Welcome to Dear Soko, a series dedicated to answering your biggest skin care questions with advice from Soko Glam’s skin experts. Whether you’re confused about specific ingredients or what you need to do to achieve healthier skin overall, our experts are here to guide you.
This week’s question comes from Raphina, who asked, “What is best for whiteheads on the nose and chin area? I can’t seem to lessen them. I don’t think I want to use nose pore strips anymore because I’ve read that it can strip the skin of natural oils.”
Here, a Soko Glam skin expert’s answer:
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Whiteheads on the nose and chin are such a common issue – I deal with them myself. You can discover whiteheads you might not have known you had by using your facial muscles to make the skin below your lip taut by pulling back your lower lip. If by doing this you see small white bumps in that area, those are whiteheads!
Whiteheads are a type of acne that form when sebum, which is the natural oil produced by your skin, collects along with dead skin cells in the pores. Of course, as I mentioned, whiteheads are common and most people have them. They can be persistent and tricky to get rid of completely, but by making exfoliation part of your daily skin care routine, you can ensure you are sloughing off dead skin cells. Less dead cells on the skin means less of a chance for whiteheads to form in your pores!
One to two times a week you’ll want to use a more potent exfoliator. I like the Dr Oracle A-Thera Tea Tree Peeling Sticks. The exfoliating solution contains both BHAs and AHAs to efficiently exfoliate the skin and also contains more gentle acne fighting ingredients like green tea and bamboo extracts. The solution comes pre-soaked on the head of an oversized cotton swab. The cotton swab applicator is perfect to get into the nooks and crannies around the nose and on the chin where whiteheads tend to form. You’ll want to concentrate this product on the whiteheads and acne-prone areas of your face first and then use the rest of the solution on other areas of the face for general exfoliation.
But every Batman needs his Robin so to best support your spot treatment, I’d also recommend using a gentle exfoliating product that is formulated to be used daily in your routine as well. I love the CosRx Two in One Poreless Power Liquid to target whiteheads because this product contains only 1% BHA so it can work for all skin types including sensitive skin types and shouldn’t irritate the skin even when used daily. This product also contains tannins which are a naturally occurring astringent found in the skin of grapes. Astringents are great for helping to minimize the appearance of pores. With any kind of acne, pore care is important because by keeping the pores cleansed and maintained, there is less of a chance for acne to form.
These products are just options and you may find that you already have products either at home or in your online shopping cart somewhere that could work! Again, you want to use one potent exfoliating product a couple times per week concentrated on the whitehead-prone area and support that with a more gentle product like a cleanser or toner that has been formulated to be used daily and contains a lesser percentage of exfoliating ingredients. The potency and amount of exfoliating products that you can use really depends on your own skin’s sensitivity levels.
To learn more about how to curate your perfect exfoliation routine and figure out how much exfoliating your skin responds best to, check out this previous Dear Soko.
Warmly,
Your Skin Expert
