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How Often Do You Really Need To Wash Your Face?

Handwashing has gotten all the attention lately (and rightfully so) because of the coronavirus pandemic, but with notables like singer Shawn Mendes and Sen. Elizabeth Warren saying they don’t wash their faces, the old twice-a-day rule has started coming into question.

The pop star prefers to “meditate a lot” because he believes “if you’re happy, you won’t break out!” The glowing former Democratic presidential candidate uses Pond’s moisturizer but told Cosmopolitan, “I never wash my face.” And actor Kristen Bell told Elle she cleanses only once a day, at night, since she doesn’t “want to strip my own natural oils in the morning by washing.”

Before diving into how often you should wash, we need to start by defining what cleansing actually means.

“When we’re talking about facial cleansing, we’re typically talking about using a cleanser in addition to water,” Nada Elbuluk, a dermatologist at Keck Medicine of USC and a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Southern California, told HuffPost. “Something that’s going to help with removing the oil and dirt and things that build up on the face over the day, which water alone is not going to do sufficiently.”

What happens when you don’t wash your face at all?

When you completely abstain from face washing, New York and New Jersey dermatologist Meghan Feely warned that “not cleansing may result in acne, particularly after a day at the beach or following a workout, or for those who wear helmets or hats and may notice acne on the forehead if sweat is not rinsed off.”

Even if you’re not sweating, day-to-day life puts you in contact with elements that clog pores, and those elements should be removed regularly. “As we sleep and over the course of the day, oils and dead skin cells build up on our skin,” Feely explained. “Throughout the day, we are also exposed to environmental pollutants.”

Those pollutants “could be...

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