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Chapter 3

Skin Type vs. Skin Concern

One of the more confusing aspects of developing an effective skincare routine is finding products that work for your skin type and that also address your skin concerns. It’s important to understand exactly what you should be using for each (skin type and skin concern) and why. Here’s how it works.

Skin type is the primary feel of your skin: how dry, oily, combination (meaning oily in some areas dry in others), or normal it is (normal meaning neither oily nor combination nor dry, just normal). Some people would add sensitive skin as a skin type, but because the research shows that skin is reactive to the environment and to everything we apply to it, whether we feel it or not, everyone truly has sensitive skin and must treat it as such.

Once you’ve determined what your skin type is and you know whether it’s normal, dry, oily, or combination, you can then determine what type of products you will need for your core skincare routine. You must look for products that are identified as being appropriate for your skin type. Products for the core routine include cleansers, toners, exfoliants, moisturizers, and sunscreens. These products, with textures appropriate for your skin type, will meet the basic needs of your skin every day of your life. Creamy, rich-textured products will be best for dry skin, lotions for normal skin, and gels and watery serums or liquids for oily/combination skin.

Next, identify your skin concerns so you can add the appropriate treatment products to address those needs. The most typical skin concerns are wrinkles, loss of firmness, brown spots, red spots, sun damage, advanced sun damage, blackheads, acne, occasional breakouts, rough skin, patches of flaky skin, redness, rosacea, keratosis pilaris, and sebaceous hyperplasia.

Because you will use your treatment products in conjunction with your core skincare routine, the textures of the treatment products should generally be lighter weight so as to not feel heavy on skin. They can be absorbent serums, liquids, light lotions, or fluids.

Once you’ve determined your skin type along with your skin concerns, you can begin assessing what types of products and formulas you can combine to get the best results.

Not every skin concern will need a separate treatment product because many treatment products can address more than one concern, and sometimes your core skincare routine is just right to achieve unbelievable results. But, the more concerns you have or the more stubborn they are, it can take multiple products to get your skin concerns under control. This is especially true if you’re dealing with multiple concerns, such as breakouts, wrinkles, advanced sun damage, and skin discolorations.

To sum up: If you have oily/combination skin, you should be using products with a liquid, gel, lightweight serum or thin, matte-finish lotion texture. If you have dry skin, you should be using rich emollient creams and lotions. If you have normal skin, the product textures you should be looking for are soft-feeling lightweight lotions.

Keeping these factors in mind, use them as your guideline to assemble a skincare routine that addresses your skin’s everyday needs. Your skin type is the basis for a routine that should include a cleanser, toner, AHA (alpha hydroxy acid) or BHA (beta hydroxy acid) exfoliant, daytime moisturizer with sunscreen, and a moisturizer without sunscreen for use at night.

Now that you have your basic routine, it’s time to identify your skin concerns and determine what additional targeted treatment products, if any, are necessary. For example, in some cases, a concern (such as clogged pores) might be handled beautifully by one of the products in your basic skincare routine, such as a BHA exfoliant. However, if you also have brown spots, you’ll want to add a skin-lightening treatment to your regular routine to address the discolorations in a more targeted manner than merely using an AHA or BHA exfoliant.

What Every Skin Type Needs

We touched on this topic in Chapter 2, Skincare Facts Everyone Needs to Know, but now we’ll expand a bit on the critical types of ingredients that all skin types need. These substances occur naturally in skin, but due to sun damage, age, skin disorders such as acne or rosacea, and other issues, they gradually become depleted and eventually skin stops producing them. Providing these integral substances to your skin daily can make all the difference in the long-term health and appearance of your skin. Of course, to keep these vital ingredients protected sunscreen is equally important, just in a different way. (We talk at length about the need for sunscreen in Chapter 6, Sun Damage and Sunscreen Questions Answered.)

