Maintaining A Desired Skin Tone

Out of all the questions about skin lightening, the most common one I get asked about is maintenance. Once you've reached your desired skin tone, what do you do to maintain it?

It's a really good question.

I touched upon this briefy in Re-examining and Understanding Skin Lightening Skin Lightening is just like every other self improvement concept in that you need to keep up with it in order to continue reaping the benefits. Just like being physically fit or taking a certain supplement or medication, once you stop completley (even if the symptoms or problems goes away) the benefits from using that drug or regimen goes away as well.

When you lighten your skin naturally (without all over treatment of hydroquinone or a skin bleaching steroid), there is absolutley no problem or risk with continuing to use that specific skin lightener for life. I don't see what the issue is? Just like acne medication that people use to keep their pores clear, a lightener can be used to maintain a skin tone.

The good thing is, once you reach your desired skin tone, most of the maintenance lies within the strength of your entire regimen as opposed to just a single skin lightener or skin brightener. Sunscreen plays a huge role in preventing re-darkening and hyperpigmentation. If you wear sunscreen daily, it will go a long way in preserving your color.

Continuing to exfoliating gently and consistently also will help remove old, dead melanin filled cells and promote a brighter, lighter more even-toned complexion.

The skin lightener (whichever one it may be) only needs to be used three to four times a week to maintain a certain skin tone. Once your skin has lightened up to a certain shade, cutting down usage of a lightener to 3x a week will work in keeping it that way. That is considering you are wearing sunscreen everyday and keeping up with gentle exfoliation as well.

The reason why this can work is because the melanin load is influenced greatly by skin lighteners, especially once it's already in a compromised state (meaning when it's at it's lightest). If the majority of your pigmentation issues were caused by sun damage, you will find that sunscreen is all you need to maintain your skin tone since your regimen of lighteners + exfoliation + sunscreen = reversed pigmentation induced sun damage.

But if you lightened past your original birth color, 3x a week usage of a skin lightener is all you need to maintain your skin tone.

A lot of people wonder if the skin will continue lightening if you reach your desired complexion and still use skin lighteners. The answer to that is no. Unless you keep upgrading your lightener to something stronger (higher % of active ingredients, or different skin lightening ingredient) you should plateau at a certain skin shade if you maintain usage of the particular lightener that helped you achieve the desired skin tone.
=D

It feels great to be blogging again. I took a break from it and I realized how much I miss and love writing on here. I'm back, and it feels good. <3