The Best Organic Skin Care According To Your Skin Type: An MD Explains

How do you choose your organic skin-care products and what sort of things you should avoid? Based on reliable data from medical journals.

Your face may be only 4.5 percent of your skin’s surface area, but it’s the 4.5 percent with which you greet the world every day, so it deserves special attention. Finding the best face-care products for your skin type requires patience and persistence. Just because the first organic product you try doesn’t work does not indicate that organic face products are not for you—it just means you haven’t found the right one. Taking a skin-type approach can help you figure out where to begin.

Average skin means your skin doesn't swing to any extreme; you don’t struggle with redness, reactions, breakouts, dryness, or dullness. A basic routine for this skin involves cleansing every night (always!) and providing adequate moisture and sun protection. Exfoliation once a week will keep cell turnover healthy and allow products to penetrate more effectively.

When you strip the skin of too much, it provides feedback to the sebaceous glands that the skin does not have enough oil and kicks them into overdrive, exacerbating the problem. Instead, provide the skin with gentle exfoliation and nourish it with the right balance of oils, training the sebaceous glands to settle down and make less sebum.

Whether your skin reacts to everything or just a few common skin-care ingredients, it's not all bad: It can make you into an educated label reader! Less is absolutely more when you’re dealing with sensitive skin. If you react to something, it’s harder to do the detective work when you’re using lots of ingredients. Sometimes, your skin just needs simplicity and time to heal itself.

Skin can get dry or dehydrated for various reasons, from diet to sun damage to age-related changes. Stay hydrated, keep your electrolytes balanced, and eat plenty of healthy fats like avocados, hemp seeds, or healthy fish. Be sure to apply product while your skin is still damp, to lock in moisture.

Redness is a result of increased capillary size or blood flow, so ingredients that soothe the skin or cause gentle vasoconstriction are helpful. Things to avoid? Heating spices like cinnamon or cayenne (in diet or skin products), red wine, and niacinamide (vitamin B3), which can cause flushing.

Dullness is often a sign that your skin’s cell turnover rate is on the low side. Fortunately, there are loads of natural ways to speed it up, and you can often see great results within a month. Be sure to use a combination of exfoliation methods, from enzymatic to mechanical.

What is left out of products is just as important as what is in them.

NOP guidelines are designed for crops and livestock, not for cosmetics. Look for brands that use mostly food-grade, certified-organic ingredients. So, does a food-grade certification make sense for all skin-care products? Probably not. While the skin absorbs much of what we put on it, the absorptive surface area of the skin is about 1/15th of the GI tract and absorbs slightly different things, so the concerns are similar but not identical. Some newer, cosmetic-specific certifications have potential to become industry leaders for healthy standards: The National Safety Foundation has one, as well as the Environmental Working Group. Just as important, since there's no regulatory committee to monitor the beauty industry, look for a brand that is transparent and educated about the products, and willing to answer questions about sourcing and ingredients.

Choosing to invest in organic food and skin-care products is one of many ways to nourish your body and spirit in the long term. You are what you eat—and what you slather on your skin!