I came across a video recently that stopped me mid-scroll.
It claimed your skin isn’t a barrier at all, but a sponge. That everything you apply, from your moisturiser to your deodorant, slips straight into your bloodstream within minutes, quietly flooding your body with toxins before you’ve even had your first cup of tea. Which is quite something to take in before 9am.
And I’ll be honest, it’s the kind of message that lingers, because part of it feels believable.
It made me stop and think, not because I believed it, but because so many people will.
It’s persuasive. But it’s also an oversimplification, and in some cases, simply not how the body works. More than anything, it’s designed to make you question everything in your bathroom overnight.
Is your skin actually a sponge?
Your skin isn’t a sponge. If it were, a long bath would be a far riskier activity.
But it isn’t completely sealed off either. The truth is far less dramatic, and far more useful. Your skin acts as a barrier, but not a perfect one. Certain substances can pass through it, particularly when they’re designed to do so or used repeatedly over time.
This is how hormone replacement therapy works, how nicotine patches work, and how certain medicated creams are able to target pain beneath the surface. So yes, absorption exists.
But not everything you apply is entering your bloodstream, and certainly not in the immediate, overwhelming way that video suggests.
What matters is far less dramatic than we’re often told. Dose matters. Frequency matters. Formulation matters. More importantly, it’s rarely one product in isolation. It’s everything layered together, day after day, without much thought.
And importantly, something doesn’t need to reach your bloodstream to have an effect. The skin itself is active, responsive, and easily influenced by what we put on it.
The middle ground we rarely hear
This is where the conversation often gets lost. It swings from one extreme to the other, either everything is toxic, or nothing matters.
The truth is usually far less dramatic, and far more consistent. It’s not about one product, but repeated exposure over time. While your body is very capable of processing what it’s given, that doesn’t mean it needs a constant stream of it.
Synthetic fragrance is a good example. Not because one use is going to cause an enormous problem, but because it’s completely unnecessary, and it quietly appears in far more products than most people realise. Across skincare, body wash, deodorant, washing detergents and perfume, it builds up.
For many people, it’s also one of the first things that starts to irritate or sensitise the skin. The same applies to heavily perfumed products that sit on the skin for hours, or fabrics washed in strong detergents that stay in contact with your body all day.
It’s rarely one thing in isolation. It’s everything combined, consistently, without much thought. And while your body may cope, it doesn’t necessarily mean it benefits.
And when you step back, it’s not just skincare. It’s everything we use daily, often without thinking. None of it unusual, all of it constant.
And interestingly, we often focus so heavily on what sits on the surface of our skin, while thinking far less about the things that go deeper. Treatments like Botox or fillers are widely accepted, yet rarely questioned in the same way. It’s a reminder of how selective we can be about what we choose to worry about.
What about acids and active skincare?
If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll already know my stance on acids, retinols and vitamin C. I’ve never fully trusted how heavily they’re pushed.
And while these ingredients aren’t designed to enter your bloodstream in the way that video suggests, they do raise a different question for me. Not just what passes through the skin, but what we repeatedly ask our skin to tolerate.
That doesn’t mean they don’t create results. But I’ve always come back to the same question. At what cost?
Many of these ingredients work by interfering with the skin. Speeding it up, thinning it out, pushing it to behave differently. While that can look impressive in the short term, it doesn’t always feel like support. It can feel like pressure.
Over time, I see more and more skin that looks reactive, tired, and slightly lost. Not because it’s lacking something, but because it’s been asked to do too much. I’ve been there myself.
That cycle of adding more, trying to fix what the last product unsettled, layering actives in the hope this one might be the answer… which usually just meant needing another product to fix the last one. When really, my skin was asking for calm.
So for me, it’s never been about whether these ingredients are good or bad.
It’s whether they’re necessary.
So where do I stand on it?
This is the part I think often gets misunderstood. While there isn’t strong scientific evidence to suggest that your everyday skincare is flooding your bloodstream with toxins, that doesn’t automatically mean everything we use is worth using.
For me, this has never been about panic. It’s about preference.
I choose to live as simply and naturally as possible, where I can. Not perfectly, but consciously. That means natural deodorants, more thoughtful choices with what I wash my clothes in, and skincare that feels recognisable when I read the label.
Not because I think my body is under immediate attack, but because it could be over time and I don’t see the need to constantly load it with things it then has to process. Especially when there’s a simpler way.
A quieter way to look at it
That video wanted me to feel alarmed. But fear rarely leads to better decisions, it usually just leads to more of them.
Your skin isn’t a sponge, but it is responsive. It reflects what you do to it, consistently, over time. And most of the time, it isn’t asking for more. It’s asking for less.
Less interference. Less correction. Less noise.
Your skin doesn’t need to be managed into submission. It needs to be understood.
That’s exactly why I created Olive & Joyce. Not to replace everything overnight, but to offer something simpler. Something your skin can recognise, understand, and quietly get on with.
Because good skin isn’t forced, it’s supported and when it is, it tends to find its way back.