Take this skin quiz to find the best ingredients for your skin and build your skin care routine.
Take The Skin Quiz
While consuming sugar is bad for your waistline, the granulated form of sugar has some uses topically. Sugar is a sweet, grainy ingredient extracted from sugar cane or sugar beets. The main use for sugar in topical skincare products is as an exfoliant in sugar scrubs.
Sugar scrubs are great for exfoliating and getting rid of dead skin. Exfoliation is a great habit to address acne, blackheads, whiteheads, clogged pores. The large granules of sugar physically scrub out dead skin cells. This leaves the skin feeling and looking smoother. Sugar is relatively inexpensive and easily available, so many people will use sugar in DIY exfoliants.
Sugar scrubs can be a little harsh, so it’s better to use a gentler method of exfoliation. Using something coarse like sugar can cause mini tears to form on the skin surface, through which bacteria can enter and cause issues such as acne. In addition, using a sugar scrub too often can irritate your skin. If you’re looking for a gentler exfoliant for your skin, try our skin quiz.
Oily skin occurs when the sebaceous glands in the pores are producing more oil, or sebum, than necessary. Sebum is natural in all skin as it keeps the skin moist and healthy. Over production of sebum can be caused by hormones, genetics or could even be a result of dry skin over-compensating by producing extra oil, in order to retain some measure of moisture.
Oily skin can also be caused by using the wrong products for your skin type. For example, if you are using overly drying soaps and astringents for your skin type, your skin may respond by over producing oil to compensate, as mentioned above. This can create an unfortunate cycle of using harsh soaps to eliminate oils, but instead exacerbating the problem.
On the other hand, overly oily makeup and products can also cause oily skin.
Ingredients that help exfoliate dead skin cells to keep pores unclogged and increase new skin cell production, such as Vitamin A/Retinol, glycolic acid, and salicylic acid, are good for treating acne as well. Benzoyl peroxide is a topical agent for fighting bacteria and unclogging pores. It is one of the longest-used medications to keep oily pores clean and healthy. Jojoba oil is also good for fighting bacteria trapped in oily skin and maintaining a moisture barrier to prevent over-production of sebum.
Sugar may be effective for oily skin, but there are many other factors that may affect whether this ingredient would work on your skin or if there are better ingredients that may work for you. Take this skin quiz to find the best ingredients for your skin and build your skincare routine.
Next: Does baking soda work on sun spots ?