Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a good day today. In today's blog post, I'm going to be discussing chemical exfoliation and AHA's and BHA's. This post can be considered a pre-cursor to a review on a beloved skincare favourite in the beauty community - Pixi Glow Tonic.
A key ingredient in Pixi's Glow Tonic is glycolic acid - which falls under the category of an "AHA" - also known as an "Alpha Hydroxy Acid". In simple terms, AHA's are great at detaching dead skin - they help to loosen up the dead cells of the skin allowing them to fall away revealing brighter, healthier and plumper skin. This helpful subreddit explains the main AHA's and the uses and purposes of each. As an ingredient in skincare, due to their focus on the renewal of dead skin, AHA's are popular for those of us who have drier skin types.
You may also be thinking of other acids that have not been mentioned above such as salicylic acid. Well, that falls under the term of a BHA instead. Unlike AHA's, BHA's focus more on purifying the skin and deeply penetrating and cleaning out the pores. Due to this, BHA's and salicylic acid as an ingredient is very popular with acne, oily and blemish prone skin types and it will often be an ingredient found in skincare products used to treat these skin issues. BHA's however are well known to dry out the skin which is why adding moisture back into the skin is important in order to prevent skin from once again overproducing oil and breaking out. Again, this subreddit contains more information on BHA's and their uses.
