There is no magical skincare routine that works for everyone. Sure, keeping your skin clean is detrimental to every skin type, but the rest differs a lot. Essentially, everyone’s skin is different, so you can’t use the same methods or the same products for every skin. With that being said, we’re going to focus on the oily skin today.
Treating oily skin is in no way easy. Nobody wants to shine and reflect the sun off of their face, but that’s a reality for a lot of people with oily skin. If you’re tired of looking like you’ve just finished an hour-long workout, we don’t blame you. We all want to look and feel as fresh and clean as possible. Oily skin can cause a couple of problems aside from looking greasy. Oils can clog up your pores and lead to acne and other unwanted skin problems.
However, there’s a bit of a silver lining here. Having oily skin means that you have a lot of natural oils or sebum in your skin and those are there to protect your skin from outside factors. A lot of people don’t have that and their skin is dry and exposed. So, you don’t have to get rid of all that, you just have to keep the greasy look to a minimum so your skin can look, feel and stay healthy. Without getting too much into detail about why and how extra sebum is produced, let’s just remember that it’s healthy in the right amounts and get to the skincare routine.
1. Wash your face twice a day
You may feel like your skin produces too much oil for it to be enough, but trust us, nothing good will ever come out of washing your face more than that. Washing your face a lot during the day will dry out your skin. Even though that may seem like a goal for someone with oily skin, it’s quite the opposite. The dry skin will only affect your glands to produce more sebum, which will ultimately become an even larger problem for you.
You may wash your face with foam, gel, or any other cleanser to clean all the dirt and excess sebum. That will open up your pores, allow your skin to breath and leave you feeling fresh and clean. If you feel the need to wash your face more frequently, do so with nothing but water. Don’t use either hot or cold water because that will either open up or tighten your pores and disrupt the skin’s ability to release what it has to release.
If you can, avoid cleansers that contain chemicals that will affect your skins ability to produce sebum. For cleansers, go as natural as possible. You can even create your cleanser at home. Products like honey, lemon, cucumber or turmeric are really good for cleansing your skin. However, be careful with lemon if you have sensitive skin, it can cause some irritation so it’s best to test it on a small area first and see how your skin reacts.
2. Use a toner afterwards
A very important step after cleansing is to use a toner. It doesn’t matter what skin type you have if your skin looks and feel dehydrated, it won’t look cool. That’s why it’s important to a toner, preferably an alcohol-free one, like the one from Aquaplus to replenish and rejuvenate your skin.
3. Exfoliate
Let me ask you a question, how old do you think Pharell Williams is and why is so happy? Well, believe it or not, the guy is 47. Yes, even though he doesn’t look a day older than 30, he’s almost half a century old. When asked how he manages to look so young and keep his skin glowing he said only one thing – exfoliate. Well, he wasn’t wrong. Sure, there may be some genetics in place when it comes to Pharell’s never-changing look, but, it’s quite certain that the exfoliation had to do something with it.
Now, you shouldn’t exfoliate every single day. Believe it or not, you can have too much water, which means anything in excess can cause side effects. Exfoliate once or maybe twice a week. This way, you can keep your extra sebum in check, remove all the dead skin build-up, clean and unclog the pores. This is especially helpful in areas prone to acne or blackheads, like the nose. However, don’t rush the process or go too hard, be gentle and thorough. Once again, avoid products with alcohol, shop smart or even create natural scrubs yourself.
4. Use face packs
Face packs or masks can be very beneficial for oily skin. However, they should be done too often, just like exfoliating. There are a lot of options out there for a face mask, and once again, it’s fairly easy to make a natural one from fresh ingredients. Masks take time, so if you’re in a hurry, you should avoid them. Take your time with them, do them on the weekends or when you know you have an hour to spare.
5. Moisturize
We know this sounds like something that someone with oily skin shouldn’t do, I mean, it’s pretty opposite of dry, right? However, oily skin needs moisturizing, too. All that stuff you do to get rid of extra oil causes your skin to dry out, and like we’ve said, when the skin dries out it produces more oil to even things up. Well, you want to avoid that. That’s when moisturizing comes into play. It is there to balance things out. Try and use water or aloe-based moisturizers to keep your skin hydrated, but not greasy.
6. Eat clean and drink a lot of water
How many times have you heard ‘Oh, I just drink a lot of water’ when you asked someone how is their skin so beautiful? We guess plenty of because in some way it is true. A proper amount of water will keep you hydrated and help keep your skin less greasy and clean.
As far as food goes, try and eat everything in moderation. A lot of dairy, meat, chocolate and coffee has been known to affect the skin and its condition. Some of them dehydrate you (meats and coffee) and some affect hormone balance (dairy) which leads to changes in the skin.
Hopefully, this has been helpful and your skin will benefit greatly from our tips.
