If you’ve come across the term skin icing and wondered what it’s all about, well, it has to do with using a cube of ice on your face to reduce under-eye and facial puffiness, inflammation and redness. Here’s a detailed guide on how it helps your skin and how you can add it to your daily routine.
How Does It Work?
Skin icing is a facile version of cryotherapy, which involves using extremely cold temperatures to heal and treat an array of skin concerns. The properties and benefits of this ice facial are capable enough to outdo many expensive facial treatments.
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Benefits Of Skin Icing
Eases out inflammation: Ice is known for its anti-inflammatory properties. It helps ease puffiness on the face, around the eyes and treats the redness and swelling caused by acne.
Minimises the appearance of pores: Ice works well as a toner. It helps to close large pores and shrink their appearance within minutes of application. This prevents pores from producing excess sebum, which helps in controlling oil on the face.
Boosts circulation: Rubbing ice on your face promotes blood circulation, leaving your skin radiant and glowing.
Calms skin: The icy cool feeling soothes and refreshes the skin too. Let’s not forget how icing also prepares the skin effectively for your beauty products.
Basic Rules To Follow
While skin icing is one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to care for the skin, the technique comes with its caveats:
– Firstly, no matter how enticing the icy cold feeling is, sensitive skin must always undergo a patch test to observe their skin’s adjustment to the technique. Usually, what may seem like freezing cold at the start, may become tolerable cold eventually.
– Refrain from using the ice cubes directly on the skin; instead, wrap them up in a muslin cloth.
– Make sure you maintain a separate ice tray for this purpose to avoid any infection.
– Always cleanse your skin thoroughly before rubbing on some ice.
– Lastly, avoid skin icing if you have active acne, as this may aggravate the chances of spreading bacteria.
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Elevate Your Experience
Regular ice is great, but there are ways to amp up the skin icing experience and experiment with methods of this ice therapy.
– Ditch water and freeze a soothing agent like aloe vera gel or rose water.
– Add a concern-oriented essential oil to the water to create treatment ice. You can add tea tree oil, lavender oil, neem oil, and much more.
– Beautify the ice cubes by adding pieces of skin-benefiting plants like green tea, thyme, mint, and even rose petals.
– If you’re feeling lazy, get yourself some face ice tools like ice rollers and ice globes.
– You can also simply dunk your face into a bowl full of ice and cold water like Katrina Kaif.
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