Top Causes Of Skin Darkening And How To Avoid Them

What Causes Skin Darkening?

Even with the sea of skin lightening and whitening products, skin darkening is still a problem for most women. When your skin gets darker, it could be a problem, depending on your preference over your own skin color. Having dark underarms, knees, or elbows can be embarrassing and you might not feel confident enough to wear sleeveless shirts or bikinis because you’re afraid your friends will see your dark secrets.

But why does skin darken in these select areas anyway? What causes skin darkening in the first place? What are these things and what can you do to avoid it?

It’s important to understand the reason why your skin darkens in various areas of the body. Here are some of the most common causes of why your skin can have dark skin tone.

✔️ Your Skin Gets Exposed

This is the most common cause of skin darkening for most people. We expose our skin to the sun in many ways.

A lot of us have day jobs which require us to go out during the morning and spend our day while the sun is up. When we go to work, the sun may be already starting to rise up. And when we go out for lunch, we may be walking under the sun for a brief period of time, but this still adds up the damage on our skin which leads to darkening.

You should apply sunblock lotion to your skin in order to avoid the damage that adds up to your skin. The good thing about sunblock is that you can easily reapply it before you head out to the sun once more, making your skin protected from darkening all the time.

✔️ Poor Proper Care Of Your Skin

If you do poorly in your skin care routine, your skin might get prone to skin darkening. Apart from your daily bath or shower, your skin requires extra love and care.

Poor skin care makes your skin unhealthy. And when your skin is not healthy, it won’t absorb the active ingredients from the skin care products you use.

When you are using sunblock lotion regularly during the day which is a pretty heavy lotion, thorough cleansing and scheduled exfoliation is needed. This will avoid clogging on your pores to improve your skin care in order to avoid skin darkening.

✔️ You Are Not Exfoliating

Dead skin cells are sitting on top of your skin at any given time because the life cycle of your skin cells is regular. They die and get shed off regularly.

The shedding slows down as you grow older and here is where exfoliation comes to help. Exfoliating the skin helps shed off the dead skin cells which make your skin look dark.

So when you are not exfoliating, you are contributing to the dark shade over your skin. Make sure to exfoliate regularly, at least 2 to 3 times a week. This will keep your skin healthy and free from dead skin cells.

✔️ Too Much Exfoliation

Exfoliating is good but too much exfoliation can be abrasive and irritate skin and may lead to skin darkening.

✔️ Irritation From Waxing, Plucking, Shaving

Body hair removal procedures like waxing, plucking, and shaving which is harsh and abrasive by nature may cause irritation on your skin. Your skin reacts to this and Melanocytes, which are cells that produce melanin, gets activated and cause increased melanin or pigmentation on skin resulting in a darker skin tone on the affected areas.

✔️ Harsh Deodorants Or Antiperspirants

Some deodorants have chemicals that may cause irritation on your skin. When the skin gets irritated it gets darker.

✔️ Increased Friction On Skin

The skin in your underarms naturally rub against each other. Friction from skin rubbing against skin or hair and from wearing tight clothes can lead to darker skin tone. This is also true in and around the bikini area, specially the inner thighs (singit).

Knowing the causes will help you avoid them and prevent skin from darkening. These are the usual causes of skin darkening and they are all easy to deal with so you can maintain a lighter and whiter skin over time.