The Secret Ingredient for Minimizing Skin Sensitivity
Omega’s in skincare
After being diagnosed with inflammatory Rosacea, my general skin health was terrible. It was hypersensitive, flaking, constantly inflamed and its natural barrier seemed non-existent - I would wake up in pain some mornings as I’d scratched my cheeks during the night and find new scabs. The skin picking didn’t help of course, so I was desperate to understand how I could minimize my skin’s sensitivity levels.
After consulting different skincare specialists, I learned that it’s actually not that difficult to hydrate skin, but to make it retain moisture is another matter. To soothe inflammation was also easier than to repair the skin’s natural defenses. A dermatologist explained to me that my skin defenses had severely deteriorated and its barriers were weakened, allowing heightened sensitivity to many types of irritations. While they did give me antibiotics, protective creams and steroid lotions, the flare ups would return when I stopped using them. The antibiotics hurt my gut health.
It was vital to take a goal oriented approach to skincare if I was serious about going further than symptom treatment. I wanted more than just relief, I wanted a long term solution to avoid ever having a flare up again.
The Snow Fox Omega Repair Cream
Understanding these slight differences between functions were the key to finding the right formulation for one our longest selling staple products, the Omega Repair Cream. It is the first and only cream we have in our assortment and the first clinically consumer perception surveyed product in our panel.
It started off as an unlabelled white bottle directly from my partner chemist, who took pity on my highly visible condition and took it upon herself to come up with something using my skin as a profile. Her theory was that we should focus on repairing my skin’s existing barrier. The natural skin barrier already consists of fatty acids, lipids and oils. The role of fatty acids in skin is to reduce trans-epidermal water loss, act as an antibacterial shield and defense system to the external environment. When this barrier is compromised, topical application of additional fatty acids can help replenish and rebalance skin health. Knowing that I refused any animal origin beauty products, she put together a botanical base of Omegas -3,-6,-7 and -9.
She believed that each of these Essential Fatty Acids played an important part in repairing skin health. Even Omega -7, a rare mono-unsaturated fatty acid found in Australian Macadamia Oil, would have a positive effect on recovery.
I was skeptical at first about applying an oil based cream as heavier prescribed creams from the doctors had caused me to break out, but it was pleasantly silky and lightweight.
To avoid breakouts, she paired the formula with peppermint oil, a naturally soothing anti-microbial that was not too aggressive. As a Taiwanese national, she happened to have studied Traditional Chinese Medicine, so her knowledge of healing herbs were deeper and probably more open minded than most pharma-based chemists I’d met. When she added a high concentration of ginseng to the cream, (it’s a century-old medicinal herb coveted in China, Korea and Japan) I was worried about the scent. As a child, I’ve been forced fed ginseng herbal soups by well meaning Asian grandparents, but anyone would tell you that it has an awfully bitter, earthy taste and smell.
We can SEE & FEEL
After the first month of daily use, my skin started to feel less sensitive. It took me about 3 months to really see and feel like my skin had started to normalize. 3 years in, I still have a skin condition but can confidently walk around with a smooth, less sensitive face.
Interestingly, our clinical survey showed that after 28 days of use, 90.63% of subjects agreed their skin felt less sensitive after using the product and 100% agreed their skin looked and felt noticeably healthier after using the product.
Early research has shown some evidence that topical application of Omegas can help with UV induced photodamage, signs of skin aging and inflammatory responses - the third of which was crucial for people like me.