How Your Skin Is Like A Bowl Of Grapes, Raisins And Oatmeal

Imagine a glass bowl full of grapes, raisins and oatmeal.

The grapes represent the young, healthy skin cells; plump, juicy and full of nutrients. The raisins started out as healthy skin cells, but they are slowly dying. These raisin cells are brown, flat and sticky. Once the raisins finally die, they turn into the oatmeal. When they get dry, flaky and uneven to the touch, then they are ready to slough off.

As we age, those raisins and oatmeal tend to stick around a lot longer than they used to. Less grapes are produced, and the ones that are created, are stuck so far below the layer of brown raisins and oatmeal, they are barely seen.

So when we are treating our skin, we want our products to get as deep down to the grape layer as possible. But when all that oatmeal and raisins are in the way, your product has a hard time penetrating down that deep.

Think of it like this; if you have your bowl of grapes, raisins and oatmeal, and you took a ½ cup of water and poured it over that oatmeal, where do you think it will go? Yup, the oatmeal absorbs all of the water, and nothing gets down into those raisins layers. 

In summary, if you want to improve your skin, you essentially want more grapes to be produced, and you want them to be as visible as possible on the outer layer of your skin (epidermis). You need those pesky, lazy raisins to get up and out of the way, and you definitely don’t want any oatmeal on top taking in all those serums you just invested in. 

This then takes me to your next lesson, which is what products should go on first? Do you put your serum on last or first? 

Take the glass bowl visual above,  all you have to do is think about which serum is the runniest. This is what you put on first, since it will penetrate deepest into your skin. 

Heres a simple breakdown of the order to apply your products: 

Step 1: Cleanse 

Step 2: Exfoliate ( unless you did it the night before - or are using a retinol at night) 

Step 3: Toner

Step 4: Vitamin C serum (day time only) 

Step 5: This is where you would add an oil based serum, or a hyaluronic acid based serum if you like more water base hydration. ( night time for sure, day time if you like a very dewy look all day) 

Step 6: Moisturizer

Step 8: Eye Cream

Step 9: SPF ( day time only)