Regardless of your primary skin type, ethnic background, or age, minor or major irritating skin conditions can be present, even those you can’t feel. The skin can burn, chafe, or crack, and you may have patchy areas of dry, flaky skin related to weather conditions, hormonal changes, the skin-care products you use, or sun exposure.

Skin can also break out in small bumps that look like a diaper rash. Skin can itch, swell, blotch, redden, and develop allergic reactions to cosmetics, animals, dust, or pollen. If that isn’t enough to make you itch just a little, then think about the number of cosmetics most women use daily.

The average woman uses at least 12 different skin-care, makeup, and hair-care products a day, with each one, on average, containing about 20 different ingredients. That means her skin is exposed to about 240 different cosmetic ingredients on any given day.

The fact that any of us have skin left is a testimony to the skin’s resiliency, the safety of the majority of cosmetic ingredients, and the talent of cosmetics chemists. Whether we like it or not, most of us will react to something along the way, perhaps even daily.