How To Heal Bleached Skin

Skin lightening is popular called bleaching in out party of our world. How do you heal skin that has been bleached or lightened? Every tip in this article is from my personal experience. 

What is skin bleaching or rather skin toning? It's essentially using skin lightening ingredients to get your skin from dark to fair, right? That means getting rid of the pigment you are born with for whatever personal reasons. 

The word bleach  itself connotates a substance that can change the appearance of a stain cloth, object among others. It has the ability to modify the state. 

From Wikipedia: 

Bleach is the generic name for any chemical product that is used industrially or domestically to remove colour (whitening) from fabric or fiber or to clean or to remove stains in a process called bleaching. 

Therefore, you are basically removing what you don't want on your skin in terms of the melanin when you choose to bleach. Skin lightening can be good whje you have dark spots to treat but when it goes beyond that, you are using a huge change in the look of your skin. 

For the most parts, a lot of the ingredients used in skin bleaching are usually meant for dark spots treatment. They are targeted at particular parts of the body that have been affected by hyper-pigmentation. I would not list all the ingredients used in bleaching or skin lightening but references will be made to some few ones. 

The abuse of these ingredients leads to skin damage that can sometimes be hard to combat.

What can you do heal your skin? Here's a not so professional points you can try. All the tips shared here are from my perspective.

✔️Stop whatever you are using to bleach or lighten. That's the first thing to do. Once you decide on this, the next thing is to find products that help rebuild damaged skin.

✔️Exogenous ochronosis is the brown-black skin discoloration that occurs as a result of dermal (skin) accumulation of homogentisic acid. The most common cause of exogenous ochronosis is application of topical hydroquinone as part of the formulation in a variety of skin bleaching cream. 

Exogenous ochronosis (EO) is a cutaneous disorder characterized by blue-black pigmentation resulting as a complication of long-term application of skin-lightening creams containing hydroquinone. 

In the body, the homogentisic acid undergoes a process called polymerization, causing it to accumulate in connective tissue and making the tissue blacken. 

How do you reverse it?

✔️Sunblock daily! This protects the skin from further damage and also more hyper-pigmentation. 

✔️Retinol serum can be used at night to enhance faster cell renewal thereby reducing the condition.

✔️Glycolic acid can also be used to exfoliate at lease twice a week to get rid of dead skin cells as well as brighten the skin. 

✔️Antioxidants eg Vitamin c, Resveratoral plus ferulic acid can also help with the fading too. 

✔️Chemical peels, derma abrasion and laser treatments. These are quite effective although expensive. See here for details on these procedures. 

✔️Azelaic acid can help treat hyper-pigmentation. It is an anti inflammatory product and also anti bacterial. It encourages skin cell turnover like retinol does. Azelaic acid stops discolored skin cells from populating.

I addition as your skin heals, skin barrier repair creams and oils also help. These plant oils have anti inflammatory and antioxidant effect. 

jojoba oil

coconut oil

almond oil

argan oil

borage oil

rosehip oil

sunflower oil

soybean oil

primrose oil

black currant oil

 Ceramides play a role in skin repair. Your facial creams may contain them.

Finally, it takes time to see results. It can take months and even years for your skin to heal.