In the event you’ve spent a good period of time on skincare and wonder TikTok, you have in all probability come throughout slugging greater than as soon as. “Aquaphor slugging,” “eye slugging,” “methods to slug your face”—it’s a mysterious nook of skincare, so we requested some specialists for the small print. And whereas the skincare method has been making the rounds on the app as of late, its origins go means again.

From what pores and skin slugging is and the advantages of utilizing this system to how the tactic differs in keeping with pores and skin kind, there’s lots to know earlier than you soar into it. When you have been curious concerning the development, this is all it is advisable know.

What’s slugging and the way does it work?

Merely put, slugging refers back to the technique of sealing your pores and skin with an occlusive agent, usually petroleum-based (like Vaseline), in a single day. Therefore the identify, which refers to how slimy your face seems afterwards – like a slug crawled over your face and left behind a greasy path. The concept is to create a protecting barrier, which can stop water loss out of your pores and skin through the night time and seal in all of the hydrating goodness out of your sheet masks and wealthy moisturisers.

In the event you don’t need to sleep with product in your face, you can too slug through the day and depart the product on for just a few hours. Although it has been popularised as a face remedy on TikTok to help with hydration, this little magnificence trick works on different components of the physique as effectively – from lips and eye slugging to ankles.

As a development, slugging’s rising recognition might be traced again to the Ok-beauty world earlier than hitting boards like Reddit’s Skincare Habit and later TikTok. However, although it has been popularised once more just lately, it’s a apply most dermatologists suggest for shortly therapeutic dryness and eczema and trapping in your moisture, in keeping with dermatologist Dr. Shari Marchbein, M.D., who made a whole Instagram Reels on slugging.

What are the advantages of slugging with petroleum jelly (AKA petrolatum)?

Petroleum jelly, the ingredient generally present in ointments like Aquaphor, CeraVe, Vaseline, and different topical lotions, is occlusive, which means it creates a barrier that seals in hydration. “In fact, dermatologists have been ‘slugging’ for years. We simply did not provide you with a cute identify for it,” Dr. Marchbein reveals. “I do not go to mattress with out it.”

New York board-certified dermatologist Dr Whitney Bowe, says that slugging might be nice for tremendous dry pores and skin and people with eczema. For her, irrespective of how a lot moisturiser you set onto chapped pores and skin, it is that remaining occlusive layer of petrolatum that basically helps to heal the broken pores and skin barrier and forestall water from seeping out.

Dr. Marchbein recommends utilizing petroleum jelly by itself or thinly layered on high of a moisturiser or hydrating serum anyplace out of your knees to your eyelids. She additionally agrees that the TikTok means of slugging – that’s, placing “the teeniest dab,” as she emphasised, over your complete face – generally is a nice answer for these with dry or delicate pores and skin. “Particularly going into allergy [or cold] season, my lips and my eyelids are the thinnest pores and skin, and so they can dry simply. Slugging is a good way of treating that in a single day.”