Busting 5 Top Blackhead Myths with Janine Tait!
When dirt gets stuck in my pores it causes blackheads.
When the oil your skin produces mixes with dead skin cells and forms a blockage in the pore, that’s a blackhead. The air oxidises the surface of these blockages turning them black hence, the name.
They are not from having dirty skin but more to do with your skin producing oil that is too thick and sticky. The solution is to improve the quality of your skin’s oil and keep it flowing, preventing it from getting stuck in the pore. To do this you need to eliminate foods that thicken your skin’s oil like cheese and chocolate and replace them with more supportive alternatives (read more https://www.bestowbeauty.com/?s=congesting+foods
Including the Bestow Beauty Oil in your diet also helps prevent it blocking as it has been formulated to improve the quality of your oil. BUT remember this needs to be in conjunction with reducing your intake of congesting foods!
Blackheads are a sign of having oily skin.
Any of us can develop blackheads regardless of how oily or dry our skin is. It’s not the amount of oil your skin produces that is the problem but the thickness of that oil and/or the tightness of the pore. The thicker the oil or the tighter the pore, the more likely it will block forming a blackhead.
So the key is to make sure you have really good quality oil that flows well. Taking the Bestow Beauty Oil supports this. It’s also important to avoid congesting foods which can thicken your skin’s oil, making it more likely to block. Hydrating your skin topically is also very important and helps reduce the occurrence of blackheads. Your skincare routine needs to be hydrating to keep your skin soft and supple. This allows the oil to flow naturally out onto the skin’s surface.
My nose and the crease of my chin is covered in small blackheads.
It’s unlikely these are actually blackheads. We all have slightly bigger pores on our nose and some parts of our chin. The pores inner walls are constantly sheading cells, helping protect us from infection. If harmful bacteria find their way into our pores, chances are they will find themselves on a very unstable surface. As helpful as this is, it does mean that bigger pores, combined with the skin’s oils and shedding cells leaves you with slightly darker pores that can look like small blackheads. For sure you can squeeze something out of if you try but honestly, don’t try! It’ll be back usually within only a few days and you risk damaging the pore opening. These are not blackheads.
To help minimise the appearance of these slightly bigger pores, work on keeping your skin hydrated. But drinking water is not enough! You need to work from the outside to hydrate the skin effectively. We recommend the 30 to Glow skin care routine from Janesce which involves soaking your skin before locking in that precious moisture by applying a Janesce mist and concentrated Janesce moisturiser. This will help refine your pores AND prevent your skin cells from building up.
I’m prone to blackheads and nothing I do helps.
Good news! There are definitely things you can do to prevent yourself getting blackheads. It is a two-way approach – you need to look at what you are feeding your skin (or not feeding it!) and what you are putting on it.
The oil your skin produces needs to be of a good quality and consistency to be able to flow onto the skins surface where it will act as a protective barrier. You don’t want it getting stuck in the pores as this is what forms a blackhead.
To do this you need to make sure you’re consuming an essential fatty acid supplement such as Bestow Beauty Oil. Bestow Beauty Oil is blended to meet your skin’s need for EFA’s. Unfortunately, relying on food to provide EFA’s isn’t enough these days. Alongside EFA’s we always recommend a vitamin B supplement as this helps support the EFA’s to do their job. We recommend the Bestow Beauty From Beneath which has been formulated with your skin in mind, giving you the correct balance of B vitamins it needs.
There are also certain foods that contribute to blackheads by degrading the quality of the skins oil and therefore causing it to block. You need to eliminate these foods and replace them with skin friendly alternatives (READ MORE https://www.bestowbeauty.com/?s=congesting+foods)
Topically the key is to keep the skin hydrated. A Janesce routine is ideal for keeping your skin supple and hydrated. The Janesce Soaking cloth is a great tool for bathing the skin. Following this step we encourage you to apply a hydrating gel or serum and then immediately lock all that precious moisture with a concentrated Janesce moisturiser. Doing this skin care routine religiously morning and night will keep your skin hydrated and healthy.
I’m not being clean enough, that’s why I get blackheads.
It’s the exact opposite! You may easily be over cleansing and over exfoliating your skin and this causes dehydration which tightens the pores. Many of us feel when we get blackheads that our skin needs a good clean and we approach this in a variety of ways. Firstly, we are tempted to cleanse morning and night or even to double cleanse. In reality, the skin only needs cleansing at night to remove makeup, chemicals and pollutants and it usually requires this to be done only once. When we cleanse the skin twice, we risk removing the protective barrier of the skin leaving it open to all those nasties we are trying to protect it from and causing it to become dehydrated.
You can also want to give the skin a good scrub, convincing ourselves that the harder we scrub and the harsher the exfoliant the cleaner our skin will be. FALSE! Over exfoliating the skin will strip the protective barrier away and can leave it feeling dehydrated and tight – trust us, not a good thing!
A skin that is dehydrated from over cleansing or over exfoliating is more likely to experience tightening of the pores and therefore blackheads. Instead we recommend cleansing once in the evening with a gentle lotion or cream cleanser and using a gentle exfoliant every few days.