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What actually causes acne, which actives have evidence behind them, and how to use them without wrecking your barrier.
13 articles
The skincare industry has built an entire product category around 'minimising' pores. Some of those claims are grounded in real biology — but the idea that pores open, close, or disappear is one of skincare's most persistent myths.
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New active making you break out? It might be purging — or it might be a reaction. The difference matters, because one means the product is working and the other means it needs to go.
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Bakuchiol is marketed as a gentler, plant-derived stand-in for retinol. The headline study behind that claim is smaller and more caveated than the marketing suggests — here's what the evidence actually supports.
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Acne isn't one condition — it's a category. A blackhead, a papule and a cyst share a starting mechanism but need genuinely different treatment, and matching the wrong intensity to the wrong type is where most routines go wrong.
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Oily skin, shiny T-zones, clogged pores — sebum gets blamed for all of it. But it's also doing genuine protective work, and the products that fight it hardest often make oiliness worse, not better.
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Squalane has become a skincare staple — a go-to oil for those who don't like oils, a moisturising ingredient that seems to work for everyone.
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Alpha-hydroxy acids get sold as one category, but glycolic, lactic and mandelic acid behave differently enough that picking the wrong one is a common reason an acid "doesn't work" — or works too well, too fast, in the wrong direction.
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Every acne product with salicylic acid uses the same tagline about unclogging pores. That's true, but it undersells an ingredient that's also anti-inflammatory, mildly antibacterial, and one of the few actives that can actually get inside a pore rather than just working the surface.
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Retinoids and vitamin C get the headlines. Azelaic acid quietly does three jobs at once — acne, rosacea and pigmentation — with a gentler side-effect profile than most of the ingredients that outrank it in popularity.
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Niacinamide (vitamin B3) has become a skincare darling — appearing in everything from serums to sunscreens, praised as a solution for nearly every skin concern.
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Slugging isn't the miracle TikTok made it out to be, and it isn't the pore-clogging disaster its critics warn about either — it's ordinary occlusion, with genuine upsides for some skin and real downsides for others.
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'Microbiome-friendly' has no regulatory definition, and most products trading on the word are capitalising on genuine scientific interest rather than delivering proven microbiome benefits. Here's what the research actually supports.
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Not all retinoids are created equal. The term covers a family of vitamin A derivatives with vastly different potencies, evidence bases, and effects on skin.
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