Comedogenic Ingredients What the Science Really Says

The word comedogenic, meaning pore-clogging, is thrown around skincare communities with far more confidence than the science behind it can support, and the truth is that the classic comedogenic scale is deeply flawed. Whether an ingredient clogs your pores depends on formulation, concentration, and your own skin, not on a single number assigned decades ago.The original comedogenic scale was built on a crude test, applying ingredients to rabbit ears and rating the resulting clogging, and its results do not reliably transfer to human skin. An ingredient labeled comedogenic at a certain rating may be perfectly clear in a well-formulated product, and an ingredient rated low can still break out certain individuals, which is why treating the scale as law leads to both false alarms and missed triggers.What actually determines pore-clogging is the whole formula and the individual. Concentration matters enormously, because an ingredient that clogs at 50 percent may be fine at 5 percent, and the base a product uses changes how ingredients behave on skin. Personal trial remains the only reliable test,