Could Coconut Oil Be the Real Reason You're Breaking Out?

One quick search about coconut oil and you'll find that it's a number four on the comedogenic scale — five being the highest. Read: it clogs the hell out of your pores. That said, it's a "safe ingredient," according to the EWG, when it comes to toxicity or being harmful to the skin, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Biba de Sousa, an esthetician, is known for giving Miley Cyrus clear skin and has been passionate about breaking this newfound love of coconut oil as a skincare product for years.

"To any person who is mildly acne-prone, it will give you blackheads and inflamed acne," de Sousa said. She admits there are some beneficial properties of coconut oil, as it's a saturated fat, so it doesn't have mineral or essential acid content, which is helpful for building ceramides in the skin. Ceramides are lipids in the skin that bind it together, and as we age, we lose them, which weakens our skin and can result in dry, wrinkled, and rough-textured skin.

De Sousa caveats her ceramides comment by adding that coconut oil has a large molecular structure, meaning it doesn't absorb into the epidermis and can create a film on the skin, resulting in dehydration. "I see this each time clients exclusively use oils for their skin care," she said.

De Sousa says that even though the skin initially feels silky and soft, the effect is only temporary since you're not properly moisturising the skin. When you apply coconut oil, you're telling your skin that it doesn't need to produce as much natural oils. This ultimately dries it out in the long run and can lead to "microscopic cracking," irritation, and stress, according to de Sousa. Additionally, coconut is, well, a nut and can affect those with nut allergies.

As for your hair, colourist Chad Kenyon agrees that coconut oil isn't great. "Raw coconut oil is extremely unpredictable in how it reacts when used as a topical treatment for human hair, both coloured and virgin hair," Kenyon said. "Coconut oil often penetrates the hair cuticle more than many other oils found at the supermarket, but that is not necessarily a good thing. It is simply not compatible with most, if not all, professional salon hair colouring." He added that coconut oil has turned his clients' colour brassy or flat.

This depends on the type of coconut oil you're using, though. "Different oil extraction methods used by coconut oil brands, usually involving heat, change the pH of the oil itself, and the pH can greatly affect the efficacy of a hair product or treatment," Kenyon said. "For instance, when we do a single process hair colour, we are using a developer, or peroxide, to open the hair cuticle so that we can successfully deposit the hair colour inside the hair cuticle. We then use ingredients and products with a low pH to close the cuticle, sealing in the colour. The varying methods of oil extraction and different degrees of heat make raw coconut oil unpredictable and effectively unreliable as a hair treatment."