Antioxidants are a group of natural and synthetic ingredients that reduce free-radical damage and environmental damage. Why is this important? Antioxidants can prevent some of the degenerative effects in skin caused by sun exposure, and can reduce inflammation within skin. [13,14] Inflammation is deadly for skin because it causes the destruction of collagen and elastin, prevents the skin from healing, and thins the layers of skin. [5,6,15] Anything you can do to reduce inflammation is incredibly beneficial, and antioxidants are definitely one group of ingredients that are fundamental for doing that.

The best moisturizers (lotions for normal skin, creams for dry skin, and gels and liquids for oily/combination skin) are formulated with a potent blend of antioxidants that help your skin reduce inflammation and act younger. It’s also critical for these antioxidants to be housed in packaging that will ensure they remain effective, which means they should not be packaged in a jar or in clear packaging because antioxidants break down in the presence of light and air. [5,6,15]

Skin-identical and skin-repairing ingredients are substances between skin cells that keep those cells connected (think of mortar between bricks) to help maintain skin’s barrier. A healthy, intact barrier allows skin to look smooth, soft, and radiant. It also allows skin to repair itself, which is critical for healing breakouts and red marks and preventing environmental damage. There are many skin-identical ingredients, including such well-known substances as hyaluronic acid, sodium hyaluronate, glycerin, and ceramides. [16,17]

Cell-communicating ingredients are any ingredients that can tell skin cells or other types of cells in skin to behave in a more healthy manner by producing “younger” cells. Over the years, because of sun damage, acne, age, and hormone fluctuations, skin cells and genes involved in cellular formation and repair become permanently damaged. The result is that the new cells being produced are now irregular, mutated, rough, defective, and older-acting cells, whereas before the damage they were healthy cells. [5,6]

Cell-communicating ingredients are substances that “communicate” with these defective cells, helping reverse the damage by helping the skin to produce healthier, younger cells. [5,6] In effect, the defective cells receive a message to stop making bad cells and start making better ones! It is an exciting area of skincare! The key players in this group are niacinamide, retinol, synthetic peptides, lecithin, and adenosine triphosphate. [5,14,18,19,20]

Skin Type Determines Formula

We know we’re being painfully repetitive, but forgive us if we go over this one more time because it is so important. Once you know your skin type, you will have a clearer understanding of which product formulations and textures work best for you. If you have oily skin, you’ll want to avoid overly emollient or greasy formulations at all costs. Conversely, if you have dry skin, you’ll want formulations with a creamy, rich base. This is incredibly important to understand. So, while all skin types need antioxidants, skin-repairing ingredients, and cell-communicating ingredients, the texture of the products that contain those ingredients is determined by your skin type. It’s fine to layer multiple products with the same texture in your routine, or, if you prefer, and if it’s appropriate for your skin type, you can layer lighter-weight products under heavier, more emollient products.

What Influences Skin Type

Many people have no idea what their skin type is, which is completely understandable because skin type can be hard to pin down and because it can be a moving target. That’s because almost anything can influence skin type—both external and internal elements can and do influence the way your skin looks and feels.Things that affect your skin type that are generally beyond your control are:

 Hormones

 Skin disorders

 Genetic predisposition

 Medications (oral or topical)

 Exposure to pollution

 Climate (including seasonal changes)

Things that affect your skin type that you have some control over are:

 Diet

 Your skincare routine (using irritating products or products that are wrong for your skin type)

 Stress

 Unprotected/prolonged sun exposure or use of tanning beds

You May be Causing a Skin Type or Concern

It probably isn’t difficult to see how smoking, sun damage, diet, and genetics can negatively and dangerously affect your skin type and concerns. What many people don’t realize is that the skincare products they use can also be a primary factor in exacerbating, or even creating, the very skin issues you are trying to resolve. In other words, what you do to your skin via your skincare routine may be causing or intensifying a skin type or skin concern you don’t want!

You’ll never know your actual skin type or get your skin concerns under control if you use products that contain ingredients that create the very problems you don’t want.

