What is Skin Cycling and Should I Be Doing It
Skin cycling. Is it any good? As with most of my answers, yes and no.
What is skin cycling?
The essence of the routine is rotating your products within a certain period of time (usually 3-4 days) so you're using each product at least once a week. It allows you to use and strategically arrange of these different ingredients (ex retinol and exfoliation) in one routine.
Who Should Try It?
This skin cycling method great for people who are not accustomed to using active ingredients on their skin. This is because the routine is designed to help alleviate some of the dryness, the purging, and the uncomfortable side effects typically associated with active ingredients. In this way you are easing your skin into using stronger ingredients gently.
Additionally, skin cycling can be useful when introducing new actives to your existing routine (ex, trying a new vitamin c), or increasing ingredient potency (such as moving from adapalene to a retinaldehyde).
A basic skin cycling routine would be 3-4 days long:
Night number one: You use a retinol night.
Night number two: you use some sort of exfoliator
Night number three: you rest and do no actives on your face.
Night number four: you rest once more with no actives on your skin and then repeat the cycle
Who Should Not To Skin Cycle
If you do have more resilience skin, or you have been using these types of actives for a very long time, this routine may not be very effective. This cycle may make your skin routine ineffective towards your desired goal. This is because many of these ingredients, such as those designed to help you age gracefully, reduce lines, reduce hyperpigmentation etc.- you’d have to be using consistent enough to get results. This is the case with retinoids for example, which you want to be working your way up to everyday use. In essence, your skincare products are only as effective as your consistency.
So in theory, skin cycling is a great way to introduce new actives into your routine. Using it for this purpose has been a tried and true method of avoiding skin irritation. However, I would add one more condition - listen to your skin. If your skin can tolerate increasing consistency, you can use it more. With the exception of exfoliator, which should only be used 1-2x per week - no exceptions! Nobody wants to burn off their face.
