WHAT CAUSES OILY SKIN?
Oily skin is caused by excess sebum production (sebum is just a fancy name for the natural oils your face and scalp produces). The amount of oil your skin produces is affected by a few different factors, including genetics, the weather, your age (younger people tend to have more oily skin), and enlarged pores. Something you may be doing that’s inadvertently making your skin oilier is stripping your skin of its natural oils. Say you’re feeling pretty oily and decide to use a strong face cleanser to wash your face. You may feel squeaky clean afterwards and think that’s a good sign because you’ve removed all that oil, but no! Over time, your skin will start to think it’s dry and will produce MORE oil to make up for it, which can lead to a vicious cycle of drying out your skin.
WHY DOES MY SKIN FEEL OILY AND DRY AT THE SAME TIME?
There’s a difference between having dry skin and having dehydrated skin, and not many people know about this difference! You may be thinking you have one type when in reality, you have the other. Dry skin is caused by a lack of oil; this can feel dry to the touch, flaky, and you may see visible dry patches on your skin. Dehydrated skin is caused by a lack of water; this may not feel dry to the touch, but it could feel very tight and uncomfortable on the inside (similar to the feeling you may get around your mouth in the cold & dry winter). If you’re feeling “dry” and oily at the same time, you may actually have dehydrated skin that’s overproducing oil to try and make up for it. Treating that dehydration could solve your oily issues too!
WHAT SHOULD I DO FOR MY OILY SKIN?
Non-comedogenic products are popular for people with oily skin. Most products with this label have been shown to not clog pores. However, this is tested by applying products to people’s BACKS, not their faces, so that non-comedogenic rating may not be completely accurate based on your specific skin type. There’s also no regulations or standard techniques set on how this testing needs to be performed. I recommend getting a sample of the product you’re looking to try and testing it out first if you’re concerned about it clogging your pores, but seeing this label is a good starting point.
One thing to look at if you’ve got oily skin is possibly changing how you wash your face. Like I mentioned before, over-washing your face can strip your skin of its natural oils and cause your skin to produce more oil to make up for it. Before I learned about this, I always wondered why my matte foundations wouldn’t last and oils would start to peek through pretty early! It’s because I was stripping my skin and drying it out too much and layering makeup on top, just for my skin to ramp up oil production throughout the day.
Over-exfoliating your face can lead to the same result, so look at how often you use exfoliating products and maybe cut back to 1-2 times a week. There’s two types of exfoliators: physical and chemical. An example of a physical exfoliators is a face scrub that’s gritty and buffs the dead skin away. Think of your skin like a brick wall with mortar holding the bricks together. The bricks at the top are skin cells that have been damaged, while the ones underneath are fresh and not damaged. Physical exfoliating is like taking a sledgehammer to the wall in order to remove the top layer of bricks and reveal the new ones below. An example of chemical exfoliators are acid toners that you apply to your skin after cleansing and don’t rinse off. These use alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs) to remove dead skin cells. Chemical exfoliating is like dissolving the mortar that’s holding the top bricks together and letting them fall off on their own. Too much of either type of exfoliating can lead to irritated skin that feels more sensitive and is more susceptible to sun damage, so be careful!
BEST/WORST INGREDIENTS FOR OILY SKIN
My main tip for figuring out what works for your skin: check the ingredients! Just because the label says it’s good for oily skin doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. Knowing which ingredients are good for your skin type and which ones are bad will help you find good quality products to use, no matter what your price range is.
BAD Ingredients
- Alcohol/SD Alcohol/Denatured Alcohol- there’s a TON of products that are marketed as ‘good for oily skin’, but one of the main ingredients is alcohol! Yes alcohol will dry out your skin, but it can go too far and strip your skin, and bring you back into excess-oil-production mode. I understand that sometimes alcohol is added to change the texture of the product, but once it’s on your face it won’t know where to stop. Ingredient lists in the US have to be in order of concentration, so the closer to the top of the list, the more of that ingredient that’s in the product. I try to stay away from skincare products where drying alcohols are in the top 5-7 ingredients.
- “Foaming” cleansers– Some of these are made with Sodium Laurel Sulfate (SLS) as the cleansing agent, which can be very drying to the skin. Others may use alcohol to help make the product foam up and rinse off easier. Either way, these cleansers may feel good initially, but end up drying out your skin too much.
- Petrolatum- I’ve heard of people using petroleum-based products as moisturizer, but it’s such a heavy texture that it just sits on the surface of your skin and can clog your pores pretty quickly. Other products like thick, rich creams usually aren’t good for oily skin for similar reasons.
GOOD Ingredients
- Hyaluronic Acid & Squalane- both of these ingredients are great for those with oily skin due to dehydration! They hydrate the skin at a deeper level thanks to their small molecular size, while still being lightweight enough to not feel heavy or greasy on your skin.
- Clay- normally found in face masks, clay helps absorb excess oil from your skin and gently clean out your pores. Bentonite clay and kaolin clay are two types that are popular in skincare, and they’re starting to be seen in other products like cleansers and toners as well as face masks.
- AHAs and BHAs- (Alpha Hydroxy Acids and Beta Hydroxy Acids) these are some of my favorite ingredients to see in products for oily skin! AHAs exfoliate your skin and remove the top layer of dead/damaged skin cells that may be clogging your pores and contributing to your oiliness. They’re chemical exfoliators, so don’t go overboard or you could damage your skin! Some popular examples are glycolic acid, lactic acid, and mandelic acid, but there’s a bunch of different types. BHAs (the only one is salicylic acid) can get deeper into your pores and clean out any gunk that’s clogging them. Salicyclic acid is also great for pimples because it’s going to dry out that area and clear out whatever is clogging that pore to cause the zit.
