Physical Exfoliants (Polishes & Scrubs) in the market – what they can do for your skin

Exfoliating your skin is an important step in your beauty regime, as important as cleansing, toning and moisturizing, in fact – this is a well known fact as it is crucial for removing dead skin cells on the surface layer of your skin that makes your complexion dull, scaly and lifeless. It functions to cleanse the skin pores and remove dirt from your face just like a cleanser in fact, except that on top of that, it also sloughs off cells.

Products with exfoliants

Exfoliants will also promote blood circulation, giving your face and body a soft, radiant and healthy glow. A good exfoliant also unblocks pores and stimulate cell turnover. Regularly exfoliating your skin can also help in reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles on your face.

Exfoliation can be categorized under physical exfoliation and chemical exfoliation, which includes chemical peels or treatments using certain chemical ingredients. There are a few types of physical exfoliants in the market today. This topic is specifically dedicated to them. I will touch on chemical exfoliation in subsequent posts.

Physical exfoliation can further be divided into scrubs and polishes. What are the differences between the two? Most probably would not know this and use both terms interchangeably, which is understandable since it is quite subjective and a matter of personal preference. What I mean by this is one person’s scrub may be another person’s polish and vice versa. Let me explain.

Salt Scrubs

Both scrubs and polishes serve the same purpose – to remove pore-clogging dead cells and dirt from your skin. What separate them are the sizes and the level of harshness on the skin of the exfoliants or abrasives.

Salt Scrub

Scrubs are usually deemed to be the product with the larger abrasives/ exfoliant. While they tend to be stronger in their ability to clean and exfoliate, they are naturally harsher than polishes and thus, are not very suitable for sensitive skin or problematic skin.

Fruit pulp scrubs

Examples of scrubs are such as sugar or salt scrubs, along with a range of other beads, which can be natural or synthetic in nature. The most popular synthetic beads would be the polyethylene beads, which are usually cheaper than the rest in the market, like wax beads. Natural plant-based exfoliants would be such as walnut shell powders, apricot shell scrubs, cocoa shell scrubs, rice scrubs, limnanthes (algae) scrubs, and a series of others.

Sesame Seeds

Almond scrubs

Walnut shell is a popular natural scrub in the market.

Polishes on the other hand comprise of smaller and softer exfoliants, or synthetic collapsible beads made out of cellulose or mannitol sugars. Examples of natural exfoliants in polishes are such as fruit pulps like cranberry, kiwi, rosehips and orange peels, as well as strawberry seeds.

Oatmeal scrub

Besides that, there is also another type of gentle exfoliant that can dissolve once you rub them on your skin. They are mannitol or cellulose-based and usually, active ingredients like jojoba oil or vitamin E can be encapsulated inside these beads for the added advantage.

Next: The dos and don'ts of scrubbing.