How to Care for Oily Skin

Before you start, identify if you really do have oily skin. Your skin may feel greasy but that doesn’t always translate to oily skin. To determine your skin type, follow the following steps:

1. Wash your face with warm water. This is to wash away some of the oil on your skin. Then wait for 30 or 40 minutes. (Or you can choose to skip this step if you do the following step first thing in the morning)

2. Grab a Kleenex and wipe your face, especially the areas around your nose and forehead

3. If the tissue has traces of oil on it, it means you have oily skin. Otherwise, you are one lucky person.

Now that you have done the test and that you are sure that you have oily skin, it’s time to look at how to take care of it.
There’s no one product that fits everyone. So you’ll have to try some of the products out there until you find one that works well for your skin. With that said, below are some basic rules that you can follow to take care of your oily skin:

1. Wash your face two or three times a day and not more than that. It’s important that you wash your face to keep it clean but doing it too often will backfire because it will make the skin dry and trigger a reaction known as reactive seborrhea, where the sebaceous glands become overactive to compensate for the loss oil.

2. As I said above, you’ll have to find a cleanser or soap that works well for your skin. Avoid using cleansers that tend to make your skin overly dry. And use warm water to wet your face, cleanse and then rinse with cold water. You can use astringent after cleansing but make sure it’s not alcohol based.

3. If your skin feels overly dry after you wash, you can choose to apply moisturizer. Use moisturizers that are non-comedogenic, meaning not tending to clog pores.

4. Use facial care products that are meant for oily skin and try to stay out of the sun because heat can stimulate sebaceous glands.

If your condition doesn’t improve after following the above rules, consult your dermatologist. There are some drugs that are able to reduce the size of oil glands and the oil production.

Oily skin care is actually not too difficult.