My son recently told me “mom, I feel
greasy all the time.” For a teenage
whose hormone is raging and oil gland is ramping up into full production, I
understand the feeling. I still remember
the good old days when I used soap to clean my face. I loved the flowery smell of the soap and the
crispy after-cleaning feel. But I know now
that feeling great “clean” sensation is deceptively bad for my skin.
Human skin is not meant to be stripped
of all its oils. We need an oily layer
(chemically speaking, a lipophilic layer) to seal moisture in and prevent us
from drying out like an autumn leaf under a scorching sun. In fact, skin conditions such as Eczema and
Psoriasis are caused by the defective moisture barrier function of skin.
On the other hand, over production of skin
oil mixed with various skin secretions and debris (if not removed properly)
will lead to acne and pimple. So, yes,
you do need to keep your skin clean to avoid certain skin problems.
The store bought solution for our skin
cleaning dilemma is the skin cleaners laden with surfactants. The most common
ones include anionic surfactants and cationic surfactants. Anionic surfactants are negatively charged
and serve to foam and lathe. They can be
rinsed off easily, together with your skin oil of course. Examples includes sodium lauryl sulphate,
sodium laureth sulphate and sodium sulphosuccinate. Cationic surfactants are positively charged. Examples includes trimethyl dodecyl ammonium
chloride. Both types of surfactants tend
to over dry the skin and upset skin pH and moisture balance.
There is a movement recently on using only
oil to clean the skin. Various blends of
oils including olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil have been
suggested. The rationale is this:
because we are trying to remove the excess oil from the skin and because oil
dissolves oil (yes, as an organic chemist myself, I know that probably better
than anyone), oil must be the best cleaner for our skin.
There is a fundamental flaw in this
rationale. The rationale assumes that we
are trying to remove only skin oil from our skin. But skin oil is wonderful for our skin. In fact, in my skin care regime, I always look
for oils with a chemical composition that is closest to human skin oil as a
moisturizer.
During facial cleaning, what we are
trying to remove is the other secretions and debris from the skin cells—inorganic
salts, lactates, urea, and minerals from our sweat glands and proteins from the
dead skin cells. These secretions and debris often mixed in the skin oil clog
pores and cause inflammations. What I
can tell you is—oil does not dissolve inorganic salts. If you stick with an oil-cleaning only regime,
I can assure you that your breakout will worsen.
So what’s my solution? I went to several ancient Chinese herbal
medicine books. I figured that, thousands
of years ago when there weren’t all those synthetic surfactants around (since I
and my organic chemists peers weren’t around yet!), women in those times must
have figured out a way to take care of their skin naturally. And, I’ve been following those recipes ever
since.
Most of the recipes I was able to find contain
bioactive ingredients such as angelica (for anti-inflammation), ginseng (anti-oxidant),
Dansheng (promote capillary circulation), and cleaning ingredients such as mung
beans, soy beans, taro roots, wild yams, chickpeas, and yucca powders—all
contain low amounts of saponins. I have
discussed these bioactive ingredients in the past. You can always replace these ingredients with
other readily available ones having similar bioactivity. For example, instead of using angelica powder
for anti-inflammatory effect, I use ginger powder in my formula. I still use mung bean and soy bean powder but
not as the base of my formula, which is usually called for in those ancient recipes. Instead,
I use oat meal as the base for my formula.
Oatmeal has well-known and, most
importantly, well researched benefits to skin.
Oatmeal's skin benefits come from
compounds within the oats called avenanthramides. According to a study in the
November 2008 issue of Archives of Dermatological Research, the avenanthramides
in oatmeal help soothe and relieve various types of skin irritation and
inflammation. The February 2007 issue of the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology
reports that oatmeal also contains chemicals called saponins, which are
responsible for its cleansing properties, as saponins have a
"foaming" characteristic, according to Cornell University. It is this
foaming characteristic that helps lift oil and dirt from the skin.
To spice things up a bit, I almost always add a “flavoring”
ingredient to my facial wash powder. For
the first two weeks of my physiological cycle when my skin is calm and nice, I
use a wash powder containing rose power.
The formula is pink colored and smelled divinely. For the last two weeks of my physiological cycle
when the oil glands are more active and skin is more acne prone, I use a wash
powder contains lemon peel and orange peel powders and has increased amount of
ginger powder. Citric acid and limonene
in lemon and orange peel combined with ginger’s anti-inflammatory,
anti-oxidative, and circulation promoting effects works wonderfully for pre-menstrual
problem prone skin.
So here is an ingredient list for a facial wash
power I have been using:
Oatmeal powder
|
80g
|
Moon bean powder
|
10g
|
Ginger root powder
|
10g
|
Soybean powder
|
10g
|
Pearl powder
|
5g
|
Rose powder
|
5g
|
Seaweed powder
|
small
amount to help the powder to form a nice paste when mixed with water in your
palm
|
Connie
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