Easy 2-ingredients Cleansing Oil for Your Sensitive Skin

Yes, you read those words just right: Cleansing oil and the whole concept of oil cleansing might sound a little bit counter-intuitive for some of us. Especially, for us sensitive skin owners. In fact, it took me some reading, learning and self-experimentation to get comfortable (and eventually fall in love) with oil cleansing.

Have been dealing with irritable skin since I was 8 years old, ‘tricky’ would be one of the most appropriate words to describe every attempt to find the right products that wouldn’t aggravate my skin.

Imagine that before the age of organic beauty.

The trust in skincare products doesn’t come that easily for this type of skin.

I used to cleanse my face with face wash products that contained sensitive-skin-not-so-friendly types of surfactants.

During my teenage years, acne problem was added to the list.

I thought all my skin needs were all hygiene-related. I would cleanse my face religiously. The grimes seemed to be successfully stripped off every time – but so did the much-needed protective acid mantle of the skin. My skin would itch from what felt like dryness, whilst the acnes remain put in their designated places all over my face.

And dermatologists could only keep my skin conditions at bay, back when my mom would bring me for consultations throughout my school years (and yes, sometimes we had to find the right one for my drama skin).

However, as much as the cosmetic aspects of my skin improved, I could feel my skin remained sensitive to touch, to heat, dehydration, itchiness, redness and salt water (imagine spending hours on a beach). In fact, I could feel my skin thinning from all that daily chemical exfoliation and probably salicylic acid, and who knows what else.

So I thought to myself, ‘there’s gotta be other issues that need to be tackled – the deeper root of the problem.’

So there I switched to the natural side of cosmetic world. That is, the natural, and eventually the organic skincare world. And see these interconnecting issues from the more holistic perspectives.

But guess what happened when I stopped going to the dermatologist.

Right. The biggest flare-up of my already-dramatic skin!

And that happened in my 20s, during the darkest period of my life journey (I was going to say ‘the darkest yet’, but I honestly wouldn’t wish for anything more than that in the future!).

This skin flare-up took me years to subdue. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but I noticed that my skin improved almost, if not totally, in synch with my psychological and overall well-being.

Hmm… I’m gonna look through it and see if I can find some evidence that could prove my suspicion right. And I have now planned to share the findings with you in the future – if I manage to find something later on.

Anyway, long story short, during those years I began to realize the importance of skin barrier repairing and its health maintenance.

• Sensitive skin
• Cleansers
• Oil cleansing method
• Fragrance-free oil cleanser for our sensitive skin
• Directions for the oil-cleansing routine
• My personal notes, tips and observation

Sensitive skin

If you know that you’ve got a sensitive skin, here are some home-care concepts for sensitive skin, written by Mark Lees’ in the 4^th edition of his book ‘Skin Care: Beyond the Basics’.
AVOID:

• Heat, since it may stimulate both neurological and immune responses. This includes sun exposure (use sunscreen when required), sitting directly in front of fireplaces, being in hot shower and using hot water when cleansing the skin.
• Using scrubs and strong exfoliants.
• Using fragranced products.
• Over-cleansing or cleansing the skin too often.
• Using any product that feels stimulating or over-drying.
• Using alcohol-based products.

Also pay attention to the foods you consume. Do you any food allergies? Nowadays, there have been laboratory tests to determine which substances we’re allergic to.

Or you can document any reactions you have when consuming certain types of foods and beverages. So far, I found out that sometimes redness appears across my cheekbone area when I eat foods that are too spicy or too hot. My skin gets agitated when I consume too much pasta and not enough greens and fruits, and so on. We might talk about this further in other post.

Cleansers

As written by Mark Lees in the 4^th edition of ‘Skin Care: Beyond the Basics’, cleansers for sensitive skin should be:

• Very mild and not foam much.
• Non-fragranced.
• Easy to remove without applying too much pressure to the skin.
• Applied with fingertips and cool, but not cold water, nor hot water.
• Removed with extremely soft cloths or cotton pads.

