Acne Skin Solution: Coconut Oil

Most of you have surely heard of praises that people have been giving to the uses of coconut oil lately. Many women claim that coconut oil works wonders when used as a skin moisturizer or made into products for acne skin solution. If you are like me (easily attracted to "natural" products that promise to get rid of your acne while giving a healthy glow to your skin) you probably have tried to replace your usual moisturizer for some coconut oil. 

If you did, this is what your experience might have been like: First, you loved the oil as it felt light on your skin and truly did give you a nice glow after sleeping with it on at night. However, after simply a few days of using it consecutively, you started noticing that your problem areas (the places where you tend to breakout the most) were covered in many pimples. Weirdly, you also noticed that the skin on your non-breakout areas was looking better than ever. 

Sadly, this is exactly what happened to me and I had to stop using this oil on my face. However, my friend didn’t get any breakouts after using it and her skin was prettier than ever. Of course, I have moderate to severe acne and she only has an occasional pimple here and there, so I figured that coconut oil didn’t go well with naturally oily skin. After doing a bit of research, I found out that, indeed, I was right. The reason my skin broke out so much was that coconut oil is highly comedogenic.

What does “comedogenic” mean? If an oil or a product is classified as comedogenic, it indicates that it is very likely to clog your pores and therefore it ends up causing blackheads and breakouts. The comedogenicity of oils is graded out of 5 (with 0 being non-comedogenic and 5 being very comedogenic). Oils with a score under 2 are usually safe for oily skin, but each person has different tolerances. Coconut oil has a comedogenic score of 4 out of 5, therefore it easily clogs the pores of the skin and even more so on already oily skin. This is why my experience using coconut oil was not the same as someone with dry to normal skin.

If your experience was like mine, you may feel like giving up on putting oils on your skin, but please don’t! There are many beneficial oils out there for us acne prone girls, coconut oil is just not one of them. Here are a few oil suggestions (non-comedogenic) that your skin might like and their main use as acne skin solution:

Tamanu oil:

Amazing for acne scars, it is known for getting rid of the worst scars.

(Score of 2)

Argan oil:

(Score of 0)

Great for preventing breakouts and for the healing of acne scars due to its high vitamin E content. 

Castor oil:

Good for very oily skin as it dries it out and detoxifies the skin.

(Score of 1)