Speed Dial: Purging 101

location, location, location (and onset & duration)

Hello! 

Hope you’re all having a great week. Today we’re going to answer the question:

How do I know if I am purging or having a reaction? 

I remember first hearing about purging – the scary, undesirable possibility that a product meant to improve your skin actually makes it worse. But the good news is that there is a specific reason for why it happens and ways to recognize it.

What is purging?

Purging is a natural response from your skin while you are adjusting to certain products and looks like a sudden, sometimes severe, breakout.

Here’s a fact to ruin your day: the pimples you see on the surface of your skin began brewing weeks, sometimes months before. Deep under the surface of your skin, your pores can get clogged with dead skin cells and form what’s called a microcomedone. Microcomedones aren’t visible on the surface of your skin and can develop, over the course of weeks, into whiteheads, blackheads and cysts. They can also sometimes resolve on their own before you ever see them. The point is, this congestion isn’t new, it’s actually been brewing for a while. 

Very briefly, retinoids work by accelerating the rate of cell turnover, meaning they speed up your skin’s natural shedding process, so that dead skin cells are sloughed off the surface and replaced by shiny new baby skin cells at a faster rate. When this starts to happen, anything brewing underneath will come to the surface faster. You can think of it like clearing out the pipes. The blockages are already forming in your skin, the retinoid is just making them come to the surface faster.