How Legit Is Activated Charcoal For Your Skin?

Activated charcoal as a beauty product has taken the skincare industry by surprise in last few years. If you are one among such people who tend to feel astonished by this disclosure then here’s something captivating waiting for you.

Charcoal is quite popular in personal care and beauty products. From soaps to face masks to toothpaste, it’s almost everywhere. But, does the black ashy ingredient deserve the hero status? Or is it just the random trending fad on social media that only looks cool?

The use of activated charcoal in the beauty products is one such innovation in the beauty industry that has raised many eyebrows. Any layman would be surprised to know that you could actually apply that black compound on your skin. But the fact is, on exhibiting regular charcoal to high temperatures in the omnipresence of oxygen leads to the reinforcement of more pores on it.  And that’s how the activated charcoal is developed.    

The trapped carbon along with the pores inside it induces and soak up things like a sponge. This very nature of activated charcoal is seized by doctors. They are using it to help remove toxins from the patient’s body. Especially the ones who are tested positive for alcohol poisoning and drug overdose.

And the same principle is now being brought into play by the beauty experts. They believe that if it has the potential to attract toxins from the body then why not use it as a bribe to remove excess oil and dirt from the pores of the skin.

Activated charcoal does not get absorbed by the body.  It is also blessed with antibacterial and anti-fungal properties which is an additional aid to your skin. Oily skinned people would love this product since other than making your face oil free, it would hold the acne from not showing up on your face. 

Currently, it has been used as an active ingredient in various beauty products such as cleansers, exfoliators, face masks and so on. It is devised by various top notch brands as well. As per the experts, “When dirt and oil present in the pores of the skin comes in contact with the carbon, they get stuck to it and get rinsed away when you wash your face”.

Uses of Activated Charcoal For Skin

Some of the popular uses of activated charcoal in your beauty regime are right under:

• Face scrub: Activated charcoal is kind of grainy in consistency which allows it to be a good bet for skin exfoliation purpose. It helps us meet a dazzling, silky and supple skin. Also, it is quite mellow on even the most sensitive skin since it comprises of very tiny granules.
• Balance facial oil: Too much oil on the skin can act as an open invitation for manifold concerns such as acne, pimples. Activated charcoal because of its very nature is a sure shot remedy to keep this complication under check.
• Shrink the pores: Open pore is a common problem among the majority of people. It is essentially caused due to cropping up of excess oil and dead skin in the way of the closing walls of pores. This, in turn, degrades your overall look since it is bound to take away the smoothness of your skin. To come to your rescue is the innovation of using activated charcoal as a part of your facial cleansers, masks or scrubs. 

Here’s a quick peek in some of the products having activated charcoal in their ingredient list and have been given green signals from the beauty experts.

• Dr. Jart+ Pore Minimalist Black Charcoal Sheet Mask:  A Korean beauty sheet mask which lends a hand to run over facial impurities and blackheads.
• Garnier Clean + Blackhead Eliminating Scrub: A gel based exfoliating cleanser that turns out to be a real addiction in your skin care regime to attain a squeaky clean skin.
• Origins Clear Improvement Active Charcoal Mask to Clear Pores:  A mask framed to waste away the grime lurking out of the skin. Plus it’s free from sulphates and parabens.
• Shamanuti Activated Charcoal Cleanser: A daily cleanser meant for disinfecting and exfoliating your skin. Can also serve an alternative to a gentle shaving cream and a body wash.

The Possible Drawbacks

While most of the products containing activated charcoals are safe when tested, there is always the other side of the coin. That brings us to another aspect of using activated charcoal products.

The activated charcoal has some amazing ability to absorb other things. But the research has shown that the regular use of activated charcoal can halt and in some cases hinder the effect of other medicines.

You might have also seen many videos on the internet where people are peeling off glossy black charcoal face mask. It is quite dangerous as when sebum inside the pore gets clogged, it forms blackhead. Removal of Charcoal face masks also strips the facial hair along with it.

This may look really satisfying but it can lead to more problems. The reason being as the hair gets ripped out, it leaves behind the congested pores like before. Sensitive skins can react to stripping action of the peeled back mask.  It can end up removing the protective layers of upper epidermis leading to dryness and rashes.

The presence of adhesive glue, skin aggravating ingredients such as alcohol, methanol etc in the Activated Charcoal skin care products can lead to more damage than recovering your skin to a better form.

Final Comments

Activated charcoal is an unquestionably a celebrated ingredient for the beauty industry. The absorbing power it possesses is uncontroversial and second to none. It has proved to absorb the harmful substances thousands of times its own mass.

But the humongous puzzle it still has to solve is that there’s no scientific evidence that it will work in the similar fashion with the skin as it does with the toxins of the body. The benefits activated charcoal offers are just incredible and as it’s an all-natural product it’s well worth trying! Even if you don’t end up getting the dream results, you still get a free ride!