Most of the skin damage I see now does not come from neglect. It comes from effort, from people following a trend they saw online, applied carefully, every day, believing they were helping their skin. The problem is not that they did nothing. It is that they did the wrong thing, consistently.
The commonest is the homemade kitchen peel: lemon, vinegar, sometimes toothpaste or baking soda, used to bring a glow. It does the opposite. These are acids and abrasives your skin was never meant to meet at that strength, and they provoke exactly what people are trying to fix, pigmentation, scarring and a barrier that no longer protects.
Then there is the pursuit of glass skin through constant exfoliation and daily scrubbing. Scrubbing every day damages the skin barrier, and once that barrier is broken the skin is left open to scarring and infection. Smooth skin is not scrubbed skin; it is intact skin.
The one that worries me most is the cocktail of whitening creams with steroids mixed in. The steroid gives a quick, convincing glow, which is why it sells, but it is a medication, not a cosmetic. Used on the face without supervision it thins the skin, promotes unwanted hair growth, and leaves a dependence that is genuinely hard to reverse.
Retinol belongs in the same category. It is one of the best anti-ageing ingredients we have, and it is a prescription medicine for a reason: it is photosensitising, and used without guidance it causes redness, peeling and the very pigmentation people bought it to treat.
And the home devices, derma rollers and dermapens, used on an unsterile face in a bathroom, are a straightforward route to a skin infection across the whole face.
The honest advice is dull, which is why it does not trend: book a consultation with a qualified person, and follow a simple routine built around your own skin. What suits one person will not suit another. That is the whole reason a routine has to be tailored rather than copied, and the reason no video can prescribe one for you.
Associate Professor Dr. Lubna Rani Faysal
MBBS (Gold Medalist), FCPS (Dermatology), MHPE · 13 years in dermatology
