Water-responsible skincare in the true sense of anhydrous products, has plenty to offer.
What's an anhydrous product? It means that water it is not one of its ingredients. Anhydrous skincare contains only oil soluble ingredients such as butters, waxes, carrier oils, and botanical extracts.
Products like oils and balms can be used sparingly with effect, multitask and bring benefits of all types of skin.
A key role of botanical oils in skincare is to help repair the skin barrier and reduce trans-epidermal water loss, to thereby help prevent the skin’s dehydration. This has led to the myth that oils are therefore of little benefit to oilier or acne-prone skin because they might cause breakouts, exacerbate acne, or clog pores.
However, in no sense do ‘all botanical oils’ exacerbate oily skin issues. Simply because some oils can have an astringent effect on the skin, while others may help rebalance the skin’s lipid profile, or present anti-inflammatory action.
Far from pore clogging, oils can be excellent cleansers as oil is a solvent for facial sebum and oil-based dirt and particulate matter on the skin.
When choosing botanical oils or butters for our formulations, it is their fatty acid profiles what guide us to pick one kind of oil over others. A simple blended face oil can act as an occlusive and reduce trans-epidermal water loss or be toning and astringent.
A lightweight, quick-absorbing, low comedogenic rating, and non-greasy feeling anhydrous product can actually be a good thing.
Oftentimes, people break out not because of having naturally oily skin, but because their skin barrier is dry, damaged, and inflamed from a regimen of harsh acne products. That damaged skin barrier then overcompensates by producing even more oil, which can clog pores and trigger breakouts.
Oil-based formulations with oily and acne prone skin in mind, can help break the cycle by balancing out the sebum levels.