Talk Skin Academy Podcast

Debunking Skincare Myths: The Truth About Pores & The Skin Detoxing

• Katie Howell

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Can pores really open and close? Join us on Talk Skin Academy as we challenge this common skincare myth and reveal the truth behind it. We'll dive into the anatomy of pores, explaining their connection to hair follicles and the crucial roles of sebaceous glands and the acid mantle in keeping our skin healthy. You'll learn why treating your skin as the vital organ it is matters more than falling for marketing gimmicks. 

Do you think having dry skin means fewer wrinkles? Think again. Our discussion covers the surprising benefits and challenges of dry and oily skin types. Discover how dry skin, despite its minimal pores, can suffer from micro-tears and inflammation, while oily skin may actually protect better against aging. We also bust the myth that temperature changes can affect pore size and clarify that skin doesn't detoxify the body—that's the job of your liver and kidneys.

Confused about skin purging versus reactions? We've got you covered. Learn how ingredients like AHAs, BHAs, and retinols work to renew your skin, what to expect during a purge, and how to differentiate it from adverse reactions. We’ll also highlight the pivotal role of pH balancing toners in maintaining your skin's health and preparing it for active ingredients. By the end, you'll be equipped with the knowledge to foster a resilient skin barrier and achieve a glowing complexion. Don't miss our weekly Instagram Q&A sessions where we debunk more skincare myths!

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Talk Skin Academy podcast with Kate, founder, director and tutor at the academy here in Essex. Today we are going to talk about debunking three myths regarding the skin. Those three myths are pores opening and closing, skin can detox and you don't need to tone the skin. I'm going to go through all three because I believe all three really do matter. And what has happened to our industry? Due to very good marketing by the skincare brands of today? They they have basically turned our skin into an accessory, and what I want to hopefully do by the end of this podcast today is try to get you to think about the skin as an organ rather than an accessory, because even we get pulled into these fads of you know, get this glass skin, get this, you know Korean type of, you know, perfect looking skin. It doesn't exist because the skin is an organ First and foremost. It's the first line of defense for our bodies to keep us healthy and protected, and this is why I'm so passionate about sharing my knowledge with you guys, because I want you to be just as passionate about the skin from an organ perspective rather than a bloody accessory, because it isn't. It's like sticking your hands down your mouth and just tinkling with your know your heart and going. I just want a fancier, pinkier looking heart that pumps better. You just don't do it, do you? You technically do, by going to the gym or exercising in some capacity, but you don't start just playing with it, because if you did, you find out that that's probably a bad idea and you wouldn't be around for a bit longer. But yet somehow skin seems to be, seems to just take it and it will keep protecting us and keep looking after us, and so I believe it needs a little bit more respect from us. If it's not, it's never going to get it from the marketing, because marketing is there to sell. What we want to do is, yes, we want to help our clients, and we just and that's one way of doing it is by selling, but we want to educate them to understand the correct information when it comes to their skin and how phenomenal it truly is. So let's talk about pores opening and closing. The crazy thing is that this is still being taught inside actual colleges by lecturers and academics in the beauty industry, because the books that they're still teaching from back from the 1900s are still saying that exact thing, but they obviously they're not going out and educating themselves on the correct science. So let's understand what actually is a pore.

Speaker 1:

So the pore is home to hair follicles. It is what allows the hair to work effectively when we are hot and when we are cold. The reason why we have hair is to keep us warm and insulated. Back in the saber-toothed tiger days, when you know things were, you know weren't as cushy as they are now, when we didn't have brick and mortar and we didn't have central heating and air con. We are here was our, our central heating, you know. Hence why we were a bit hairier back in those days than we are now, because we don't need to be as due to the fact of what we've been able to create as a civilization. So when it comes to pores, it's homes, it's the opening. It's the opening, it's the door to your hair. And if you had the ability to close a paw, then we as a human race probably wouldn't be alive today, because we wouldn't have been able to actually keep ourselves warm back in the days when we didn't have all the cushy things we have today.

