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What is lavender?
Lavender is a small evergreen shrub with fragrant purple flowers. Lavandula or lavender oil is the oil distilled from the flower spikes of this plant. Lavender oil contains phytochemicals such as linalool and linalyl acetate.
What is it best for?
In addition to being a beautifully fragrant ingredient, lavender oil can actually promote skin healing. Lavender has been shown to increase collagen synthesis in the skin’s connective tissue. In simple words, this means that lavender oil can be used to treat minor cuts and wounds.
In addition, it can be used to soothe sunburn, insect bites, and the symptoms of eczema and psoriasis. Its anti-inflammatory properties may help reduce acne, and the essential oil can also reduce irritation and pain caused by skin conditions.
In general, lavender has a soothing property, making it an excellent ingredient for many skin conditions. To find out if lavender will help with your skin needs, take our Skin Quiz.
What is the drawback?
Lavender has relatively few drawbacks as a skin ingredient. As lavender oil is fragrant, it can irritate the skin. In addition, being an essential oil, it is a powerful ingredient, and needs to be diluted sufficiently before it is safe to use on the skin. It may also cause an allergic reaction in some individuals.
Oily skin occurs when the sebaceous glands in the pores are producing more oil, or sebum, than necessary. Sebum is natural in all skin as it keeps the skin moist and healthy. Over production of sebum can be caused by hormones, genetics or could even be a result of dry skin over-compensating by producing extra oil, in order to retain some measure of moisture.
Oily skin can also be caused by using the wrong products for your skin type. For example, if you are using overly drying soaps and astringents for your skin type, your skin may respond by over producing oil to compensate, as mentioned above. This can create an unfortunate cycle of using harsh soaps to eliminate oils, but instead exacerbating the problem.
On the other hand, overly oily makeup and products can also cause oily skin.
Ingredients that help exfoliate dead skin cells to keep pores unclogged and increase new skin cell production, such as Vitamin A/Retinol, glycolic acid, and salicylic acid, are good for treating acne as well. Benzoyl peroxide is a topical agent for fighting bacteria and unclogging pores. It is one of the longest-used medications to keep oily pores clean and healthy. Jojoba oil is also good for fighting bacteria trapped in oily skin and maintaining a moisture barrier to prevent over-production of sebum.
lavender may be effective for oily skin, but there are many other factors that may affect whether this ingredient would work on your skin or if there are better ingredients that may work for you. Take this skin quiz to find the best ingredients for your skin and build your skincare routine.
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