When it comes to finding out your skin type, the first thing you need to do is forget everything you’ve heard before! What you’ve been taught by cosmetics salespeople, aestheticians, fashion magazines, and even some dermatologists, is likely incorrect, confusing, or designed to simply keep you buying more and more products—it all ends here!

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The 3rd edition of my book The Beauty Bible will be out next month! It just blows me away as to how much new information there is. Everything from controversies in sunscreens, the organic natural debate/hysteria, antioxidants, inflame-aging., and on and on has all new research and studies concluding different aspects of how best to take care of skin.

Perhaps the most stunning part for me is the research of why irritating ingredients are so bad for skin but in particular oily skin. This is where my endless recommendations and nagging not to use alcohol or menthol, citrus, eucalyptus, volatile fragrance components (natural or otherwise) makes even more sense. It turns out irritating ingredients can stimulate oil production by triggering a neurogenic response that release androgen receptors in the pore thus producing more oil. (Sources: Archives of Dermatologic Research, July 2008, pages 311–316; Dermatology, January 2003, pages 17–23; and Medical Electron Microscopy, March 2001, pages 29–40.) This means when you use products that contain irritating ingredients, though you may initially feel less oily because they decrease the oil on the surface of skin, they stimulate the pore to make more oil then you hade before which creates an endless cycle.