Understanding Oily Skin

Understanding Oily Skin

oily skinSkin oil is a good thing, otherwise your skin wouldn’t make it. Problems arise when there is too much. For many women, a shiny face from oily skin is a constant annoyance. Understanding what causes oily skin is the first step to choosing what to do about it. Caring for oily skin entails using cleanses and lotions that promote healthy skin.

Of equal importance is avoiding common mistakes that make oily skin worse.

Classic Characteristics of Oily Skin

Here is what to look for if you are not sure whether the shininess of your face is due to oily skin:

  • Your face becomes shiny within an hour or two of cleansing and looks downright greasy by the middle of the day
  • Your makeup seems to slide right off your face
  • The more oily areas have blackheads, white bumps, or acne
  • Your pores are visibly larger, particularly on your nose, chin, and forehead

Importance of Skin Oil

Every pore has one or more glands, called sebaceous glands, where skin oil (‘sebum’) is manufactured and secreted. Sebum is a complex mixture of triglycerides, wax esters, squalene, and a number of metabolites of fat-producing cells. Sebaceous glands are generally connected to hair follicles, except on the nose and eyelids, where there are no hairs.

Sebum is a crucial component of good skin health. First and foremost, it waterproofs and lubricates skin and hair and it provides the body’s main external defense against germs. Furthermore, sebum may also act as a delivery system for antioxidants, including vitamin E, to the upper layers of facial skin.

Sebum is clearly a crucial component of healthy skin that impacts the entire body.

Caring for Oily Skin

The temptation is to use harsh cleansers that remove too much skin oil. Skin care products that contain alcohol are too drying because they remove too much oil, especially with repeated use. In fact, severe drying only makes matters worse, since it stimulates sebaceous glands to make even more sebum.

In addition, skin care products containing irritating ingredients are not helpful. Such ingredients include alpha-hydroxy acids and essential oils like menthol, mint, eucalyptus and lemon. Redness or tingling from such products indicate skin irritation, which eventually causes more problems.

Also avoid the use of overly abrasive scrubs, rough scrub mitts, loofahs, and bar soaps. All of these harsh treatments will irritate and damage your skin.

The best care for oily skin includes starting the day by using a gentle, herb-based cleanser in the morning. The goal is to flush away dirt and excess oil without irritating the sebaceous glands and cause them to manufacture even more sebum. A gentle cleanse will also keep pores from clogging. Clogged pores are the playground for bacteria that cause acne.

One of the most important ingredients to look for in a cleansing formula is clay. Clay has a strong binding effect on skin oil. Unlike other astringents, clay is completely non-irritating. Two kinds of clay, bentonite and kaolin, are especially helpful for unclogging and tightening pores.

Jadience Herbal Formulas has an ideal gentle cleansing cream that provides all of the herbal and clay ingredients of a natural skin care product that keeps your oily skin in check just the right way for healthy skin. It is the Cleansing Cream for Normal to Oily Skin. You will be amazed at what it will do for controlling skin oil and promoting overall skin health.

 

Leave a Reply