You probably didn’t get a skincare guide in your Welcome to Manhood packet. In fact, you probably didn’t get a welcome packet at all. Most of us were lucky to get reliable transportation, a few facial hairs, and a mattress and box springs set in an empty apartment when we first officially became adults.

Not knowing how to take care of your skin is a problem for a lot of guys, and the reality is most of us don’t even know it’s an issue. We live with dry, oily, or acne-prone skin wondering what we’re doing wrong and how we can fix it, but that’s usually about as far as the thought process goes. 

Taking care of your skin is important for keeping it healthy and crucial if you want it to look good. Your friends at Disco are here to help. We’ll tell you everything you need to know about taking care of your skin, and we promise we’ll keep it simple. 

Skin Basics

You read your car’s manual (or at least Google the hell out of it) when you buy it, so you know how to take care of it. The same goes for all skin conditions. 

Here are the basic schematics of your skin and how it works. 

Cell Turnover

Your skin constantly renews. When you’re a child, the process happens rapidly. Every 7-10 days, you’re getting new skin. As you get older, that process slows down, taking more than two weeks in your twenties but taking close to a month by the time you’re in your thirties. 

Cell turnover is essential because it’s what keeps fresh, new skin on the epidermis. Skin cells are created in the deepest layer of your epidermis, called the basal layer. As new skin cells are generated, they begin to push up to the epidermis, where they eventually die and are sloughed off. 

The faster your cell turnover, the better looking and more youthful your skin will appear. 

Collagen and Elastin

Collagen and elastin are two proteins that are foundational in your skin’s anatomy. They both help give your skin structure and are major components of your skin’s tissue. Each has a very specific role. 

• Collagen. Collagen helps keep skin firm and plump. Collagen prevents you from developing fine lines and wrinkles and keeps your skin looking full. With age, collagen supplies begin to dwindle, which can make your skin (and face, forehead, chin, and cheeks) look hollow. 

• Elastin. Elastin is the protein that makes your skin stretchy. When you pull on your skin and see it snap back into place, that’s elastin at work. Elastin supplies also decrease with age, which can cause your skin to hang loosely on your bones. 
  
  When elastin decreases, you’ll start to see deeper wrinkles and sagging skin. 

Men’s Skin vs. Women’s Skin

It’s important to note that your skin is completely different from women’s skin. Why is this important? Because most of the products you buy in-store have been formulated for men’s skin, relabeled, and marketed to you as a men’s skincare product. 

Products made for women’s skin aren’t formulated to work for men’s skin. Men’s skin is thicker, generally oilier, and has an entirely different texture due to hair follicles that produce thick facial hair. 

The takeaway: you can’t use the same stuff the ladies do and expect good results. 

What Your Skin Needs

Your skin has needs, just like your significant other, and if you don’t provide for them, your skin will be just as much of a hot mess. Here are five things you can do for your skin to take better care of it. 

1. Cleansing

It’s more than just soap and water. Cleansing is the process of removing excess dirt and oil from the surface of your skin and helping promote moisture balance. Cleansing helps keep your skin clean, protects its microbiome, and helps eliminate pore-clogging grime that can lead to breakouts. 

2. Hydration

Your skin needs moisture, even if you think it’s super oily. Taking care of your skin’s moisture balance can even help oily skin produce less oil. 

When your skin is deeply dehydrated, sebaceous glands can start working overtime to produce additional sebum (your skin’s natural oil) to compensate. This can mean your skin becomes oilier than it normally would be. 

Your moisturizer should include ingredients that are both humectants and emollients. 

• Humectants. These ingredients help hold moisture in your skin. 

• Emollients. Emollient ingredients fill in cracks and rough spots, helping to condition and soften your skin. 

3. Deep Gunk Removal

Cleansing alone is a good start, but for serious pore protection, you need a product to go deep into your pores and pull out the build-up of dead skin cells and oil that can cause acne breakouts and ruin your complexion. Having too much sebum can clog pores and trap bacteria. 

