What’s Causing You To Breakout? 5 Ingredients to Avoid
Breakouts can be caused by any number of factors. You didn’t take your makeup off after a long night out, you haven’t changed your pillowcase for a few weeks, your diet relies on fatty, sugary foods or you aren’t using the right skincare regimen to combat acne-prone skin.
Our skin is supposed to be an expert in healing and repairing itself, so it can become frustrating when acne and other skincare issues persist. The simple truth is that you may be inhibiting your skin from repairing itself by loading your skin with bad ingredients. Most of these ingredients can be categorized as either an irritant, a chemical that damages the skin, or an allergen that incites an immune reaction. If you are having persistent breakouts and haven’t been able to find a solution, here are some of the top ingredients to look out for in your skincare.
1. SALICYLIC ACID
Salicylic acid is most often quoted by healthcare professionals as being a skin savior for acne, however, it can also have the complete opposite effect on your breakouts. This type of acid is very harsh on the skin, and can result in making acne worse and triggering more breakouts especially for older, sensitive skin types. Don’t use it as an all-over face treatment if there are only specific spots that you need to treat. Just focus on those areas instead as it can be too harsh on sensitive, acne-prone skin, causing inflammation, redness, and excessive dryness.
2. FRAGRANCES
Be wary of labels that include “perfume,” “parfum,” or “fragrance” on the label. Manufacturers aren’t required to list out the ingredients included in their fragrances as it is proprietary information. This means that manufacturers can sneak in potentially harmful toxic ingredients in the mix. Dry skin spots, a blotchy complexion or fresh breakouts can be results of fragrances that contain certain irritants or allergens you may not have been aware of. Instead, swap out your products for unscented products or naturally scented products that don’t hide under that fragrance label.
3. EXFOLIATING BEADS
Those exfoliating beads in many skincare products like scrubs and exfoliators can cause more problems than solutions. Rather than just sloughing away dead skin cells, exfoliators with rough, grainy textures can irritate and scratch the skin’s surface AND help spread the acne bacteria across your face! Yikes! The artificial microbead ones are also said to be harmful to the environment when it gets washed out into the water.
4. SODIUM LAURYL SULFATE
Sulfates are generally known as foaming agents, causing your face wash to bubble and foam. However, sulfates are also known to strip the skin of essential natural oils, in turn causing the skin to go into overdrive and overproduce sebum that ends up blocking pores and causing further breakouts. They are also very alkaline in nature, and can disrupt the skin’s natural pH balance from functioning its best!
5. ALCOHOL
Alcohol is most often found in toners and cleansers and is intended to dry out the skin. You may think your skin needs to feel tight and dry to be clean, but that’s not true. After the skin has been dried out, it goes into sebum overproduction, which then gets trapped in pores, especially if there is a layer of dry skin or other blockages on the surface. It’s also a shock on the skin’s natural balance and confuses skin, and over time, you may end up with too dry or too oily skin.
Natural Skincare Products Your Face Will Love
If you aren’t sure what is causing your skin’s breakout reaction, try eliminating some of these ingredients and see how your skin reacts. If you use an exfoliating face mask that leaves your skin red and irritated, try Juniper & Pine’s ROSE VEIL, a natural detox face mask made with rosehip powder. Or, swap out your foaming sulfate cleanser with PAPAYA FUSE, a cleansing oil made with papaya (so it smells great too!)
None of our products include fragrances, sulfates, salicylic acid, alcohol or exfoliating beads, so you can be sure your skin (and the environment) will love it!
*If you want to do more research on your skincare products, and see if they contain potentially toxic ingredients or not, you can visit the EWG Skin Deep Database or use the app Think Dirty.
