#011: Skincare, An Imperfect Science

I’ve gotten some pretty bad skincare advice over the years.  Baby oil, for instance, is definitely NOT all it’s cracked up to be. As a kid we put it on our skin and went out in the sun, which, of course led to blisters.  One year at summer camp a friend suggested we put baby oil in our hair as a conditioning treatment.  You can only imagine how awesome my hair looked for the rest of the week at camp.

Another popular piece of skincare advice that didn’t turn out so well was moisturizing my face with coconut oil.  It’s natural.  It makes my skin feel so soft.  Yes both of those things are true, but it’s also comedogenic, meaning it clogs your pores. And for me that’s exactly what it did, and the result was breakouts.  There are tons of great moisturizers out there that are natural, have ingredients to promote healthy, glowing, hydrated skin, but are also non-comedogenic. 

For YEARS I didn’t use a moisturizer because I had oily, acne prone skin.  What a mistake.  You actually can treat your skin kindly, even if you’re prone to acne.  Ingredients such as Vitamin E, Rose Oil, Chamomile- these natural ingredients will hydrate without clogging. Clay masques are also known to benefit acne/oily skin.  It draws out impurities, shrinks your pores, and absorbs excess oil from skin without drying it out.

Finally, my all time favorite worst skincare tip- “the sun will clear up my skin”.  I’m pretty sure I believed this until a few years ago, and even passed this along to my kids.  First of all, tanning makes you sweat, which clogs your pores. The way your skin tans is by heating it. Think of an oven. It’s a dry heat, which actually dries out your skin. Tanning also causes hyperpigmentation which can make existing scars look even worse than they already did. To me, this tip is the worst offender, in my opinion it’s the thing that ages our skin more than any other mistake we make.

If you take anything away from my skincare mistakes, I hope it’s this: use decent products, use sunscreen, and whatever you do, stay away from baby oil.