If your skin is… oily!

What makes it worse?
Your efforts to improve your oily and acne-prone skin may be well intentioned, but washing with the wrong cleanser, using too many anti-acne products on the same day and scrubbing your skin with too much zeal will only aggravate blemishes and may even increase oil production. Also, impatience with your regimen-and moving on to another treatment prematurely-can derail your skin’s improvement. Keep in mind that the blemish you woke up with did not appear out of nowhere but rather has been brewing, likely for weeks. Here’s how to stop it now before it annoys you later.

Habits that cure

Morning
Wash with a cleanser that’s not too creamy (and therefore pore clogging) but not too drying (which will kick those oil glands into overdrive as the skin tries to compensate for its sudden loss of moisture. Cleansers that contain an anti-acne ingredient, such as salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide, are very beneficial but make sure that you’re not doubling up on that ingredient with other skin-care products in your morning regimen.

Evening
Post-cleaning, target the breakouts that you have and prevent new ones from forming by applying an anti-acne treatment over your blemishes. Or sweep it over your most common trouble areas, such as along your jaw line or across your forehead.

Once a week
Set aside a few minutes for a facial mask with oil-clearing components. Masks are formulated to deliver an intense burst of active ingredients, making them an effective way to control oil and deeply clean pores.

Extra-credit skin SOS
Since the skin is the largest organ in your body, it makes sense that it, too, is affected by stress. How? Quite simply, stress prods your body to produce the hormone cortisol, which then encourages your skin to over produce oil. Naturally exercise and long walks-even a good laugh-help keep stress at a manageable level and your skin clearer.