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Skin Check-In With Dr. Will: What Is Slugging and Is Safe for Your Skin?
Welcome to your skin check-in with Life & Style’s resident health and beauty expert, Dr. Will Kirby, a celebrity dermatologist and Chief Medical Officer of LaserAway. Every week, he’ll be spilling his candid thoughts and professional advice on all things skin, beauty and wellness as it relates to you — and your favorite stars.
TikTok must officially be out of new trends because it seems that we may have reached the bottom of the barrel. Welcome to my discussion on slugging!
What is slugging?
This in vogue experience that influencers are documenting on social media right now consists of first coating your face with a thick moisturization product like Aquaphor or Vaseline. After that, you go to bed for the night. Then, well … that’s basically it. Actually, that is totally it. Slugging is just a euphemism for moisturizing before going to sleep.
There are some pros to slugging in that these thick, petrolatum-based products do offer supreme moisturization properties because their viscosity affords them the benefit of prolonged, occlusive contact exposure and this may improve your skin barrier.
As such, slugging can absolutely help heal irritated, dry, cracked winter skin. But there are some downsides, too!
Petroleum-based products can be comedogenic and cause black-heads, especially on people with oily complexions. Rather than wait until your skin is flaky and inflamed and needs to be ‘slugged’ though, it’s better to take short, cool showers, use a humidifier if the air is dry, avoid diuretics like coffee and alcohol, hydrate well and apply a light moisturizer twice daily like Drenched from LaserAway Beauty.
Slugging is certainly safe and can absolutely benefit the right person, but calling slugging a ‘skincare hack to combat dry skin’ is like calling sipping a glass of water an “incredibly powerful weapon against being thirsty.” So, hydrate, moisturize and slug away if and when necessary!
