The Oil-Cleansing Method

It all started with a pimple, or rather another pimple. I had a breakout, so I started using something stronger to clean my face (St. Ives Green Tea Scrub). It worked great at getting rid of that pimple. But I kept using it, even though it was too strong for daily use. My skin was irritated and flaky.

I did an informal poll of my Facebook friends to ask what they were using to clean their faces.  One answer was very surprising. One friend said she was using oil to clean her skin and was happier with it than any product she'd ever used before.

If you haven't heard of the Oil-Cleansing Method, here are a few articles about it I found. But the basic premise is "like dissolves like." I shouldn't have been too shocked, I know lots of people who was their hair with conditioner rather than shampoo. It's a very similar principle.

So, after debating it for what ended up being a couple of weeks. I tried it for the first time at the end of November 2013.

I started with a blend that was roughly half castor oil & half grapeseed oil. After 1 try, my skin was actually too dry. The up side was that this calmed my fears that OCM would turn my face into an oil-slick.  

I needed to use less castor oil, so I adjusted my blend to roughly 2 parts grapeseed oil to 1 part castor oil. I've been doing this roughly 2 nights on / 1 night off for over a month.

So is it working? I think so. One thing I can say for sure is that the moisture balance of my skin has changed. I need far less moisturizer than I usually do in the winter. So it's probably worth the switch just for that. 

However, I've been a little frustrated/disappointed with the other promised benefit of OCM, unclogging pores. Now, I've never thought of my pores as particularly clogged, and they're certainly not very large. But I bought a mirror with 10x magnification to check them out. Sure enough, what I thought were tiny dark spots on my skin were actually clogged pores. I became obsessed with unclogging them. 

The increased efforts mostly included steaming my face, using pore strips, and trying different facial masks. This seemed to work on my forehead, nose, and chin, but my cheeks have remained pretty stubborn.

I certainly don't think OCM is doing my skin any harm, so I'm going to give it some more time.