From cooking to skincare, plant oils – like coconut, almond and avocado oils – have become a favorite household staple in recent years.
Like other topical oils, such as vitamin E or coconut, almond oil is an emollient, which helps the skin lock in moisture. This is critical for people with eczema to help relieve and repair flaring skin. When skin is dried and cracking during a flare, this leaves open spaces between the cells of your skin. Emollients fill these empty spaces with fatty substances, or lipids.2 Phospholipids, another component of plant oils like almond oil, mainly fuse with the outer lipid layer of the skin, potentially acting to help increase the effectiveness of your skin barrier.
Almond oil also contains linoleic acid, which has a direct role in helping maintain skin barrier function. “There are a few small reports about oils that are high in linoleic acid being theoretically better for eczema than others,” said Dr. Fishbein. Plant oils, like almond oil, can be an especially helpful emollient in this case because they can have an occlusive effect, which means they help the skin stay hydrated for longer by preventing too much water loss. Previous research on plant oils have demonstrated that almond, jojoba, soybean and avocado oils, when applied topically, mostly remain at the surface of skin without deep penetration. This combination of properties creates a hydrating barrier, which is what helps set almond oil apart from other non-plant oils or emollients.
Post time: Apr-04-2022