Speaker 1:

So let's just think about the from a basic human living condition scenario. That is what a pore is. It is the home to your hair follicles. Attached to the hair follicle, you have what we call your sebaceous gland, which is your oil gland and that basically secretes oil to allow the hair shaft to be nice and greased up, to spill out onto the skin surface to create what we call your acid mantle. Your acid mantle is your chemical barrier and, again, it is what is part of your protective barriers. You have four in total with your skin and the physical. That, the chemical barrier, is your barrier. That basically, is invisible to the naked eye and it pretty much just stops. Anything that wants to get in should be kept out. Part of that is, like I said, the oil. The other part is sweat. Okay, so again, if your pores were able to open and to close, if it closed, then the oil wouldn't be able to get out and that's when it could potentially lead to massive issues, which actually does happen, and that's what's called acne, right, an inflammatory skin disorder.

Speaker 1:

The other thing we have to realize is the only part of that hair follicle that has a muscle attached to it is the hair itself. During colder times, the muscle pulls the hair up to allow it to be on standby and when we are hot it then relaxes, so the hair collapses down. Your pores do not have muscles to just open and to close. It's impossible to do that. So when your skincare brands tell you that this opens and closes your pores, they are lying. When your you know, when your tutor is telling you that steaming opens and closes the pores, they are technically lying. Now, they don't. They might not mean to be lying, they might just be misinformed, but I'm telling you today on this podcast that the pores have do not have the ability to just open and close, and nor does any type of equipment allow that pore to open and close.

Speaker 1:

The only way you can make the pore look smaller is by helping to reduce oil levels, and that can be by internals applying you know, by maybe taking the pill or by having some sort of medication that helps control testosterone and hormone levels. Because, remember, it's down to the hormone levels that are associated with your oil glands that that if your hormones are going crazy, so especially your progesterone and your testosterone, then they are linked directly to your oil glands. So if they're going through the roof, they're having a crazy moment, which, around just about a week prior to say, for instance, a period that tends to happen. That's why 70% of women will tend to break out prior to the period kicking off, because of hormone-related kind of like fluctuations. Then the oil levels will start pumping more. Because what is it doing? It's trying to create a habitable environment for a baby to be created. That's the whole point because, remember, oil is part of your chemical barrier to keep your body safe and out of harm's way of anything from outside trying to get in, so you can see how the body is trying to protect itself at all times. So during that phase of that month, that would be why that's happening. So, unless you take some sort of birth control, or you take something that helps you to reduce your hormone levels, or maybe something that topically is applied that helps to strip away at the oil, leaving potentially an impaired barrier, then that's the only ways that you can potentially help to reduce oil levels so that the pores can shrink a little.

Speaker 1:

Because if versus a dry skin versus an oily skin aka, I have very dry skin. Well, for instance, you know, one of my friends has a really oily skin. So I have very little visuals of my pores because my pores don't need to be open because I literally am a I'm like the Sahara desert of dry skin. Well, she has a pretty much a waterfall of oily skin, but her skin is amazing and she will age way better. Well, she should do technically than me, because I have dry skin, meaning I am, I'm more prone to things like breakages inside the barriers. But your chemical as well as your physical, and she has very, and she has a strong skin. So if we took both of our skin back into the era of the saber-toothed tiger, her skin would be the desired skin to have, because she has a high fluctuation of oil level to keep the berries nice and safe and intact. So there'll be no micro tears. And when micro tears happen, inflammation happens and then that is when we get problems with the skin. So having open pores with an oily skin is necessary to avoid potential acne issues. Okay, so that is why a pore needs to always be open.

Speaker 1:

What can cause a to flop open over time in age is people being very disrespectful to the skin in general. So those of your clients who are pickers, for instance, when they are younger, they pick their spots, they pick their blackheads, they pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. That is causing serious damage to the collagen that is within the actual skin the collagen that is within the actual skin. Now, we're not going to go into that today, but that is what causes the skin, as we get older, to start to flop open. So if you've got clients who are more mature and they're like I've got open pores, I want to get rid of them, then the one way you can do that is by having things like microneedling to help support the collagen. So it's not the pore itself, we're supporting the collagen structures around the skin to be able to become more stronger, to pull back in the actual pore itself. So if you are dealing with a lot of clients that are having pore issues because you know they were pickers, maybe when they're younger they're a little bit aggressive towards the skin with exfoliation, or maybe they have a lot of sun damage, then that could be another reason why pores open or they say flop open because the collagen and the elastane that surrounds those pores are damaged and so they can't keep the structures up anymore. So when it comes to pores, hopefully now you've got a more basic understanding of what a pause is for and why things that are out there.

