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Best Pore Minimizer – Reviews for 2022

Got big pores? Find out how to fix them!

If you were born with big pores, you already know how awful it is. Big pores make you look older. They make your skin look rough and bumpy. They’re a magnet for dirt and oil. If you’re a woman, big pores make you look manly. If you’re a man, big pores mean acne… lots and lots of blackheads and acne.

Having large pores on your face can feel like a curse, but it doesn’t have to be that way. As we speak, there are dozens of companies intrepidly trying to find new formulations to minimize pores.

There are also tons of “home remedies” like egg white masks and baking soda scrubs, but unfortunately, they really don’t do much to minimize your pores. Plus they make you look like a freakshow when you do them…

Things you should know about your pores

Best Pore Minimizer

First of all, what are pores? Each one of your pores is actually the opening for a hair follicle. Even though you might be female and have no capacity to grow a beard, each pore is a potential hair growing out of your body. Each of your pores is home to a tiny little sebaceous gland. These glands are responsible for all your skin’s oils. It might not be too much of a stretch to say that big pores create oilier skin. But, look on the bright side, your friend with the perfect face with no pores suffers from dry skin something fierce! The size of your pores is, for the most part, determined by your genetics. If one or both of your parents have big pores, it’s quite possible you do too. Also, the darker your skin is, the more likely you are to have bigger pores.

Dirt and acne stretches out pores and could make them permanently larger as time goes on. And I really hate to tell this to all of you pimple poppers, but each time you do that, you risk damaging the pore and permanently enlarging it. Just look at some of the irregular pores on your nose to know this is true. This is why it is vital you use the best face wash you can afford that is suited for your skin.

Some other factors that enlarge your pores is excessive exposure to sunlight and age. The Sun’s UV rays are like kryptonite for your skin’s collagen. As collagen weakens in diminishes in your skin, your skin slackens creating wrinkles and loosens the pores making them look much larger. And as you age, the capacity for your skin to renew collagen and repair itself reduces adding to your worries about having large pores.

What to know about the best pore minimizer products

If you want your pores to appear smaller then it is crucial that you keep them exfoliated and clean. Any dirt, makeup, oil, or dead skin allowed to linger in your pores is just going to stretch out the pore and eventually form into blackheads (which REALLY makes your pores stand out).

The best thing you can do is consider getting a power facial scrubber. Now there are hundreds of these facial brushes on the market and some of them are pretty cheap. But seriously, this is your face we are talking about! The proverbial “money maker.” Of course, you can grab some lousy $20 facial scrubber and it will work well enough, but why not make an investment in your skin and get something that actually does everything it promises?!

That, my friends is the Clarisonic Mia2 two Speed Sonic Facial Cleansing Brush System. This mini-monster is seriously breaking out the power tools to minimize pore size, obliterate wrinkles and power exfoliator.

If you have a serious skin care regimen and don’t have this magical machine in the mix, you are pretty much wasting your time. The best thing this facial scrubber does is that it removes all the grime and dead skin cells leaving your face immaculately clean and bright preparing the skin so that the next skin care treatment absorbs completely. That is huge especially if you have any existing skin problems. If you are serious about wanting the best pore minimizer, this device is your savior.

Now this is a spendy unit, but there’s actually one even better (and way more expensive… sorry)! The Clarisonic Smart Profile is like the MIA on steroids and is definitely worth the investment.

Skin toners to reduce pores

You can’t just stop with the facial brush. Once you’ve prepped your skin with the brush, now is the time to knock your pores into teeny tiny submission. The next step in the process is to use a facial toner. Facial toners are like the black sheep of skin care because a typical main ingredient is witch hazel making this a not very pleasant smelling product, but it definitely makes your pores disappear! Keep in mind, the smell does vanish soon after application.

Here are a couple of our favorite pore minimizer toners.

This might be the absolute smelliest of the toners, but it’s really quite effective. Not to mention it is pretty much the best all natural pore reducer. People really love this product because it actually tightens your skin without drying it out. Definitely use this toner morning and night to see best results.

Now for those people who just can’t handle the smell of Dickinson’s, doTERRA’s pore minimizing toner has a much more pleasant smell. That’s not to say it doesn’t still have some funky scent to it, but it is way more palatable than the previous product. This toner does have a few more ingredients to it including essential oils of lavender, ylang ylang and German chamomile so you aren’t knocked out by the witch hazel.

If you decide not to go with the power facial brush, you still need to exfoliate to make sure every pore is clean and clear to help reduce pores. You can do steps at the same time if you choose a great exfoliator with skin peel enzymes. Depending on the strength of your exfoliator, you can use it every day or every other day. If you have very sensitive skin, you will probably not want to use this product more than three times a week.

