Whenever our pores are clogged it's so easy for us to blame our skin care products or makeup for causing that but they might be innocent it might be just your skin that's clogging up by itself.
Everyone does experience congestion,everyone does experience clogged pores and a lot of the poor care tips out there seem to be focused on scratching the surface, today we're diving deeper into the root cause of what causes clogged pores.
You have pores, a new born baby has pores, everyone on the planet has pores, it's where your hair grows out but it's also a pathway for your sebum also known as your oil to travel from underneath your skin to outside the surface of your skin to naturally lubricate,moisturize and also protect your skin so everything that you're born with does serve purpose however the problem does happen when it gets clogged.
How do we get clogged pores:
It is probably one of the most straightforward thing to understand,it's basically your pore lining or the pathway or the tunnel for your sebum getting clogged up whether there's overgrowth of keratin,the skin cells that are bottlenecking the pathway or there's something else that's blocking on the other side of the tunnel therefore your sebum gets trapped underneath the skin and that will eventually manifest into whiteheads blackheads or closed comedones, open comedones.When your skin decides to send some white blood cells to help,that is when the inflammatory acne would happen.
what causes clogged pores often times or most of the times,we do think it's the skin care products or the makeup products or the dirt,bacteria,sweat pollutants and everything else that doesn't have to do with our own skin to be the demon,to be the evil and the culprit and the cause of clogged pores,those are not the root cause of clogged pores and for any skin care ingredient or makeup ingredient.
As your clogged pores have thickened, waxy, gloopy sebum,your own oil becoming comedogenic,if you have never heard about the concept of lipid peroxidation or squalene oxidation, in simple words it's basically your sebum your natural oil getting oxidized by uv exposure environmental stressors or anything that cause oxidative stress there's something called scolin in your own natural oil it accounts for about 11 to13 making it one of the main components of our own natural oil,it serves many different purposes including naturally moisturizing your skin,making your skin feeling really soft flexible and just supple.However this is very prone to oxidation,it is very unstable and once this does get oxidized, what happens is that it becomes really comedogenic.
First skincare tip:
It is to wear your sunscreen every single day if possible. There was one study that did an experiment extracting an isolating human squalane,sample and exposing that to uva radiation for about four hours and they noticed that the comedogenicity basically has increased significantly.
Second skincare tip:
It is good to add antioxidants to slow down or fight against the lipoproxidation,there are some other consequences of squalene oxidation,not only does it thicken up your sebum making it more comedogenic but also it does take away some really important skin antioxidant that naturally occurs on our skin including vitamin e and also glutathione.It is a really great idea to add some antioxidants into your routine so that your skin has the ability to fight against the free radical and to slow down the oxidative stress so that it does prevent the squalene from oxidizing.
Vitamin A, vitamin, vitamin C and vitamin E: These three ingredients are often talked about and often referred to in a lot of researches suggested as great antioxidants for your skin, however if you do have clogged pores and acne and if these two are your main concerns,it is highly recommend you to invest in a really great vitamin A product and that's basically a retinol product.If you do have extremely oily skin, green tea as your main antioxidant source would be a wonderful idea because not only does it has one of the most potent antioxidant compound or source called catechin in it but it also does regulate your sebum production managing the entire oil factory of yours root cause.
Going back to the pore tunnel again,if there are constantly dead skin cells being built up on the other side of the tunnel and they don't know when to leave and they're really just chilling there not paying any rent it does become a problem because your sebum has no way where to actually pump out and excrete and exit,this condition is called "Hyperkeratinization".It is basically an overgrowth of your own skin cells so there are a lot of new skin cells that are growing inside and outside the poor tunnel creating a traffic jam and a bottleneck basically.Solution for this is pretty clear,everyone out there who does suffer from clogged pores to invest in one of the three ingredients retinol,vitamin A, AHA or BHA or all three of them are fine, just know how to space it out so that you don't over irritate your skin.AHA gently dissolves the bonds between the dead skin cells so when your skin is naturally turning over,it makes it way easier for your skin to naturally push away the dead skin cells.
Before your dead skin cells are clumped up all together having a really tight bond with one another so it's kind of breaking friendship in a way, BHA or salicylic acid would be a wonderful idea if you do struggle with open comedones and blackheads.
BHA is an oil-soluble chemical exfoliant making it really easier to travel down to your pore lining and cleaning that tunnel. There's vitamin A,the royal family member of all skin care ingredients and this is often called as retinol, retinoid.
When it comes to clogged pores vitamin A does serve a lot of great purposes not only does it resurfaces the skin but it normalizes the entire skin cell turnover,it also does a beautiful job at addressing the hyperkeratinization issue the overgrowth of skin cells and since it is a fat soluble ingredient it knows how to travel down into the pore lining making sure everything is clear making sure there's no inflammation and all that
Another root cause to clogged pores are definitely over produced sebum or highly activated oil factory when there's limited space in the poor tunnel but there is too much oil to be pumped out and to be sent out to the world, things become tricky it's like a perfect environment for your pores to be clogged from inside and out,a lot of women would experience some clogged pores just before their period and that's when the hormonal imbalance happens that's when the male hormones are actually more dominant and the male hormone is something that does affect,your sebaceous gland more also there's something called cortisol which is a stress hormone inside our body that can eventually reach the sebaceous gland to produce more oil so whenever you are stressed you tend to become more oilier making it a little bit easier for your pores to get clogged.
When it comes to skincare, look for ingredients such as niacinamide,zinc and green tea those three ingredients would really help regulating your sebum production.
Facial oils for balancing sebum production :
When it comes to diet do cut out dairy sugar and high glycemic foods,these do have a tendency to raise your insulin level which has a tendency to signal your sebaceous gland to produce more oil.
A review of the three major causes of clogged pores:
Number one:The viscosity of your sebum.Your own sebum can be a very comedogenic ingredient to you when it gets oxidized.
Number two:Slow down cell turnover or overgrowth of keratin,overgrowth of skin cells.
Number three: Just too much oil over, producing sebum.
Keep in mind that less is more when it comes to layering skincare,by lessing your makeup layers,you can decrease the oil production. Less layers means less chance of poor clogging or less ingredients to potentially clog the pores.
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