Speaker 1:

So you know, trying to sell the skincare you know. Close the pores, tighten the pores. The only way we can you can, if you do have a client's got acne prone skin is to keep the skin nice and clean but not affecting the barriers. Okay, so, keeping the skin nice and healthy so that the barriers are intact, but then the pores not getting enlarged due to debris and oil levels. Opening, opening, opening, stretching the pore that's the only reason why pores might get much bigger is through, again, pore cleansing. I went through a whole thing on that in the last couple of episodes. So go check that particular um episode out where I talk about cleansing and the importance of it, but making sure you use the right cleanses not affecting the ph of the skin. So go and check that out. But that's pores. Okay. So steaming hot water, all that fun stuff does not open or close the pores.

Speaker 1:

Now, when it comes to then, the next one we're going to talk about is the skin detoxing. This skin has a lot of jobs. In total, it has seven big jobs to do, but one of them isn't detoxification. Again, it's a marketing myth that the great marketing world of the beauty industry made up to sell detoxing products, the only three organs that can detox the body and remove the nasties from the system. The first one is your liver, the next one is your kidneys, and the colon also plays a huge part in that as well.

Speaker 1:

But when you are breaking out because you're using a detoxing product, that is not what's happening. You might be going through what's called a slight purge, where the skin's cycle system is speeding up, maybe because you're using a type of AHA or a BHA or potentially a retinol, which is their jobs to help stimulate cellular renewal. But your skin does not have the ability to detox. It doesn't have the functions to do that and it's not. It's you know. Its main purpose is to keep you protected, to allow vitamin D to be taken in and to be turned into energy, to fuel your bones, to fuel you physically. That is what the skin is. It's the defensive organ of your body, to keep you healthy and to allow everything internally to do their jobs correctly.

Speaker 1:

So when you're talking to your clients and you say this is going to detox the skin, that is just not true and it's. It's given your clients unrealistic expectations, irritations, the difference between when you think about purging. If someone asks you the difference with purging, you know when it's purging and not a reaction, because the purge will always happen in the area that they tend to get their breakouts in. If they start getting brand and breakout in other areas of the face, it's not a purge, it will be a reaction to whatever it is you're recommending them to use and if that does happen, you would stop what they're utilising and then start to slowly maybe then figure out what it is that's causing the reaction to happen. If, for instance, the purge lasts more than six to eight weeks, it's no longer a purge, it's a reaction. Purging can take up to six to eight weeks because it works with the life cycle of your skin and depending on lifestyle choices that you're making through sleep, through your eating habits, through sun damage, through age.

Speaker 1:

Again, not everyone, don't everyone. Everyone's not cut from the same cloth. No one has the same lifestyle, no one has the same stress levels, so turnovers will be different, based on that person's overall well-being. You know also be depending on how good their gut is, because gut and skin talk to each other all the time through their own microbiome, so it's their way of communicating, the way that you can say that, in a way, the skin is showcasing if the body is going, is under attack or needing to detox is potentially that way. So, like I just mentioned, your skin and your gut both have a microbiome and they are both talking to each other all the time.

Speaker 1:

I also have to say, when it comes to skin, it's like you're. So I think of a car, think of the. You know, the control panel in the car, what you see, the dashboard of a car. You've got different lights lighting up whenever there's different issues. So if there's an oil issue, the oil lamp will light up. If there's a tire pressure issue, the tires will light up. Now these bloody cars tell you. They just tell you, they just literally tell you I have a problem with my tire. Um, so it tells you. That's kind of how I like to say to my clients about the skin.

Speaker 1:

If there are gut issues due to maybe stress levels, due to maybe someone being highly stressed because of a job or because of social life or because of whatever the reason and we know that when we get stressed we tend to not be as good with our eating habits, and we know that when we get stressed we tend to not be as good with our eating habits A lot of us either go to the point where we don't eat, and some of us go to the point where we eat all the things that we never normally eat, but it's the only way that it makes us feel good. It's keeping us going during a pretty hefty time. So if the body starts having the things that it's not normally having and the gut's not happy about it, the gut will say to the skin hey, can you just notify this person that right now I ain't happy with what she's putting or what he's putting in my mouth. And so this is how I will showcase that I'm not happy. It's not detoxing, it's a notification to say hey, can you stop doing what you're doing, because right now it's annoying me internally and the only way I can show you is by showing you externally through the skin. So not only is your skin the voice of protection, it's also the voice of notification. So it's also another way of explaining why the skin could be breaking out due to lifestyle choices. Instead of saying the body's going through a detox, I would say your body's notifying you that actually, right now it ain't happy and we need to figure out what, within the lifestyle that you're doing, is causing this situation to occur. That's how you can then explain or communicate correctly by not telling them that it's detoxing, because the fact of the matter is the skin can't detox. So I hope that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