Milks or emulsions are appropriate for makeup removal.

Slightly foaming cleanser might be a better option for oily-sensitive skin.

I have worked with a number of green surfactants that felt mild enough for my sensitive skin, e.g. Yucca extract, cocamidopropyl betaine (you can often find this ingredient in baby products), decyl glucoside and sodium lauroyl sarcosinate (not that SLS). With different degrees of foaming (although not that much of a foam), they were designed to cater for sensitive skins that are easily dehydrated, no matter how oily these sensitive skins are.

Maybe – just maybe – we can talk about green surfactants in another post, in the future. Just let me know in the comment section below if you want to know and learn a little bit about them.

Oil Cleansing Method

Organic anhydrous (without water) cleansers come in different forms. Some are thick and/or solid, some are liquids.

The thicker, solid variants would require butters and sometimes waxes, usually mixed with other liquid carrier oils. The percentage of each of these ingredients would determine the final texture of the cleanser.

The liquid ones would require liquid carrier oils, although small percentages of butters and/or waxes can be included as well, for the desired texture and therapeutic benefits.

Safe amount of essential oils, CO₂ extracts and other oil-soluble extracts may also be added to these anhydrous cleansers.

One good thing about this type of cleanser is that it wouldn’t require addition of preservatives. The only thing you would want to add into an anhydrous cleanser is an antioxidant or a combination of antioxidants, to prolong the shelf life of product. Though, you’ll need to make sure that no water or water steam would go into the container. Choose the right kind of container. Store it properly.

In general, these anhydrous cleansers can be massaged into dry or wet skin. They act as solvents for oil-soluble grimes. The cleanser-grimes mixture will then be wiped off with hot muslin cloth.

However, with sensitive skin, I feel like there should be some alterations in the method. All of which will be described in the next section.

Fragrance-Free Jojoba Oil Cleanser for Our Sensitive Skin

Yep, there I spilled the beans out for you: It’s jojoba – our almost-solo ingredient for this special cleanser.

Why jojoba oil?

Many superior skincare qualities of jojoba oil, but especially its effectiveness in skin penetration, its sebum-like structure, its barrier-repairing property, and its great compatibility with the skin have made its way to the top of the chart of hypoallergenic oil cleanser for irritable, sensitive skin.

Jojoba oil dissolves excess sebum buildup that could clog hair follicles and create problems such as acne. It blends well with sebum, forming non-greasy film that holds moisture, controlling the flow of sebum and thus supporting the natural balance of the skin. It balances the skin’s acid mantle, hence the barrier-repairing quality, which makes the oil useful for dry, oily and combination skin (Price & Price, 2008).

You may want to read ‘9 Skin Benefits of Jojoba Oil (Wax?!) – Get to Know with the Thing that Successfully Prevented the Early Extinction of Sperm Whale’ for the details on jojoba oil and the skin benefits of jojoba oil.

Fragrance-Free Jojoba Oil Cleanser

Ingredient	Percentage (%)
Simmondsia chinensis (jojoba) oil	99.5%
Natural vitamin E	0.5%

Formulation method:

1. Weigh the jojoba oil in a beaker.
2. Add the correct amount of vitamin E to the jojoba oil.
3. Mix both ingredients well by stirring them together by using a glass stirring rod.
4. Pour the mixture into your chosen bottle, close the lid, and label it.

Notes:

• Type of oil (organic, cold pressed, etc.)

For maximum unaltered therapeutic properties of the carrier oils, find the unrefined, cold pressed and even the organic variant of the oils. This would also minimize the chance of being in contact with any kinds of synthetic chemical traces, e.g. solvent(s) used in extraction and refining processes.

• Antioxidant

Here we’ll add the most popular antioxidant in the natural and organic skincare world, i.e. vitamin E.

It usually comes in the form of mixed tocopherols derived from vegetable oils. The most common natural vitamin E variants are based on soybean oil or sunflower oil – with the soybean-based vitamin E being the most commonly encountered in the natural and organic skincare world, at least that’s the case for me, so far.

