You Need To Stop Cutting Up Your Tubes Of Skin care

Skin care is expensive, so it comes as no surprise that we do what we can to get the last drop out of our moisturiser, serum or sunscreen. In fact, the internet is full of money saving beauty tips and tricks on how to maximise every last drop of our products, unfortunately some of these tips come at the cost of contaminating the very products you were trying to preserve in the first place.

A commom product-salvaging hack that we are guilty of as well, is cutting the tubes of skin-care products in half, to get to the last bits trapped inside. While it sounds like a pretty smart way to ensure that nothing is wasted, it’s also a great way to contaminate your product, and possibly your skin, according to the experts – damnit!

The problem is that by cutting up those tubes of beauty products, you are essentially increasing the speed of oxidation and potentially exposing the spread of bacteria and fungus.

This is because beauty products are formulated with preservatives that control and prevent bacterial contamination and the packaging these products come in is important, especially for ingredients like antioxidants, peptides, and retinol/retinoids, in order to prevent accelerated oxidation.

Products packaged in tubes rather than jars are more susceptible to contamination and this is especially true with products made for the eye and mouth area. Cutting open a tube can let in microbes, which in turn can overwhelm the preservative system and allow harmful bacteria or mould to grow within the product. Once the tube is cut open, the safeguards have been removed and there is no guarantee how the content will react.

Contaminated products can also cause and even trigger inflammatory conditions like acne, eczema or contact dermatitis.

If you still can’t resist the urge to get the last drop out of your tube, be sure to transfer the contents into a clean, sealable container immediately to minimize oxidation. But even then, it’s just not worth the risk.

So, before you start slicing up your tubes to fish out those last few dregs of product, take the advice of dermatologists and put down the scissors and step back from that almost empty tube!