Skin fasting was bound to happen. The advantages of dietary fasting for a day or three have been floating round since Hippocrates decreed it was a way to heal the body in ancient Greece.
And currently, we’re in a peak diet period in history. So was only a matter of time before the principle of healing the body by not eating for short stints crossed over into skincare, and women would step away from their cleansers, exfoliators and forsake all moisturisers.
The idea is doing the rounds at the moment with beauty bloggers detailing their extreme four-day struggle of going without skincare of any kind whatsoever – to mixed results. Not sure we’re quite up for this!
This trend however can be traced all the way back to 2011, when Japanese skincare brand Mirai Clinical suggested something less austere than no product for four days and it was this: sleeping without moisturiser one night a week, stating:
“The moisture inside the skin becomes dehydrated because there’s not enough protection [natural oils] to keep the moisture inside.”
With too much added artificial moisturiser, the skin ceases to produce its own natural oils.
“This leads to even drier skin,” explains Mirai Clinical Body Care creator Koko Hayashi.
Think of this paired-back "fasting" as a version of tough love for skin, in which denying your skin of a moisturiser one evening a week will make it buck up its ideas and help normalise its secretion of sebum and the skin’s natural rejuvenation process all by itself.
At Corbin Rd. you’ll appreciate by now that we’re all about going back to basics for the health of our skin and in using natural ingredients in our Restorative Cleansing Balm. With the added support of using our Viteve™️ Silk Exfoliating Cloth with its Silk Tuft™️ technology, this nourishing balm deeply cleanses skin, clearing pores of the day’s dirt, debris, makeup and dead skin as well as gently exfoliating and improving micro-circulation by stimulating blood flow to the surface of the skin.
We’re in favour of trying anything that strips back complicated skincare. And we think you have nothing to lose going to sleep without moisturising one night a week. You’ll be in bed much sooner and that’s never a bad thing given plenty of sleep is vital for great skin. If you give it a go, tag us in your results!