Greasy skin is never attractive. Even without the acne, the shine from the excessive oil is enough to turn off anyone. For people who have suffered this curse since adolescence, worry not for there is hope. For the rest who didn’t, I say lucky you! But just because not all of us have oily skin doesn’t mean we didn’t have to learn what makes it so. There are a few questions that needs to be answered if we are to understand how this skin condition came about.
How does skin get greasy in the first place?
Body hair grows on our skin. Underneath these hairs there are oil (sebaceous) glands attached to their roots. The role of these glands is to produce oil to coat and protect the hair. However, when too much is produced, the oil coats the upper layer of skin as well.
The oil from the sebaceous glands comes up the surface through the skin pores. When the pores are large, more oil comes up. Tighter pores, therefore, discourage spillage of sebum onto the skin’s surface.
All areas of the skin from head to toe have sebaceous glands, although not all produces the same amount of oil. The most oily areas are found on the face, which beauty experts call the T-zone. It starts from the forehead where the top bar of the T lies and continues toward the bridge and sides of the nose and then down towards the mouth and chin areas. The cheeks and jaw have less oil on them.
Over-production of oil may be caused by many factors. One cause can be genetics. When your parent or parents have oily skin, chances are you will have, too. Another cause may be gender. Men will more likely have oily skin than women. Yet another factor can be one’s diet where consumption of some types of food encourages oil production in skin.
Is it going to go away once we get past adolescence?
Oily skin is supposed to go away after adolescence once we were done with our bodies’ hormonal changes. When we mature, our skin also ages until it is dry as paper in our senescence. However, not everyone escapes the curse of oily skin during adulthood. Some still have oily areas, specifically on the face, where sebum is produced more often.
What can you do to lessen your skin’s production of oil?
Sebaceous glands produce sebum, a complex blend of varied lipids (an assortment of fats), and dead sebaceous gland cells, (the cells that manufacture the sebum). Fats found in sebum include triglycerides, wax monoesters, squalane, and free fatty acids.
Some of these oils are beneficial to your skin, and some are not. Contrary to the popular notion that all of the oil on skin is bad, some skin oils actually function as a protective shield from pollutants and other environmental changes that our skin is exposed to everyday. So, the trick now is to get rid of the harmful oils while maintaining the existence of the good oils.
One way of doing this is to use a facial wash and a moisturizer that doesn’t have alcohol and has glycerin. As much as possible check the ingredients of the facial products you use. Natural products are safe, especially tea tree oil which is antibacterial but doesn’t wash the good oils away.
Another way to prevent oily skin is to use facial toners that tighten up the pores on your skin. This will discourage the excess oil from coming up. When the sebaceous glands sense there is less need to produce oil, then the greasiness will stop.
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