Something on Twitter today reminded me about a topic that I have been meaning to address for ages: the perils of over-exfoliation and ‘over-enthusiastic’ product application. With the increasing popularity of at-home beauty treatments (peels, micro-dermabrasion, enzyme exfoliants) it’s only natural that there will be more than a few little skin accidents. Some of the products available on the market are almost salon-strength (a few are more than powerful enough to warrant being handled by a trained therapist!) yet we can buy them willy-nilly with no individual advice or prescription. Which is fine, kind of, because we can also buy bleach and all sorts of things that have the potential to permanently remove our eyebrows/rot our livers/set our hair on fire. I’m going to be doing a more in-depth post about potential home-facial hazards, but for now I want to suggest a great little product for emergency skin-trauma repair.

By skin-trauma, I mean on a ‘cosmetic’ level – we’re not talking proper burns here, or open wounds, weeping sores and so on. If you ever have anything on your face that is seriously painful, blistering, weeping, then get thee to the purgatory that is Accident & Emergency – or Casualty as I still prefer to say. No, here I am talking about fixing irritation, stress and minor trauma. We’re talking redness, puffiness, sensitivity, chapping and broken capillaries. We’re talking “oops, I got drunk and left that face peel on for three hours” kind of redness and “oh dear, I think that I didn’t quite need to scrub that micro-dermabrasion cream in as though I was waxing the car” kind of stress.

NuBo’s Post Injection Treatment is actually designed for post-surgery skin – you know, that frightening skin that you see on those television programmes that is swathed in bandages and has two blackened eyes poking out. So if it’s great for this kind of skin, then you can bet that it’s even better on ‘normal people’s problems’ skin! I keep it in my Skin SOS drawer along with a selection of skin intolerance creams, some spot ointments, a pot of yogurt and a fire extinguisher. I have used it on ‘sun-sore’ skin, on hungover skin (is brilliant for reducing redness and dark shadows!) and I have used it on chapped, winter skin. The best use, though, was when I had been acting like a moron and decided to test out the whole of Boots in one week – I thought for a second that my face might have just peeled off all in one go, but the NuBo Post Injection Treatment had me fixed up within a day or two.

NuBo products are very luxury, very ‘high-end’, but also very effective. There are no added fragrances, colourings, parabens or petro-chemicals, if those kind of things get your goat, but there are plenty of active ingredients to calm, restore and heal. At £48 for 30ml it’s not exactly cheap, but I suppose if you can afford cosmetic procedures then that would be but a mere drop in your financial ocean. This serum absorbs very easily – one time I used it, it tingled quite a bit on my very chapped and irritated skin, but I persevered overnight and had nicely comfortable and almost-healed skin by the following morning. Its fortés are strengthening the broken capillaries beneath the surface of the skin to reduce redness, helping to reduce swelling and generally recharging skin cells so that overall recovery time is reduced.

I’m going to be looking more closely at skin stress and trauma, so I will try to find some more purse-friendly options too, but for now the NuBo is a firm favourite. It’s never advisable to rush into a new skin routine, especially if it involves a radically increased level of active ingredients, but we are told so many different things about our skin that it’s sometimes difficult to know what an earth we’re supposed to be doing! So here’s my advice: if it says exfoliant, anywhere, don’t use anything else that day that also says exfoliant. If the product contains glycolic acid – and you’ll be hearing much more about this little ingredient – then read the instructions carefully and remember that any products containing it  should be introduced gradually. Stay safe kids!

NuBo Post Injection Treatment is £48 from FeelUnique: http://tinyurl.com/3cp4cb3