Washing Your Skin with Care
How much washing is too much? This can vary with skin type, but for the most people, washing in the morning and at night is plenty. Over-drying your skin with constant washing can have a variety of negative effects, and leave you more vulnerable to sun damage than your skin normally is while it has a healthy level of oil.
Part of the benefit of a natural acne treatment like vitamin B5 is that it doesn’t completely sap your skin of oil. It merely lowers oil production to the normal level that most non-acne-sufferers experience. Many topical cleansers, on the other hand, do sap your skin of oil - even if only for a short period of time. Washing a few times a day like this is not a problem, but some people become obsessive about washing their face, and this compulsion can lead to skin problems. Companies even now offer medicated acne pads that you can take with you anywhere, which is precisely the type of thing you don’t need.
As we go into winter and the air becomes drier, your skin will need a healthy layer of oil to prevent the irritation, parched skin and peeling that cold, dry air can bring on.
If you feel the need to wash more than twice per day, get in the habit of simply rinsing instead during the middle of the day. Rinsing with water, rather than the chemicals found in soaps and cleansers, is gentler on your skin and will give you a clean and refreshed feeling without sapping your skin of all oil. Remember that surface dirt is hardly ever the cause of acne.
The way to fight excess oil is not with excess washing. In the most common cases of moderate acne - where the skin becomes red and irritated with a white pustule lodged under the surface - the oil builds up too quickly within the gland itself, hardening and bursting the gland (and then leaving a hardened pustule that has swollen too large to fit out the pore). Topical cleansers simply do not help in these cases, as they do not penetrate into the gland itself (nor would that be healthy). Often, they simply sap healthy oil from the surface.
So keep in mind that some skin oil is a good thing. It provides a natural barrier against the sun and elements. Don’t let washing become a compulsion. And if your skin feels too oily, simply rinsing with water is a healthy choice on most occasions.
