated skin. Both of these cleansers will wash athletes' skin without damaging the skin barrier. This is important for athletes who take multiple showers per day.
We also choose to eliminate essential oils from our entire product line. They are way too irritating, and they burn when an athlete begins to sweat. In our Char Goals Everything Bar Cleanser, we use activated charcoal instead. Activated charcoal exhibits antimicrobial properties without the irritation from tea tree oil, peppermint, eucalyptus, or menthol oils.
After eliminating irritating soaps, athletes should rebuild the skin barrier. Our Total Cranarchy Multi-Use Balm was designed to do exactly this. Remembering the brick wall analogy, the main component of the mortar that keeps the skin barrier "bricks" together is oil. Supplementing the skin's natural oils with a balanced fatty acid spectrum can help the skin function much better. If you suffer from chronically dry skin, your skin may not have enough natural skin oil to feel smooth and soft. Adding in specialty oils such as cranberry seed oil, jojoba oil, short chain fatty acids, pomegranate seed oil, and sea buckthorn berry oil will bring dry skin back to life. The Total Cranarchy Multi-Use Balm contains each one of these superstar ingredients.
In conclusion
Mil Usos is specifically designed to repair and restore athletes' skin. We are athletes, too, and we know how brutal training can be. The skin takes quite a bit of damage with hard training. Our products are designed to mitigate that damage. We didn't set out to create more generic and underwhelming skincare. We designed targeted formulas that repair and restore. We use the highest quality ingredients and concentrated formulas so athletes get more bang for their buck. Each product is designed to address multiple concerns at once, so athletes can quickly and easily put their skin back together.
Author: Rebecca Williams, Founder