Family Physician: A Friend to Depend On

Posted on: 11 December 2015

It has traditionally been assumed that drying out oily skin can effectively fight acne breakouts. However, many individuals are unfortunately inflicted with acne breakouts despite the fact that they have naturally dry skin. Moisture in the skin is important to keeping it healthy overall, and healthier skin will be less prone to breaking out.

The following are five things you should be aware of if you've been unsuccessfully fighting your acne by drying out your skin with harsh cleaners or acne medications:

When skin is moist, pores are more likely to remain open and unclogged.

Dry skin is constricted and more likely to feature pores that are tightly closed. Blocked pores are a major cause of breakouts, so it's important to keep them open to prevent acne from developing. By keeping your skin moist, you can help your pores remain open and clean. 

A lot of products that dry out the skin also cause inflammation.

Skin care products meant to fight acne often include alcohol. While it's true that alcohol provides the benefit of cleaning the skin, killing bacteria, and drying up oil, it also causes inflammation.

Inflammation can cause acne and lead to redness and swelling in the skin that increases the prominence of blemishes. 

Some parts of your face may naturally be dryer than others.

Unfortunately, some parts of the face tend to dry out more easily than others. This means that you might be drying out skin on one part of the face to help cope with excessively oily skin on other parts of your face.

Parts of the skin that tend to remain oily include the nose and forehead. If you're combatting oily skin, you might want to focus more on these parts of your face when applying skin care products and leave other parts of your face alone. 

Bacteria is a more significant cause of acne than moisture.

Bacteria is a more significant cause of acne than oil alone. It's therefore important to remember that keeping your skin clean is more important than keeping it dry.

You can keep bacteria on the skin under control without drying the skin out. Focus more on removing bacteria than removing moisture and you may find that your skin's condition improves. 

Pores can become clogged by dead skin cells.

When your skin is dry, dead skin cells will tend to flake off and obstruct pores. Acne develops when dead skin cells mix with oil in the skin. This means that creating an environment where both oil and dead skin cells are present around your pores greatly facilitates acne development. 

For professional skin care, contact an office such as East Carolina Dermatology and Skin Surgery, PLLC.