Products like scrubs and masks are perfect for removing dead skin cells, smoothing your skin, and deep-diving into your pore-holes to keep them clean. 

4. Anti-Aging

You may be a strapping young buck now, but in ten years, you’ll have dark circles and the beginnings of crow’s feet like every other middle-aged guy you know. It’s not a threat, it’s a fact. Aging is part of the process, but you can combat the signs of aging with products that contain age-defying ingredients. 

Anti-aging products work best when you start using them early. So lather on the wrinkle cream now, homie. 

5. Sun Protection

If one thing will help you look younger longer, it’s keeping your skin protected from the sun. It is also the most powerfully effective way… to make yourself look a decade older than you actually are. 

Wearing sun block with 45+ SPF every day (whether or not you think you’ll be in the sun) is a vital part of keeping your skin healthy and taking care of your skin. 

How to Take Care of Your Skin

Taking care of your skin is simple when you do it the Disco way. Our Regimen Set has all the products you need to give yourself top-shelf skincare in just minutes a day.

Added bonus: our skin-care products are all formulated to work perfectly with the pH balance of a man’s skin type. Lady-skin care ingredients are not included. 

So, whether you have sensitive skin, dry skin, normal skin, combination skin, or whatever your skin type may be, here’s how to take care of your skin with our regimen set.

Daily Care

Here are the Regimen Set products you should be using every day to keep your skin cleansed, hydrated, and protected. 

• Charcoal Face Cleanser Stick. The easiest form of facial cleanser, simply swipe it on and later. Our gentle cleanser stick contains coconut oil to hydrate your skin, phytic acid to support cellular turnover, and charcoal to help remove dirt and impurities. 
  
  You’ll get squeaky clean skin without stripping it of its natural moisture. 

• Hydrating Face Moisturizer. A rapidly absorbing moisturizer that contains ingredients to soothe, hydrate, and protect. Vitamin E is an emollient that conditions and softens your skin, while macadamia nut oil helps deliver extreme hydration and anti-aging properties. We top it off with vitamin C for antioxidant protection and skin brightening. 

• Repairing Eye Stick. You slept eight hours and still look like you barely survived a zombie apocalypse. Our eye repair stick fixes it. Formulated with caffeine to depuff and pycnogenol to lighten up dark circles, our eye stick also helps reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. 

Twice a Week

At least once or twice a week, you’ll want to do a deep clean. You can compare it to putting 93 in the tank instead of 87. Here are the Regimen Set products you’ll use twice a week to round out your good skin care routine. 

• Exfoliating Face Scrub. A gentle (yet seriously effective) scrub that removes dead skin, erases excess oil and soothes irritation at the same time. Aloe helps keep skin calm while papain (extracted from papaya) breaks down the chemical bond between dead skin cells and your epidermis to gently remove them. Apricot oil helps keep skin soft and hydrated. 

• Purifying Face Mask. The ultimate in pore-cleaning benefits, our mask contains natural bentonite clay that helps remove excess oil, clearing the way for charcoal to dig out impurities that could lead to breakouts. Willow bark extract helps decrease skin irritation and soothe the skin. 

Bonus Points

We know you’re an overachiever, and that’s why we recommend Disco’s Moisturizing Mineral Sun Block to round out your basic skincare routine. We don’t include chemical sunscreen in our sunblock. Zinc oxide provides UV protection, while our tripeptide blend helps repair your skin and supports collagen and elastin production. 

Instead, opt to wear sunscreen, especially broad-spectrum sunscreen that helps protect your skin from excessive sun exposure, uva, and UV rays. Use sunscreen that is at least SPF and provides broad-spectrum protection against both UVA and UVB rays.

Wear it every day to keep your skin protected and healthy.   

Let’s Disco

Taking care of your skin? That’s easy. Disco has the products and the information you need to keep your skincare game on point (or, you know, to at least have a skincare game). Keep your skin looking as sexy as you are in your own mind, with the Regimen Set and a little know-how from your pals at Disco. 

Sources:

Anatomy, Skin (Integument), Epidermis | NCBI

Fighting against Skin Aging | NCBI