Oily skin for everyone has one thing in common: sebum production.
It's what we estheticians aim to cleanse when we're choosing different scrubs and soaps for your faces.
But when considering how to manage your oily skin on a daily basis, it's important to consider a few other factors:
Biology and Lifestyle
Depending on your unique biological composition and lifestyle, your oily skin could stem from acneic skin, your individual water to oil levels, environmental pollution, diet and water intake, or even your skin care routine!
Over exfoliation and soapy cleansers
Did you know that scrubs and gel cleansers can actually stimulate oil production?
Our skin needs oil to retain optimum hydration and balance.
Depending on these as trusty cleansers to scrub the skin at the immediate sight of oil can exacerbate acne and oiliness due to excessive water loss and the exfoliation of pores. This communicates stress to the oil glands and can increase trans-epidermal water loss with less oil binding to hydration molecules in the skin. Altogether, this can result in reduced barrier function and immune protection.
Oily skin is not always an indicator to exfoliate.
Caring for your skin
Choosing the best skincare products to address oiliness most depends on the other characteristics of your skin, but there are good products that generally help cleanse the skin with respect to the promoting the natural environment of generally healthy skin.
Double Cleansers
Formulated with an oil and a neutralizing toner, double cleansers are designed to bring a gentle balance to the natural PH of the skin while removing unwanted skin toxins like sebum, urea and free radicals. A double cleanser is more sophisticated than using a soap cleanser twice; it is a two step system that, when cleansing the skin, takes multiple factors into account that address environmental and biological stimuli and helps restore the acid mantle and barrier function.
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Milk Cleansers
Milk cleansers typically contain gentle emollients along with lactic acid that helps balance the PH of the skin and brings enzymatic properties to reduce sebum buildup on the skin's surface while gently loosening corneocytes (dead skin cells) on the top layer of your skin.
This is perfect if you have oily skin that seems a bit dry, closer to normal, or acneic.
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High Frequency, LED Blue or Green Light Therapy
High Frequency is an effective treatment for regulating oil production by means of diamond or crystal electrodes. It's a gentle treatment when used correctly and only takes a few minutes.
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LED Therapy is being acknowledged by science as an effective stimulation of reparative and immune functions against free radicals and foreign pollutants. If you feel that your skin has become more oily but you're not really sure if it's your environment or an internal biological process, trying blue light and/or green light therapy as a starting point could shed light on the right direction !
Professional Treatments
Advanced treatments utilizing mandelic and hyaluronic formulations can help address various conditions that accompany oiliness, bringing a full spectrum treatment that brings hydration and balance to all of the functions of the skin.