It Was the Hyaluronic Acid That Did It

(Well, that and a few other things.)

For several years now, I have been a slave to many of the current skincare trends that have seen bathroom counters creaking under the weight of all the “must-have” steps within a routine.

Whether the products came from Japan, Korea, France or elsewhere, it seemed as though almost overnight everyone became a shill for ‘Big Double Cleansing’ (god, those guys must have squeaky clean faces, am I right?)

And I was apparently one of them. After discovering some skincare bloggers and YouTubers over 10 years ago – coincidentally at a time when my skin was suffering from some first-time-ever breakouts – I was a prime candidate to believe all of the hype about multi-step skincare routines. I immediately threw out everything I’d ever been slathering on my face and started afresh.

I also travelled to Japan around that time and the sparkling aisles of Don Quixote et al had me utterly convinced that I’d been cleaning my face all wrong for years. I was hooked.

Well, that was then and this is now. After many years of using foaming cleansers, oil cleansers, toners, essences, sprays, creams, gels, washcloths and any other godforsaken things that screamed “I am your skin saviour!” from my online shopping basket, I have turned my back on it all.

And reader, my skin has never looked better.

It started off innocently enough. My skin weathered the storm of rotating and differing products fairly well for several years. Until it didn’t. There were stressful house moves and global pandemics, not to mention very early perimenopause hormones, which all seemed to culminate in my skin looking, well, shit.

Rosacea creeping onto my cheeks where it had never been before. Faint lines of dermatitis near my mouth. Dry eyes. Hives. Itcy red spots. All of it seemed to creep up on me and then refuse to leave, much like an unwanted squatter.

I refused to believe it was my beloved skincare that was doing it and instead turned to different brands and formulations. Nothing really helped long term.

Until one day this year when I happened upon a YouTube short of a woman talking about how bad for our skin hyaluronic acid is. I can no longer find the link to it, but in my research, I stumbled upon many people saying the same thing, over and over.

I had already started to feel as though this ingredient, which is now included in everything with abandon, was not really having the desired effect on my skin that it should be. But that video confirmed some of my suspicions. Not only was I probably over-washing my face (as someone who does not wear thick, heavy makeup on the regular), but I was probably over-washing it with an ingredient that my skin just didn’t like.

I thought it was worth a shot to start removing it from my skincare routine and see what happened. I also had started to notice that thicker creams with ceramides in them were also aggravating my skin, especially if i used them both morning and night. So both of those ingredients were out immediately.

It was quite the feat to find any skincare that didn’t include any of those ingredients, but I managed to find a cream cleanser, micellar water, toner and day/night creams without them. And my experiment began.

I stopped double cleansing as many of us know it and started removing face grime with just micellar water and cream cleanser. On work-from-home days I paired back my routine to sometimes just cleanser and moisturiser (shock horror!)

Almost immediately, I stopped getting dry itchy eyes (something I had thought was allergy related, but now could possibly have been exacerbated by some of these ingredients).

Then I started to notice that my skin was looking calmer and less red straight after cleansing and moisturising at night.

The glow up happened so much quicker than I ever could have imagined.

I even started getting less breakouts from using sunscreen on my face. (Side note: I have switched to using the SPF 30 that I use on my body on my face, which has helped, because some of the extra ingredients in facial sunscreens, like niacinamide, also seem to be a trigger for me).

I started adding in an exfoliating facial pad every other night (again, no hyaluronic or ceramides) and even some old rosacea scarring is starting to fade.

If I had not seen the turnaround so quickly myself, I would never have believed that the hyaluronic acid was causing me redness, fine lines, dry eyes and god knows what else. This ‘hero’ ingredient has been stressing my skin out for years and I didn’t even know it.

Obviously I am not a dermatologist. And I know there are many out there who will argue that hyaluronic acid has transformed their skin. To those people I say “bravo!” because clearly you have a much different skin type to mine. 

But turning back the clock to a much more paired-down routine without a huge laundry list of ingredients in it has helped me no end. So maybe if you’re in the same boat as me try it for yourself?

I can only hope Big Double Cleansing doesn’t read this and try to have me silenced. Gulp.