Aha's For Normalizing Combination Skin
Often the biggest frustration for those with combination skin is
caring for it properly. Having both dry and oily skin areas on
your face can make skin care seem almost impossible. There are,
however, things that you can do to care for and keep your
combination skin healthy and feeling good.
For one thing, some areas of your face may feel tight after you
wash. This will typically be on the parts of your face not
included in the T-zone area. These areas will likely also look
flaky and dull and may feel rough.
First of all, make sure you are cleansing every day. Use a mild
cleanser on your entire face. Use the cleanser twice a day,
preferably before bed at night and after get up in the morning.
These are the times your face most needs to be cleansed anyway,
but if you have combination skin it is imperative.
Get a good moisturizer. Once you have identified which parts of
your face are the dry parts, most likely these areas are not in
the T-zone and this is the area you will treat. Use the
moisturizer on those dry areas only. Using it in your oily
T-zone will only make that area worse.
The goal when you have combination skin is to normalize it.
Normalizing is trying to gain a balance between the oily and dry
areas so that all your skin looks and feels the same. In order
to accomplish this feat, you want to look for products that are
made for such normalization. For instance, ones that contain
alpha hydroxyl acids (fruit acids or AHA's) or retinols will
work best. Retinols are a vitamin A derivative. Such products
should help you to gain more normal and even looking skin.
The reason AHA creams are so beneficial to your skin is that
they area catalyst for skin cell regeneration. By burning off or
removing the top layer of skin cells (or the too oily and too
dry ones) they expose the healthier skin cells beneath them.
These cells are more likely to absorb moisturizers. They also
help improve skin elasticity through their water-binding
properties. This can help with that "tight" feeling you may get
in the dry areas with your combination skin. The only thing
about which you need to be aware is that once you are using
AHA's, you need to continue using them. Once you stop, your
cells will not regenerate at the rate they were with the AHA and
will return to their original state very soon.