Do you still get acne sometimes, even though you’re well past your care-free teenage years? We did to… until we understood this. Oil-free is not better. Here’s why.
Your skin needs water and oil to stay hydrated. It gets both of these substances from outside your body as well as inside your body. This means that the amount of water you drink and the humidity in the air both affect how much water is available to your skin.
The amount of oil available to your skin is also determined both internally and externally. Your skin produces an oily substance called sebum to keep itself hydrated. The oils in your body are made available to your skin by eating healthy fats.
You need to wash your face to remove germs, environmental toxins, sweat, and makeup. When you was your face, you also remove the sebum that your skin produced as a natural moisturizer. If you don’t provide an external source to replace the oils on your skin after washing, your skin will produce more oily sebum to compensate.
If your skin tends to be oily, this cycle leads to more breakouts and irritated skin. If your skin is dry or sensitive, washing without replacing oils will make your skin will get even drier, redder, and more irritated.
This is surely not what you want.
To make your skin stay breakout-free and hydrated, you need to control the amount of oil and water available to your skin. Drink more water (not tea or coffee, which are dehydrating) to provide your skin with enough water on the inside.
You can’t control the amount of water vapor in the air, so don’t worry about that. Instead, eat healthy fats, such as avocados and olive oil, to make sure you skin has the right kind of oils available to hydrate your skin. Provide an external source of oil for your skin in the form of a moisturizer. The amount of oil that you’ll want to put back onto your skin after washing will be determined by the climate you are in and how your skin is responding to it.
If you’re in a warmer climate, use a lighter moisturizer with less oil in the formulation. You may be tempted to skip it altogether, but your skin can actually get dehydrated from loosing a lot of water due to sweating. Then you start the cycle that we talked about above.
If you’re in a colder climate, use a richer moisturizer that is fortified with healthy carrier oils, such as coconut oil and shea butter. Choose a moisturizer that also uses anti-bacterial and calming essential oils, such as chamomile and rose. This will help keep your skin break-out free without harsh drying treatments.
Try it! Let us know how it works for you. If you’re looking for a moisturizer like this, email us and we’ll point you in the right direction. We love before and after pictures.
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