If you’re using products that contain irritants, you can create dry skin and still make your oily skin worse (think dry skin on top, oily underneath). Products with irritating ingredients also cause collagen and elastin to break down, damage skin’s ability to heal, and make wrinkles worse. Alternatively, if you use overly-emollient or thick-textured products along with a drying cleanser, you can clog pores, prevent skin cells from exfoliating (which makes your skin look dull), and make your skin feel oily in some areas and dry in others. If you over-scrub, you can damage the barrier (surface), causing more wrinkles and dry skin.

Not surprisingly, the kinds of products you use make all the difference in the world when trying to reach your goal of having the best skin of your life now.

How to Determine Your Skin Type

Once you’ve ruled out the controllable factors that can affect your skin type (for example, sun exposure, smoking) and eliminated problematic products (poor formulations, jar packaging, irritating ingredients) from your routine, you’ll be able to more accurately determine your skin type.

A good thing to keep in mind is that almost everyone at some time or another has combination skin. That’s because the center area of your face naturally has more oil glands, so you are more likely to be oily or have clogged pores in the “T-zone.” Many people with dry skin often find their skin is less dry on the nose and center of the forehead than elsewhere. It’s also typical for some areas of your face (the eye area, around the nose) to be more sensitive.

Before you get out your mirror and have a close look, it’s best to wash your face with a gentle cleanser. Then, wait two hours to see what your skin does without additional products or makeup (you can apply a gentle toner after cleansing, if desired). You may see a combination of skin types—normal to dry in some areas, oily in others. It bears repeating that anyone’s skin can have multi­ple “types,” and that these types can change due to hormonal cycles, seasons, stress levels, and other factors.

How to Determine Your Skin Concern(s)

In some ways this is the easiest section of the book because most of us are painfully aware of what our skin concerns happen to be. Most of us already know what wrinkles, breakouts, blackheads, sagging skin, or brown discolorations look like. That’s the easy part. But there are some skin concerns that are far more difficult to identify, such as sebaceous hyperplasia (small whitish, crater-like bumps on skin), milia (small pearl-like bumps on skin), keratosis pilaris (tiny red rough bumps on the arms and legs), and rosacea (sensitive skin with flushing and redness) among others. We explain all of these in the next sections of the book.

The most important takeaway about skin concerns is that most people have multiple skin concerns at the same time. It is not unusual for someone to have rosacea, wrinkles, sun damage, brown discolorations, and patches of dryness. This is where skincare can get complicated because once you’ve identified your skin concerns, then you need to add the specialty treatment products that can address them. Your core skincare routine may be enough to handle some aspects of your skin concerns, but that all depends on how stubborn or deep the problems are. You are the only who can determine how targeted and precise a skincare routine you want and need.

There are specific treatment products, both prescription and non-prescription, targeted for the treatment of acne, rosacea or other types of redness, blackheads, very oily skin, advanced sun damage, wrinkles, eczema, hydration, skin discolorations, and so on. Those concerns, along with your basic skincare requirements, are explained in the following chapters—along with helpful tips on how to put a routine together, including the order of application.

Basic Skincare Requirements

This section presents a quick overview of the products you need to build a core or basic skincare routine. (We elaborate more on this topic in Chapter 4, Which Skincare Products You Need and Which Ones to Avoid.) In the following paragraphs, we list the products you would use every day to maintain your skin, to meet many of your skincare needs related to your skin type, and to address some of your skin concerns. Though this may sound like a sweeping comment, we believe strongly that everyone can benefit from following these steps, even teenagers. Although we know it’s highly unlikely that any teenager will follow all these steps, starting them in the right direction with at least three would be a perfect beginning.

The basics are: Twice a day use a gentle water-soluble cleanser appropriate for your skin type; more emollient for dry skin, more of a lotion style for normal skin, and a gel or pearlized lotion with a bit of sudsing for oily/combination skin. You can start or follow with a makeup remover to be sure you’ve removed every last bit of makeup; you don’t ever want to fall asleep in your makeup.

