Why Getting Your Hands Off Your Face Can Save Your Face

Deborah DePiano, facialist and owner of the West Hollywood complexion atelier DePiano Skin, wants you to keep your hand-to-face contact to a minimum.

Deborah DePiano is a straight talker. “Touching your face too much can wreck your skin’s health. First off, your hands are magnets for germs they pick up from handling things every day that others have handled. Every time you get change at the drugstore, look at a menu at a restaurant or work out at the gym, for example, are opportunities for unhealthy microbes to hitch a ride onto your digits. And if you touch your face frequently after that, those germs could find a home there and possibly even into your body.”

The bad stuff

So how bad can this be though? What specifically are we talking here? Well, how does spreading bacteria, viruses, mold and yeasts grab you? This isn’t to say that everything you touch is going to always transmit the flu, trigger a staph infection or spread conjunctivitis (‘pink eye’), of course, but enough do on enough people that it’s wise to err on the side of caution.

“Plus,” warns Deborah, “Constant face touching means you can exacerbate your own existing skin conditions – like those triggered by acne bacteria or the herpes virus – and make them much worse. Picking at a pimple is the same as planting a seed so that two more blemishes will show up in its place. Acne loves its own company, that’s for sure!”

“I know that telling someone to stop touching their face is easier said than done because gestural habits are so hard to break.,” she admits. “I’ve had clients who have tried everything from meditation to hypnosis to plain old willpower. Sometimes these work but oftentimes they don’t.”

And if they don’t? Nobody is suggesting you run around with surgical gloves on (like Deborah herself wears when she gives a client a skin treatment). But here are some smart strategies you can adopt.

The hygiene part

Before she launched her aesthetics practice back in the day, Deborah was a nail tech so she knows whereof she speaks. “Without realizing it, people are carrying around tons of germ-breeding debris under their nails every day. And the longer the nails, the worse it gets. It’s actually pretty gross.”

“The best thing you can do for your face?” she says, “Wash your hands frequently in warm water and as part of your skin care routine, scrub under your fingernails with a nail brush every night without fail. And if you have long nails, after you’ve toweled off your hands, blast a few seconds of hot air under your nails with a hairdryer so the area is bone dry.”

The no rubbing part

Touching your face by leaning and rubbing adds mechanical damage as well as microbial vulnerability to the skin. Habitually leaning on a hand for too long, for example, can literally press wrinkles into the skin.

“And finally,” warns Deborah, “Rubbing your eyes a lot can literally tear the thin skin around them, permanently eroding it. These tears are microscopic but they’re real and over time will manifest as laxity and sagging. That’s why we always recommend applying eye cream with the ring finger which is weaker.”

On that note, Deborah adds that she’s seen people do real harm when they rub on their treatment creams too hard to encourage absorption or scrub on their makeup and blush application in order to blend it perfectly.  She offers easy and elegant solutions for both these scenarios.

 Chronicles of Clean 1: This is the first of a 4-part Mineral Air series on the role of skin hygiene in skin beauty.

・FOR TREATMENT PRODUCTS: When you apply lotions, and especially thicker creams, on clean damp skin, smooth it onto the surface of your complexion with your fingertips. Leave the excess, if any, alone for 10 minutes. The skin is physiologically equipped to absorb what it needs and no more. Then after the 10 minute pause, gently blot off anything less – there probably won’t be much – with a tissue.

・FOR FOUNDATION AND BLUSH: Mineral Air comes to the rescue here. First, the fingers never touch the face, only the mist from the device does, so it’s perfectly hygienic. Second, because you don’t physically touch your face, there’s no danger of inadvertently damaging it over time with too rigorous blending. And why would you need to? Mineral Air’s mist blends so seamlessly even when sprayed on in layers, it completely eliminates the need for any extra refining or polish.

“Best thing you can do for your face? Wash your hands frequently in warm water and as part of your skin care routine, scrub under your fingernails with a nail brush every night without fail.”

Deborah DePiano
Aesthetician
Owner, DePiano Skin

W  depianoskin.com
IG  depianoskin