There are two kinds of exfoliator/peels. Some use fruit enzymes, alpha hydroxy acids, or retinol as the active ingredient. These are for normal skin types. However, if you have oily skin or tend to break out easily after treatments, try lotions with salicylic acid instead.

As with any peel, you should definitely put on sun screen afterwards. Your skin will be sensitive and the sun will make matters much worse.

A tiny little bit of this goes a long way! This gluten free and vegan peel is activated with pumpkin enzymes and it really is in the best pore minimizer products you can find. This pore minimizer is pretty powerful so you should probably only use it one to two times a week. It leaves your skin feeling fresh and revitalized and you’ll definitely notice smaller pores and tighter skin.

Feel like a teenager again after using this peel. Its active ingredients are lactic acid and salicylic acid combine together to deeply exfoliate your skin. Plus it’s packed with antioxidants to help the skin regenerate and heal faster. You get the added benefits of having all of your fine wrinkles erased and that baby-bottom smoothness and radiance that you get from salicylic peels. After a few treatments, you’ll notice (or more accurately—not notice) your pores.

Best pore minimizer for makeup

So you’ve done all the scrubbing and toning and peeling and you’re still not satisfied with what all of these best pore minimizer products have done for you. There is one final solution that isn’t exactly a cure, but it sure does the job making your skin look young and smooth. You can use a primer in your makeup regimen. The good news is that for you guys who are looking to reduce your pores also, you can many of these skin care products without makeup or without looking like you have any makeup on.

This primer is designed to be used with or without makeup. It goes on clear and within a few minutes, it shrinks up all your pores and fine wrinkles to create a flawless face. Maybelline’s Baby Skin is pretty much the best pore minimizer makeup primer out there. Just about everyone uses this product and its price is perfect! After a little drop of this rubbed into your face, you’ll be telling the director, “I’m ready for my closeup!”

Thoughts on the best pore minimizer

Just about any dermatologist will tell you that the size of your pores is genetic and there is not much you can do about it. Here at Civilized Skin Care, we say an enthusiastic, “No Way!”

The reason a dermatologist would tell you to not bother is because most low-end pore minimizing skin products can really mess up your skin in other ways. Some primers essentially just spackle on and clog your pores giving you terrible breakouts. If you don’t diligently read all the directions for some chemical peels, they have the capacity to burn your face really badly. If you’ve ever seen someone walking around with the “red clown face,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. And some low end toners are basically just witch hazel or have other impurities added to pad the volume.

In you quest to reduce your pores, you could hurt your face more than you are helping. This is why you should stick with any of the best pore minimizer products recommended on this page. As with all skin care products, you might have to try a few different ones until you find the formulation that is just perfect for your skin.

As always, the best way to civilized skin is to seek out the best products you can find with the most natural ingredients. Take care!

The Best Lotion for Dry Skin – Reviews for 2022

Pretty much anyone and everyone puts out a body lotion for dry skin. The problem is that there is perilously little regulation for anything that you don’t ingest. Essentially, there is nothing stopping a “skincare manufacturer” from slapping one or two “healthy” ingredients into a mush of toxins and then selling it all over the country as the next best skin savior.

Moisturizers For Very Dry Skin Are Now In Your Reach

Best Lotion for Dry Skin

People with dry skin are much more in danger of these shady products. Your skin in thirsty! It tends to soak up lotion faster than people with normal skin. If any toxins show up in your skin care, you skin is dangerously more likely to absorb it.

It isn’t fair, but you can choose to see this as a blessing! You also can receive way more nutrients through your skin than your friends. That’s right, your face and body lotion can actually provide you with countless vitamins and minerals that will not only make your skin feel baby-bottom soft, you can actually get healthier during your daily skin care rituals!

In your quest to uncover the best lotion for dry skin, there are many factors you should consider. First of all, did you know that a large percentage of skin lotions, soaps, creams, moisturizers, cleansers and just about anything you can rub on your skin can be purchased “private label?”

What is Private Label skin care?

Essentially, a manufacturer (often in China) creates a skin care product for a business. That business might have some pretty good intentions and request that certain ingredients are included and certain others are excluded. The manufacturer creates the product to specifications and delivers it the business to sell. Anyone with skin can tell you there are about a billion “skin care companies” out there. Not all of them survive. Now the manufacturer has thousands of gallons of a product it needs to get rid of.

ANYONE can come in and buy all the product and have the manufacturer slap their private label on it. So now you have something “specially formulated” for this new company that really doesn’t know much about the lotion but is selling it with all these lofty claims about its efficacy that it has no right to make.

The point here is that you should never believe claims from a company you have never heard of. There’s a good possibility this company just bought a bunch of overstock and labeled it as their own creation. Stick with skin care companies you know have a research department and you’ll never get duped by opportunists who could care less what you use to treat your dry skin.