Try to find the non-GMO soybean-based vitamin E if it’s too hard and not-affordable for you to find and use the sunflower-based vitamin E. Both variants will do the job in prolonging the shelf life of the oils and thus the product.

• Measurements

In most cases, we’ll express the weight of each ingredient in gram.

And the temperature will be expressed in degrees Celsius (⁰C).

• Equipment

Here, we’ll do the blending in a glass beaker, by using glass stirring rod.

Of course, you can use a glass or mug and spoon if the product you’re going to make is strictly used by you and not public (I’ll assume you’re making DIY/homemade products for yourself only). BUT please always remember to separate the formulating equipment from the kitchen equipment – don’t use them interchangeably. This way, you’ll avoid any possible contaminations. Nevertheless, you’ll see that it’s safer and more fun to use the proper equipment.

We’ll also need a digital scale to weigh our ingredients. 0.1 g readability and the capacity of 500 g would be good enough for most of our formulating purposes.

If you’re planning to make more homemade products for yourself, it would be a good idea to own 2 scales: one with 0.1 g readability, and the other one with 0.01 g readability (for those extracts and essential oils). There are many options of pocket digital scales out there, which would be suitable for when you are just starting out.

One more thing worth mentioning is, that you would need to make sure that you wash and then disinfect all equipment before and after making your product. You can use alcohols, though isopropanol (isopropyl alcohol) and ethanol are the two particulars that I would recommend to use for this purpose.

Please let me know in the comment section below, if you want to know more about formulating equipment. We’ll see if a separate post about this would be needed.

• Container

For this jojoba oil cleanser, we can use a glass bottle with dropper pipette, a flip lid bottle, a pump bottle, or an airless pump bottle.

Always remember to store the product properly at cool or at least non-elevated temperatures, away from direct sunlight and extreme humidity.

• Label

It’s necessary to label your homemade personal product with this information:

Name of the product

Quantity (the weight, in this case)

Production date

*It really is a good practice to include the ingredients on the label. For personal use, this is not a requirement. But at least write down the ingredients somewhere, perhaps in your journal or on the product’s excel sheet.

Directions for the oil-cleansing routine

It’s very simple!

1. Wet your skin with some water. It’s a good idea to use warm water, since this way you’d be preparing your skin for better oil absorption. However, first try and see how your sensitive skin copes with the warmth.
2. Place about 7 – 9 drops of jojoba oil onto your palm and massage the oil with both of your warm palms, into your facial skin. Let the oil sit for about 30 seconds and wait for the grimes to dissolve in it.
3. Place a piece of clean muslin cloth in warm water. Twist and squeeze the water out.
4. Gently and slowly wipe the jojoba oil-sebum-grimes mixture off with the warm and damp muslin cloth. Don’t press too hard – we need to minimize any friction on our sensitive skin. Make sure you clean the area around the nose well but still gently.
5. Wash the cloth so that it can be re-used during the next oil cleansing session.

And voila! It’s done!

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I believe today is the right day for you to finally try this unique way of cleansing your face.

Perhaps it sounds too risky and there might be that “not-clean-enough” vibe surrounding it, for us sensitive skin owners. In fact, that’s exactly what I thought before trying it for myself. But girl, look at how I’ve been converted into being a fan now!

Try it for yourself when you’re ready, but always keep in mind that there is no such thing as one-cure-for-everyone when it comes to skin care. Something that works well for me doesn’t guarantee its efficacy in your unique system.

Have you tried oil cleansing for your face? How did it work on your skin?

Is it the first time you’re trying this super minimalist procedure?

Are you planning to try this in the near future?

What are your concerns?

What are your experiences in dealing with sensitive skin?

Any tips for many of us here?

Please do share your concerns, opinions, experiences, and tips in dealing with irritable, sensitive skin, as well as on the oil-cleansing procedure, in the comment section below – and we’ll thank each other for sharing the knowledge.

Love and best wishes,

Ella