Beauty Products VS Malassezia

[Anonymous]

I recently (within the past year) found out that I have Malassezia/seborrheic dermatitis. What comes with this is a long list of "things that will cause your skin to freak out on you" that you must be conscious of. Upon discovering this world of avoidance, I realized how many products use things such as castor oil and polysorbate. It's honestly pretty difficult to find less expensive products that are "safe" aka free of triggers. Using SkinCarisma has been eye-opening. While those without this problem may overlook it, but anyone with will know how frustrating it is to look at a ton of products you can't safely use without flaking, raw, and irritated skin. I think this is something a big portion of brands overlook, is it just me?

[MoLuxe]

✨I feel the same way! That’s why I use this website called sezia.com! It’s an ingredient checker for malassezia inducing agents. You just copy and paste the product ingredients into their search engine and it tells whether this product provides great risk according to the ingredients. It has helped me a lot! I would be mindful of some ingredients: while glycerin may be ok for sebderm, as I researched, it may not be formalassezia. I would mitigate risks according to what works for you! Hope this helps! ✨

[LaLa424]

For some reason it removed the sezia website address when i posted my comment below, but yea that’s what I was referring to as well. The site was created based on simple skincare science’s site/blog, and he has since corrected his site and said glycerin is actually safe, and sometimes good for, fungal acne/malassezia and seb derm.  I just read it a few days ago and it made me so happy lol!  As far as I can tell, though, sezia hasn’t updated their product checker. Sezia has definitely been a huge help for me as well!

[LaLa424]

100000000000000% feel your pain!  If you haven’t discovered it yet, use  - while it is still tedious to check EVERY SINGLE PRODUCT’s ingredient list, it has still saved a lot of time and hassle. (Just fyi that is not a typo, it is .co not .com). The first thing I found during this nightmare of a journey was over-hyped  list of “safe products,” which I personally found to not ne very helpful. After finding, I went back to simpleskincaresciemce and double checked the ingredients of some of the lesser expensive products listed (drugstore brands, etc) and they actually turned out to NOT be safe. Plus trying to navigate that looooong list of products and remember what all the different asterisk combinations were supposed to indicate....no thanks. I finally just started combing through Sephora and Ulta’s sites/apps for particular types of products I knew I needed to get or change out, and checked the ingredients of every single one I was interested in to see if it might cause problems. That probably sounds like a lot of trouble to go through, but really it didn’t take much time. The hardest thing to find was a moisturizer, which I just recently found a 100% safe one that does not seem to irritate my skin in any way for any reason (its the First Aid Beauty Hello Fab Coconut Water Cream). 

Foundation is especially frustrating because it seems that it is mostly matte formulations that are “safe,” but I have dry skin not matter what - seb derm/malassezia or not - so matte foundation just looks horrible. I have yet to find a foundation that truly works for me, but luckily (and unfortunately at the same time) I haven’t had a reason or need to wear make up daily or at all really for most of this year, so that has helped give my skin time to heal up a little more, and helped save time and money that would otherwise have been wasted in buying and returning products trying to figure something out. Doesn’t help that when you walk in to an actual Sephora store and inevitably run in to or ask a sales associate for help, the minute you try to explain what your skin concern/problem is and that you have avoid this-that-and-the-other, they give you the crazy eyes and say “we can’t help you with that, you need a dermatologist.”  Yes thanks, been there done that, I’m asking you about make up, not to solve the problem!!  (I have tried to get samples of a couple of foundations to try, and have been told repeatedly that “we’ve never made samples for customers” even though I know just a year or two ago I used to get them all the time, whether it was make up or face wash -it’s how I found a number of new products I returned to buy religiously - they had little jars and packages they would use to make a sample from testers. I know of course with COVID this likely wouldn’t be possible, but even early last year LONG before the virus, employees would still tell me that the store has never offered that, which is just not true). 

Sorry for the rant, I just went to a physical Sephora store today and again ran in to the same unwilling-to-be-even-remotely-helpful attitudes from multiple employees, so I am a bit frustrated and felt some relief when I just found your post, even though it is from months ago. I hope you have been able to find some products that work for you, and/or good resources for info. I have been dealing with this since last year, so if you have any questions or need some ideas, feel free to contact me. I can’t promise I will have the answer, but I might know where to go look for it!!