Next is a toner, and of course it must be one that contains no irritants of any kind. This step assures you that you are quickly giving back to skin the crucial substances we mentioned before, such as antioxidants, skin-repairing ingredients, and cell-communicating ingredients, in a lightweight sheer formula that’s appropriate for your skin type; dry skin would have more emollients, normal skin would be a fluid without extra emollients, and oily/combination skin would have ingredients that are helpful to balance oily skin.

You then follow with an exfoliant in a formula appropriate for your skin type. We explain at length in the next chapter why an exfoliant is a basic item in any daily skincare routine.

A serum can be your next step to give your skin a concentrated dose of the brilliant ingredients skin is hungry for, including antioxidants, skin-repairing ingredients, and cell-communicating ingredients. This is a wonderful basic step that many overlook, but the benefit may be worth experiencing for yourself before you write this step off as being a waste of time.

It goes without saying, but we will say it anyway: During the day you must wear a sunscreen with SPF 30 or greater and you must experiment to find a texture of sunscreen that makes your skin happy. For someone with dry skin a creamier formula should be perfect, for someone with normal skin a lotion formula will be great, and if you have oily/combination skin, a matte-finish sunscreen would work best.

At night you need a moisturizer to feed your skin once again, with healthy amounts of antioxidants, skin-repairing ingredients, and cell-communicating ingredients. The texture of your moisturizer must be appropriate for your skin type. If you have oily/combination skin, a liquid, gel, or thin serum would be ideal; dry skin would need a rich emollient cream; and normal skin would do great with a lotion.

Layering Skincare Products

The first building block for finally achieving the best skin of your life is a core skincare routine, as mentioned above. Those basic, and critical, steps—water-soluble cleanser, toner, exfoliant, SPF moisturizer during the day and moisturizer at night—are essential products for everyone. All of these core products must have a texture that is appropriate for your skin type and must contain the same indispensable ingredients for skin.

As we explained throughout the opening chapters, and it bears repeating, everyone needs antioxidants, skin-repairing ingredients, and cell-communicating ingredients. If you have dry skin, the texture of the products should be emollient creams and serums; if you have normal skin, they should be lightweight lotions and serums; if you have oily/combination skin, then gels, liquids, and thin serums are best. For some skin types and skin concerns, the basics might be all you need to have smooth, soft, and radiant skin. If your skin concerns are more complicated, or if you have more than one skin type on your face, then additional steps are vitally important—this is where layering skincare products becomes imperative.

Depending on your skin concerns (breakout-prone, blackheads, advanced sun damage, rosacea, among many others) and/or on your special skin type (seasonal changes to skin, more dry patches than typical for combination skin, super oily skin, extremely dry skin), you might want to consider layering one or several uniquely-formulated products with the products in your core skincare routine.

Layering involves supplementing your core routine with products usually referred to as specialized serums, essences, boosters, or medical treatments (over-the-counter as well as prescription), either every day or as needed. As you will see in the following chapters, we explain how you can add a specialized product or products to your core routine to address specific problems such as skin discolorations, extra moisturizing for dehydrated skin, more emollients for seasonal dryness, anti-acne products for breakouts, increased exfoliation for stubborn blackheads or advanced sun damage, and so on.

You can add these types of targeted, or focused, products at almost any point in your skincare routine, after cleansing and toning. Depending on the type of problems you are addressing, these targeted treatments can be used daily, every other day, once a week, or seasonally.

The most important thing to understand is that no single product can do it all when you have distinct and disparate skin concerns. It’s possible that it may take only one extra product, but this depends entirely on the problems with which you are dealing. Layering is not a new concept in skincare, but given the new and advanced lightweight and highly compatible formulations that can truly make a marked difference in specific skin concerns, better skin awaits you once you understand how layering works and what products will produce the best results.