The Benefits of Activated Charcoal For Your Skin
Charcoal has been around for thousands of years. It has been used by man to heat our homes, cook our meals, and even punish our children! But we’re not talking about that dreaded lump of coal your parents warned you about on Christmas Day. It turns out these two have nothing to do with each other. Coal is a rock you dig out of the ground. Charcoal on the other hand is a man-made product, made from wood. Today charcoal is popping up in things like toothpaste, food, deodorant, and even skincare!
It’s important to know which type of charcoal we are referring to when it comes to the beauty industry. Charcoal is a carbon residue made from partially burned wood and other organic materials in which the burning took place with limited air supply. Specifically, activated charcoal is created when ordinary charcoal is heated to an extremely high temperature. When this happens, the elements and compounds bound with the carbon atoms are removed, vastly increasing its surface area and all the binding sites for carbon are “free” for binding with incoming molecules and atoms. The number of open binding sites allows for activated charcoal to become much more porous, like a sponge this substance is very good at removing contaminants whether that be in water, toxins in your stomach, or on the skin. For this reason, activated charcoal has a number of medicinal and industrial uses.
You may hear that activated charcoal is like a magnet, but a more accurate representation would be chewing gum or sticky tape for dirt (a lot less captivating but far more accurate). A magnet can attract particles close to it and pull it in. Activated charcoal however needs to touch the substance to stick to it and trap it. Therefore, in beauty products it is said that activated charcoal products can remove more dirt than other products. A normal cleanser removes surface dirt and oil through the use of surfactants like synthetic detergents. But these don’t really get into pores. On the other hand, activated charcoal can potentially absorb oil from pores, so it could draw out dirt within a pore with it. This means it can potentially clean deeper inside the pore than your traditional cleanser.
Activated charcoal cleanses the skin, unclogs pores, removes deeper impurities, and dead skin cells. Dirt, toxins, heavy metals, chemicals, and oil that are deep in our pores come in contact with the charcoal, get attached to the charcoal molecules, are pulled to the surface and washed away. The result is smooth, vibrant and even-toned skin.
There are various visible results you can see from exfoliating with activated charcoal products like our Hades Detoxifying Charcoal Scrub. Results seen will vary from smaller pores, reduced inflammation, less acne, softer and brighter skin. Oil and dirt are what make our pores appear bigger, the activated charcoal binds to this nasty duo and pulls it out of your pores reducing pore size. The Hades Detoxifying Charcoal Scrub helps remove oil, a great tool for anyone battling oily skin and acne. Remember, our pores are easily clogged with anything ranging from dirt and oil to toxins. These can cause things like acne, ingrown hairs, etc. So, it’s important to routinely get all that out of our bodies. Once all the those trapped toxins have been pulled up out of our pores onto the surface of the skin you want to remove it, shrink those pores and bring back moisture to the skin’s surface. The ingredients in our activated charcoal sugar scrub do just that, sugar granules naturally exfoliate the dry and rough patches of the skin, deeply nourishing Shea Butter, Grape Seed Oil and Organic Coconut Oil glide across the skin and whisks away dead skin cells and toxins as you rinse, leaving skin cleansed, smoothed and hydrated.
If you are dealing with dull, oily, and rough skin, activated charcoal is an excellent product for you to introduce into your skincare routine. With the myriad of benefits, we’re not just talking about using activated charcoal for your face! The benefits of activated charcoal are just as important for your whole body to give you healthy, glowing and smooth skin all over! Summer is right around the corner and we are going to be baring a lot more than just our pretty little faces. So, get prepared to bare it all with confidence and let Hades do the dirty work, leaving your skin vibrant and renewed.
At least now if you get coal in your in stocking, you know it won’t be for a bad skin care routine!
Citations
Caleb Strom. "Difference Between Charcoal and Activated Charcoal." DifferenceBetween.net. August 27, 2019.
Michelle, et al. “Activated Charcoal in Skincare: The Science.” Lab Muffin Beauty Science, 7 Nov. 2018.