In the event you’ve spent a good period of time on skincare and sweetness TikTok, you have most likely come throughout slugging greater than as soon as. “Aquaphor slugging,” “eye slugging,” “easy 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 approach has been making the rounds on the app as of late, its origins go method 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 bounce into it. In case you have been curious in regards to the pattern, this is all you should 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, typically petroleum-based (like Vaseline), in a single day. Therefore the title, which refers to how slimy your face seems afterwards – like a slug crawled over your face and left behind a greasy path. The thought is to create a protecting barrier, which can forestall water loss out of your pores and skin in the course of the evening 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 in the course of the day and go away the product on for a couple of hours. Although it has been popularised as a face therapy on TikTok to assist with hydration, this little magnificence trick works on different elements of the physique as effectively – from lips and eye slugging to ankles.

As a pattern, slugging’s rising reputation could be traced again to the Okay-beauty world earlier than hitting boards like Reddit’s Skincare Habit and later TikTok. However, although it has been popularised once more lately, it’s a follow most dermatologists advocate 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, that 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 title 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 could be nice for tremendous dry pores and skin and people with eczema. For her, irrespective of how a lot moisturiser you place onto chapped pores and skin, it is that closing 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 prime of a moisturiser or hydrating serum anyplace out of your knees to your eyelids. She additionally agrees that the TikTok method of slugging – that’s, placing “the teeniest dab,” as she emphasised, over your complete face – could be 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.”