Ways to Bleach Your Skin

Why would you want to bleach your skin?

Believe it or not, there are several reasons.  The first has to do with pregnancy.  During pregnancy, your hormones are raging which increases melanin production and causes the mask of pregnancy or melasma.  In layman's terms, this causes "darker spots" on your skin, normally on your forehead and face.  The spots go away after pregnancy but for many women, bleaching their skin can help to remove the spots while they are pregnant (my wife had this condition....6 months after we had our daughter, they were gone.)

In some cases, you may want to bleach your skin if you have had severe acne scarring.  Once again, the darker color where the scar is caused by inflammation in the skin.  And melanin, whose job is to protect the skin, acts and the result is darker skin tone in the area of the scarring.  This is also called acne hyperpigmentation.

Aging also becomes an issue for many women who want to bleach their skin.  Basically, as we age, we produce less and less collagen for our skin, our skin starts to get thinner and the melanin production is less effective.  More problems with skin happen because our faces are typically doesn't uniformally distribute oils across our skin.  Dryer skin tends to pigment darker and areas that are more oily tend to pigment lighter.  The result is age or liver spots.

Finally, perhaps the biggest reason why some women may want to bleach their skin is because of cultural bias.  What I mean by this is that a large part of the world's population has help on to the belief that pale, white skin is better.  In fact, there are some who would risk their lives using banned whitening products such as hydroquinone in pursuit of whiter skin.

In this hub, I intend to show you several alternatives to bleaching your skin.  These include natural ways to whiten your skin as well as popular ingredients that can make whiter, paler skin.

Many people don't know this but if you want to bleach your skin, you may not have to resort to chemicals to have it done.

In the case of age spots for instance, you may be able to exfoliate your skin with a glycolic acid peel or use a kojic acid lotion. Both of these alternatives are natural and safer than using some of the other bleaching chemicals. In fact, there are many bleaching creams that use both as a supplement to their main ingredient (which typically is alpha arbutin or hydroquinone if you live in the U.S.)

Exfoliation works because as we age, dead skin starts to collect more and more on the surface of our skin. This dead skin can create darkish brown pigment on our forehead and face. Soaps and lotions that contain either glycolic acid or kojic acid literally lift the dead skin off your face and reveal your healthier newer skin underneath.

Of course, in extreme cases, many who want to bleach their skin need more powerful bleaching creams. The most effective skin bleaching agent out there is hydroquinone but this bleaching ingredient is illegal everywhere in the world except the US.

Another solution is A Arbutin and beta arbutin. Both of these are found in a plant in Canada and although they aren't as effective, they have less side effects.

By the way, to the body, there is no difference between alpha arbutin and hydroquinone. It breaks down the same.