Any questions on that? Once you've listened to this podcast, please remember. Every single Tuesday at 7pm I do a Q&A where I go live on Instagram, on the TalkSkin Academy Instagram page, and I have five questions that you guys give to me. So if you have any questions on this whatsoever, just chuck that question on there and I will answer it, as long as it's within the five. And then the last one then, to finish off, is toning. So I hear so many different responses to toning and in my 20 years of working with client skin, especially more problematic skin like your acne prone skins, your inflammatory skin disorders one of the biggest, biggest issues is an imbalance in the pH, and I'm not going to go into massive details right now, but when it comes to the pH, your routine of cleansing can either make or break the pH balance.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and remember, like I said to you before, oil and sweat are what create the asthmatil, so that chemical barrier, what creates the pH. Remember 1 being acidic, 14 being alkaline, 7 being neutral. Our skin likes to be between 4.5 and 5.5 on that pH scale. When you cleanse your skin, regardless of what cleanser you're technically going to use, you will always use some sort of water content to remove your cleanser. Right Now, remember, on the pH scale, water is around about the 7. It's getting a little bit less weird well, it's not so much about 7 anymore because of what's going inside our waters these days. So right now, our skin's been taken completely out of its comfort zone by just simply using water on the skin, whether you splash it with your hands or you use some sort of pad or cloth to remove the cleanser. So, regardless of how pH balanced your cleanser will be, it will always be taken slightly out of the actual it's natural habitat, okay.

Speaker 1:

Not only that, remember, if you're not using an oil-based cleanser, if you're using a foam-based cleanser or a milk type of cleanser, oil attracts oil. So if you're not using an oil-based cleanser, maybe on your second cleanse, then there will always be some type of residue left, because your cleanser will not be able to pick up the excess oil that's left on your skin due to what you're using to remove it. So you'll also have that issue as well. So then, if you go and apply anything that's going to penetrate into the skin, then guess what? It's probably going to cause slight breakout or slight, you know, issue with whiteheads, blackheads, all the skin's just not going to feel really clean enough, and so then you're going to go in and really scrub it to get that clean feeling, which is the opposite of what we should do, as you know.

Speaker 1:

So the reason why I believe using a pH balancing toner is crucial is because it fixes those two issues. The first thing that a pH balancing toner will do is it will utilize the ingredients inside it to take your skin back into a pH hydrated zone, so between 4.5 and 5.5, takes your skin back into that by the ingredients that are inside it. That will make the skin feel healthy, clean, but not dry and stripped, okay. And then the other thing it will also do is remove any excess residue from the skin itself, making sure, then, that any actives that are going to be applied topically that need to penetrate and do all the good stuff that they say they're going to do. They then have a much better chance of doing it, because they're not then sitting or not being able to get into skin due to that film that was not removed through cleansing, because you're using water to remove the cleanser. So this is why for me, like I said, of the past 20 years, I have really truly believed that toning is crucial to keeping the skin healthy, hydrated and then deeply cleansed, and that's why I say it's like think of it, you know, if you think of brushing your teeth and flossing, you're going to have much healthier teeth and gums if you do both, versus just doing a floss or a brush.

Speaker 1:

Cleansing is good and it works, but you do need it psychic, the toner to come in and just double check, really make sure that it skins back to its natural pH and that it's deeply cleansed, ready for then the absorption of your more active, more expensive products. So there we go, guys. Three month myths debunked through biology, through skin understanding. Let me know what your thoughts are. Would love to get your feedback on this and what your, your beliefs are in skin and any myths that you'd like me to debunk, leave them in the comments, give them to me so I can do more podcasts like this that help you understand skin in much better detail. Simple, yet understandable education that you can then go and showcase to your own clients, whether it's on Instagram or in person. So there you go, enjoy and I'll see you in the next one. Bye, everyone.