Published By: Sayan Paul

7 common ingredients to avoid in your moisturizer

These moisturizer ingredients can cause severe harm to your skin.

There are lots of reasons why you should moisturize your skin daily. Simply put, it improves your skin health and reduces the risk of numerous issues to a great extent. However, things can turn bad in the longrun if your product contains any toxic ingredients. And let's admit it - we usually don't read the label meticulously where the list of ingredients is printed. As your skin absorbs everything applied to it, you need to be more careful while purchasing moisturizer or any other skincare products. Below, we have mentioned seven harmful ingredients that are present in most of the moisturizers available out there in the market.

Sulfates: Sulfates, loaded with surfactant properties, are used in moisturizers so that they can cleanse your skin better. The list includes sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate, and sodium dodecyl sulfate. However, being extremely harsh on the skin, these chemicals cause irritation, allergies, and several other issues.

Parabens: Parabens are used as preservatives in moisturizers along with many other beauty products. The list includes methylparabens, butylparabens, and propylparabens. These are highly toxic as they enter the skin and mimic estrogens, which results in disrupting your hormonal balance.

Mineral Oils: Mineral oils are used in moisturizers to make them soft as well as smooth. However, these create a layer on the skin, which results in clogging all the pores. Thus, it becomes hard to remove the dirt, impurities, and other toxic substances from your skin. This is a major cause of acne, rashes, and blackheads.

Retinol: A moderate amount of retinol is good as it helps reduce wrinkles, lighten fine lines, and fade acne scars. But the problem starts when it is present in a huge amount in your moisturizer. It makes your skin extremely sensitive to UV Ray. As a result, you experience irritation, redness, and peeling skin.

Astringent: Just like retinol, astringent is also good when it's there in a moderate amount. It tightens pores, fades dark spots, removes excess oil, and also works as a toner for dry skin. But overuse of astringent is very harmful as it removes all the natural oils from your skin. This leads you to experience flaking, irritation, redness, and more on your skin.

Alcohols: Alcohols are a preservative that also makes the moisturizer light and soft. The list includes ethanol, methanol, isopropyl alcohol, alcohol denat, etc. However, it makes your skin produce too much oil, which results in causing acne, pimples, and several other issues.

Fragrances: Fragrances are used to simply make the moisturizer smell good. However, these irritate your skin deeply and cause damage. This leads you to numerous issues such as rashes, itchiness, allergies, and more. In fact, as per recent research, certain fragrances can even trigger respiratory disorders.

Some other ingredients in the list are formaldehyde, phthalates, BHT, etc.