So now that we got the scary stuff out of the way, let’s look at all the best ingredients that you want in your dry skin moisturizer:

  • Sunscreen. What’s the one thing that that will actively dry out your skin everyday when you are exposed to it? The sun! Even if you can’t find the best lotion for extremely dry skin with sunscreen in it, you should still manage to wear something with at least an SPF 30+ even if you are just wearing regular olf sunscreen.
  • Skin replenishers. There are tons of things you can put on your skin that actively helps your skin to create more healthy skin cells. Things like salicylic acid, glycerin, glycerol, hyaluronic acid, ceramides, sodium PCA, silicones, petrolatum, and alpha hydroxy acids all boosts your body’s ability to keep creating good skin. Not all of these need to be in your lotion, but the more there are, the better the lotion.
  • Antioxidants. As damage accumulates in your skin from exposure to sun and harsh environmental conditions, your skin slowly loses its ability to replenish itself. Antioxidants counter act this damage and encourage your dry skin to fix itself. There are also a bunch of really great antioxidants fthat you should look for in your skin creams: vitamin C, vitamin E, epigallocatechin-3 gallate, green tea extract, grape extract, resveratrol, willow herb extract, feverfew extract, licorice extract, superoxide dismutase, ferulic acid, and quercetin all rejuvenate your dry , itchy skin.
  • Emollients. Emollients are fatty, lubricating moisturizers that keep your skin from losing moisture. Any body lotion with one or several of these ingredients like, shea butter, cocoa butter, linoleic acid, oleic acid, fatty acids, borage oil, sunflower oil, mango butter and especially coconut oil is bound to do wonders to help your dry skin symptoms.

The Best Body Lotion for Dry Skin

Here are a few of our ultimate favorites on how to get rid of dry skin fast. As with all skin care products, try as many as possible to see how well it reacts with your sensitive skin. Once you find a winner, buy a whole crate of it and rub it on generously!

This salon sized bottle of body milk used to only be available in a salon (at a ridiculous markup!) Now that you can buy it online, your dry skin will rejoice at its good fortune. Decleor really made something special when they created this body lotion and it’s like a miracle on your dry skin.

Best of all, it doesn’t have a strong scent so both men and women can enjoy this without smelling “funny.” This will be one of those things you thought twice about buying but then it becomes one of those things you could never consider living without.

Aveda is one of those companies that really make unbelievably effective skin care treatments. This body moisturizer will not let you down. In fact, this really is the best lotion for extremely dry skin. It goes on luxuriously, penetrates your skin deeply and leaves your skin feeling soft and moist even hours after putting it on.

Of all the body lotions, this seems to be the one that people end up with as their favorites. If you are plagued with dry skin or live in a place where the winter is constantly attacking and drying out your skin, this replenishing body moisturizer will become a second skin to you.

Definitely read the directions for this one! Since this lotion is water activated, you need to put it on after your shower but before you towel off. It is kind of a pain in the butt to stay wet for a long time after your shower, but what it does for your skin is nothing short of a miracle!

You’ll be impressed with how quickly it absorbs into your skin and how your skin feels baby smooth all day without any greasy residue. If your skin has gotten to the point where it’s starting to crack or peel off, this is going to be the one thing that saves it. You’re going to love this! It really is the best lotion for dry itchy skin.

This skin care miracle is packed full of hydrating vitamin B5 gel as well as hyaluronic acid to deeply moisturize your dry skin. This is the same stuff doctors recommend to their pregnant patients whose skin tends to get bone dry during pregnancy.

This very mild lotion works on all skin types and especially recommended for people with sensitive skin. Wanna keep your face looking decades younger? This will become a life saver to you!

I personally know of two people who almost commit suicide when they discovered this dry skin lotion was no longer sold in the United States! But don’t you worry. You can still buy it online! This formulation is packed full of phospholipids which is like a knock-out punch for dry skin!

Not only have women used it for decades to keep their skin smooth, men who work with toxic chemicals that dry out their skin swear by Complex 15. This is the all-purpose moisturizer for very dry skin that will repair your damaged hands, feel, elbows and just about every other part of your dry skin!

Our Thoughts on the Top Dry Skin Body Lotions

There’s a lot of good stuff out there, but the people who do nothing but create moisturizing lotions and creams really know how to do it right. Don’t trust your delicate dry skin on just anything you can find at your grocery store. You might not just be doing damage to your skin by covering it with inferior skin care products, you might also end up clogging your pores and making your skin condition worse.

You should definitely moisturize your skin every single day and especially after you wash away vital skin oils in the shower. Ever wonder how celebrities look so incredible well into their 70’s? The secret is right here! Find the best body lotion for dry skin and use it religiously every day of your life. Your skin will thank you and you’ll stay sexy and look good naked for a very long time! You owe it to yourself to make this a daily ritual. It is the civilized thing to do…