Is Aftershave Bad For Your Skin?

Aftershave has become an important part of men’s grooming process. Typically, aftershave is made to soothe the skin and encourage healing. As you shave, you are most likely to accidentally cut yourself whilst the shaving process significantly strips of your skin of moisture. Applying aftershave helps to provide that cooling sensation that reduces the stinging of your cut.

The aftershave application also helps to heal the cut whilst also acting as an antiseptic and antibacterial. However, in recent years, manufacturers have begun to incorporate the addition of fragrances into aftershaves, thus, some aftershaves are even marketed as lotions, gels, and balms. With this fact, comes the risk of aftershave being unsafe or less than ideal from your skin.

This is perpetuated by the addition of artificial ingredients. Thus, this begs the question of whether aftershave is bad for your skin or not. The answer to this is broad. Some aftershaves are good whilst others are not. Others may be good for your skin, but not good for someone else’s skin. Yes, this answer is confusing, so to better understand these factors, below is an outline explain to what extent aftershave is bad for your skin.

The Aftershave Options

Nowadays, aftershave comes commonly available in splash or balm types. And through this design, you will come across a myriad of ingredients depending on the manufacturer and the intended outcome. In general, balm aftershave types tend to be made of natural products whilst splash types are made by a combination of artificial and natural products.

Which Are The Harmful Ingredients?

In general, aftershave contains alcohol. However, not all aftershaves contain alcohol. Although, in general, you will come across mist alcohol-based aftershave in splash form and non-alcohol based aftershave in balm, this is not always the case.

Plus, you cannot always determine simply by looking that the aftershave has alcohol or not. However, learn aftershave is exempt from this fact. If you come across clear aftershave, it most definitely contains alcohol.

Yet, you can easily find out if your aftershave contains alcohol or not. Simply look at the ingredients list. If you come across ingredients such as alcohol, denatured alcohol, isopropyl alcohol or Cetearyl alcohol, then that is an alcohol-based aftershave.

In some aftershaves that contain smaller amounts of alcohol, you will come across propylene glycol, which is essentially a smaller percentage. Alcohol in aftershaves can really be potent to your skin. For example, alcohol types such as propylene glycol are used in antifreeze thus, making them unsafe for your skin. Other alcohol types such as ethyl acetate, for example, are known to have carcinogenic and irritating properties.

On shorter-term effects, the alcohol in your aftershave still affects your skin. If you use an alcohol-based aftershave you are more likely to experience the tingling and burning sensation than if you use a non-alcohol based balm aftershave. This happens when the alcohol in the aftershave comes in contact with your cuts. The more the alcohol content, the greater the sensation.

Typically, alcohol will cause wrinkles and extremely dried skin. And if you have a dry skin type, you will be affected even more. Yet, some alcohol-based aftershaves have controlled amounts of alcohol, as such as they may be just fine to use if you have oily or combination skin without affecting it.

And if you go further to examine the safety of your aftershave by looking at the manufacturer’s ingredients, the topic gets even broader. This is because a product belonging to a brand, it is a proprietary item. Thus, the manufacturer is not mandated to share all its ingredients.

This means that your aftershave may be manufactured by a cross-section of products of which most of them, you will not be aware of. And thus, you will not be able to determine whether or not they are safe for your skin. So if you have sensitive skin, it is always best to avoid them entirely.

Colorants are also an ingredient to avoid, after alcohol. Some colorants incorporate harmful chemicals that are very unsafe to your skin and body as a whole. For example, many colorants are known to affect your respiratory system and induce allergic reactions and attacks such as asthma. Colorants also a great way of causing skin problems such as eczema.

How To Keep Your Skin Safe

Before you figure out how to care for and protect your skin, you must first know it. What is your skin type is it oily? Dry? Or a combination? The purpose of your aftershave is to soothe, heal, moisturize and leave you smelling good. Thus, you must make sure that the option you go for does all this.

The first step is to always read and make sure you are familiar with the ingredient. If you have oily or combination skin, then alcohol-based aftershaves fairly work fine. If you have dry skin, you should avoid putting anything that has alcohol on your skin. Instead, go for aftershave made with natural items.

Natural items such as tea tree oil can substitute the working functions of alcohol. Tea tree is a natural antiseptic and anti-bacterial. It can also be integrated with their natural ingredients to enhance the functionality of your aftershave.

Other natural products such as aloe Vera are also favored. Aloe Vera is an excellent soothing agent to prevent skin irritation and can also be used to counter the sun. Furthermore, a moisturizing aftershave also goes a long way. Remember, you are shaving and then washing your face.

This means that you are stripping your face from significant amounts of oils and moisture. To replace this loss, a moisturizing aftershave is ideal. Ideally, naturally moisturizing agents help to both moisturize your skin whilst also leaving it breathable.

Therefore, as much as you will come across aftershave that is bad for your skin, you will also come across some that are good. It is only essential that you know how to identify an aftershave option that is ideal for your skin.