Understand my skin
While sensitive skin rarely requires a visit to the dermatologist’s, it can weigh heavily on the quality of life of people who suffer from it. To measure its effects, and the success of sensitive skin care creams like Sensibio Defensive, a medical and scientific team has developed the new Burden of Sensitive Skin (BoSS) questionnaire.
Sensitive skin is not a serious problem, but dealing with it day-in, day-out can take its toll on anyone. Small and niggling, it works its way into any number of decisions, without ever really casting a dark shadow over life in general. It’s the fact that it is constantly there that makes it wearing.
The make-up you use, the clothes you buy, the places you go… all can be impacted in some way by how your sensitive skin reacts, or how you fear it will react. It can sometimes feel that you don’t always have all the freedom you would like to make the choices you want. One wrong move, and your sensitive skin could be stinging, itching and flashing dry patches.
The psychological weight of constantly dealing with "What if?" can be important, and draining. You may feel that really, sensitive skin is not a big issue, not worth complaining about, and yet yes! You do want to complain! You may want to take a photo with your friends, buy that beautiful jewellery set, run the marathon in a polluted city – but your sensitive skin makes you hesitate, and possibly refuse. That’s a lot of time you spend worrying that could be spent in more pleasant ways.
To truly grasp the impact that sensitive skin has on daily life, Laboratoire Bioderma has developed in collaboration with a number of dermatologists and scientists the Burden of Sensitive Skin (BoSS) questionnaire1. It measures the degree to which a person’s life is impacted by their sensitive skin.
Many skin disorders can have an important impact, even burden, on quality of life. This burden is understood in terms of how it affects overall health, including psychological, physical, social and economic factors. For sensitive skin, we needed a specific tool that is adapted and relevant. The BoSS questionnaire was therefore developed specifically to evaluate the burden of sensitive skin on everyday life.
Comprising 14 questions, the BoSS questionnaire touches on three themes: self-care, daily life and appearance. Patients answer by rating how they’re impacted, from 0 – never, to 4 – always. All scores are added up at the end, and the higher the overall score, the more life is impacted by their sensitive skin. While the criteria that are tested can be subjective in nature, they are also strongly tied to symptoms of sensitive skin, and the questionnaire is therefore a helpful diagnostic aid.
During the questionnaire’s development phase, 4,614 subjects completed the questionnaire. Results were correlated with SF-12 (Short Form health survey) and DLQI (Dermatology Life Quality Index) results. Taken together, they provide consistent confirmation of BoSS’s validity as an aid to measuring sensitive skin’s impact on quality of life.
During tests to measure Sensibio Defensive’s effectiveness as a face cream for sensitive skin, subjects were also invited to respond to the BoSS questionnaire. The difference in before and after results showed that their quality of life improved, after just one month of applying Sensibio Defensive as skin care for sensitive skin.
For 88% of subjects, pollution had therefore less impact on quality of life, as the impact was reduced by 46%.2
Sensibio Defensive plays a real role in diminishing sensitive skin symptoms and therefore alleviating the burden of sensitive skin on everyday life. Patients’ “before” and “after” responses show a clear improvement in how they experience their skin and the impact it has on their daily life. They are much freer in their actions and decisions as a result of having sensitive skin that is better able to defend itself.
As a moisturiser for sensitive skin, Sensibio Defensive has a proven effect on strengthening the skin’s self-defence mechanisms. Even better, when your skin is soothed, you feel better, stronger, and more capable of meeting the demands of each day. This beneficial psychological effect is essential, as we’d all prefer to live the life we choose rather than one we feel we’re forced to live.
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