For people who suffer from having blackheads on their skin, sometimes it may seem that we’d all be better off without pores. Because, blackheads are basically just the skin pores that have been clogged with dirt, dead cells, and bacteria… Unfortunately to all of us, we actually need those pores.
First thing first, shall we talk about a few key terms before we move forward? That will help us in
Dehydration
Skin dehydration is a basic process of when your skin is healthy, it will get rid of dead skin cells up and out through the skin pores (in other words, it exfoliates itself and regenerates the new skin).
Still, there’s a whole multitude of chemical products that will dehydrate your skin (ie. not enough water left in the skin layers). As your skin is dehydrated, it will begin to trap those dead skin cells and the chemical junk leftover in makeups and other skin care products into your pores.
Extreme skin sensitivity
Clogged Pores, Sensitive Red Skin, Rosacea are all the telling signs that your skin health suffers from an extreme sensitivity…
The chemicals included in it, can act to heighten an increase in skin’s sensitivity, as well as it can thin your skin and remove the protective barrier. This means that the skin and pores become too responsive towards what you’re applying on it.
If that’s true, the skin will be responding actively to even the slightest external stimulation… That kind of reaction starts sending more blood flow to the area, making your face red and blotchy, resulting in some bright long lasting hyper-pigmentation marks, increased acne, etc.
Trapped skin pores inflammation
The blood flow, which usually follows even the slightest skin stimulation then gets trapped within the pore. Those pores, in turn, get clogged with dead skin cells, oil, and chemical ingredients, which will simply stagnate there.
This blood flow stagnation scars the natural collagen in the pore (collagen being our skin’s supportive and regenerative component), so the scar tissue will die and get clogged inside the pore alongside the dead skin cells.
This results in scarring, pitting, big pores, and lots of redness and breakouts. If you can’t yet spot that scarring on the surface now, if left unfixed it will inevitably become more visible over time.
And if the pressure in the skin’s pores gets too high, it will become full on inflammation, rupture the pore and spread to the next pore, spreading the problem across your skin.
Okay so let’s get to the ingredients oftentimes used in the skin care products, that you may want to be avoiding:
Silicones
Names:
Methicone, dimethicone, trimethicone, cyclomethicone, siloxane, cyclopentasiloxane, cyclotetrasiloxane, cyclohexasiloxane, silsesquioxane, trimethylsiloxysilicate, methylpolysiloxane, stearoxytrimethylsilane
What they are supposed to do:
Add a silky and smooth touch…
What they actually do:
Apparently silicones are one of the most harmful ingredients out there. They contribute to dehydrating the skin and clogging the pores, which oftentimes marks the beginning of redness, pore scarring, and acne breakouts.
Petrochemicals
Names:
Paraffin wax, mineral oil, toluene, benzene, petrolatum, and anything that ends in “eth”, “decane”, or contains the words PEG (polyethylene glycol), DEA (diethanolamine), MEA (ethanolamine), TEA (triethanolamine), butyl, methyl, propyl, ethyl, ethanol
Examples:
propylene glycol, PEG-40, laureth sulfate, phenoxyethanol, butylene glycol or butyl stearate, EDTA (ethylene-diamine-tetracetatic acid), isopropyl alcohol, methylparaben, ceteareth-20, BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole), BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene), dodecane
What they are supposed to do:
It usually either locks the moisture in the skin pores, keeping it moisturized or acts as a skin preservative in any other relevant way…
What they actually do:
Petroleum derived ingredients are pore clogging components, which work as a delivery agent, meaning they trap all other junk in the product deeper into the pores. Sometimes they may come with such hazardous ingredients as the 1,4-dioxane, a carcinogen and neurotoxin…
Parabens
Names:
acnemethylparaben, propylparaben, ethylparaben, butylparaben
What they are supposed to do:
Supposedly they make the mold growth stop and also extend the shelf life of the product…
What they actually do:
All of these are highly toxic and are harmful to your endocrine system. In other words, those are hormone messer uppers. When you are trying to heal from acne, you don’t want that.
Phthalates
Names:
pthalatesDEP (diethyl phthalate), DBP (di-n-butyl phthalate), BzBP (benzylbutyl phthalate)
What they are supposed to do:
Usually, those ingredients are meant to homogenize the product and dissolve solid ingredients. Also used to make the fragrance stay…
What they actually do:
Same as parabens… they disrupt your hormones and mess the hormone system up…
To summarize, it’s important to keep in mind that when you look up for your skin care product’s contents, the ingredients are enlisted with the highest quantity first. They go down the list in a descending order (from more to less)…
So the first ingredient listed is the main ingredient with the highest quantity of the product.
If you come across a “baddie” ingredient it’s going to be less of a big deal if it’s at the end of the list (ex. 0.05% of the whole product), rather than if it’s close to the top (ex. 50% of the whole product).