Understanding and Treating Combination Skin

Today’s topic was submitted by our friends at TheBeautyBean.com which is a wellness and lifestyle blog. Their question is, is it possible to have oily skin and dry skin at the same time? And the answer is yes, because that’s what combination skin is. Let me make sense of this for you. Your skin has oil glands that make oil and water glands that make water. There’s a much greater concentration of your oil glands in the T-zone which is your forehead, nose and chin because it sort of looks like the letter “T.” Your water glands are every place on your skin. Now when you make water or sweat and you do it in the T-zone, because there’s is a little bit more oil there, the oil sits on top of it and sort of holds it in and keeps that moisture there. But for the same reason because there are fewer oil glands and therefore less oil on your cheeks, the water or moisture isn’t held in and can evaporate more, and that happens especially in dry, cold weather. So it’s possible that, if your water glands are a little bit underproductive, you’ll dry out here, but you won’t dry out in the T-zone because the oil helps hold it in. So you’re oily in the T-zone and dry on your cheeks.

This is combination skin and the way that it’s treated is by using a regular acne cleanser which helps remove oil on your entire face which will help bring your excess oil into balance by removing that oil and then you use a water-based or an oil-free or a non-comedogenic moisturizer on your cheeks to help restore the deficient moisture or water. Now it’s possible that by using that acne cleanser, if you really have dry skin, that you may get over-dried and, in those cases, you actually have to use two different kinds of cleansers—an acne cleanser in the T-zone and then a gentle cleanser or a cleanser for dry or sensitive skin on your cheeks. But with a combination of cleansers and moisturizers, it’s entirely possible to restore your normal oil and water balance so that you’re neither oily nor dry and, when your oil and water are in balance, then you have normal skin.