Acne Magazine

One of the more prevalent acne drugs of the tetracycline antibiotic family, which of course I’m not a fan of to treat acne since I don’t agree with treating acne with long term antibiotic use, called Doxycycline, is being looked at now as a possible, actually, a very probable, treatment for those that have lung tissue damage thanks to the very serious lung disease emphysema.

If you’ve ever read one of Dr. Perricone’s books about skin care, he delves into a lot of healthy alternatives to cosmetic surgery and expensive procedures, and really concentrates on supplementing the body inside out to achieve good skin, whether your goal is to maintain a great complexion at any age, to hold off the aging factors of the skin such as sagging and wrinkles and sunspots, or even to help with other skin problems like eczema, rosacea, and acne.

One of the common denominators in most of his literature is how you should take a good vitamin C ester supplement for good skin, pretty much no matter what your skin care goals are, ie aging prevention, acne treatment, rosacea or acne rosacea treatment and other skin care problems.  I have also read in many other places that vitamin C is a vital component to maintaining healthy skin, and have even seen a visible improvement in the tone and texture of my skin since I began taking my vitamin C supplement.

Not only that though, because I believe that good nutrition and vitamins cannot all be obtained through a supplement or pill, I’ve made sure to include high vitamin C and high antioxidant foods in my daily diet.  Examples of this are lemon juice in my water every day, oranges and other citrus fruits a couple days a week, and then other foods naturally high in antioxidants besides vitamin C, so that I can be sure I’m getting a well rounded diet of high power foods that will help fix my complexion problems and make my skin more luminous. 

Vitamin C is shown to be a very powerful antioxidant, and has incredible restorative powers to the health of the cells, including skin cells, which can benefit anyone, no matter what their skin type.  Apparently, there are some vitamin C supplements that are made so that they will not upset the stomach, so those of you who avoid this vitamin supplement because of that should be able to take that type of version without any stomach issues because of the acidity. 

I have been using the same old trick at night for years when it comes to a blemish that I can just feel blanching the surface of my skin, before it becomes a full on red, erupted and scar-worthy zit on my face.  It’s really nothing special.  All I do is apply my mask, whatever kind it happens to be that I have laying around.  For a while it was a zenmed acne mask, then it was a Proactiv mask, and now I have a mini sized Murad acne mask that has lasted me forever that I got free with my face wash last time I purchased from them.

They are all a mud type mask, that is very thick and almost a chalky consistency, so thick that it will stay put as soon as you slick it on over a zit, or a burgeoning zit, as I do.  You should just need enough so as to cover the zit itself and only then the immediate surrounding area, careful not to put too much on around the radius fo the bump itself so that you don’t accidentally overdry the skin around it, which can end up looking worse than the zit itself.

I do this at night and then I leave it on all night long, and sometimes it works to clear it up, but if it’s a really hormonal zit that’s destined to come through the surface and hasn’t stopped gathering inertia toward becoming a full fledge boil sized zit on my face, it will only make it a tad bit more dried up, and I’ll still have to go through the motions of caring for the zit once it completely breaks through the skin’s surface. 

If you catch a new zit when it has just started to hurt a little bit, and you can see a faint bit of red and a very beginning of a bump or irriation in the spot where the bumpd is about to sprout into a full fledged zit, then you can often catch it and get it to go down if you just apply some sort of reputable acne cream, or my favorite is a thicker mask because it stays put and doesn’t come off all night until you wash it off, as long as you don’t accidentally rub it while it’s still wet. 

As I sit here typing this, I have a dot of the mask on my face, on a brand new bump that surfaced today because of the massive stress I’ve had to deal with today getting things organized and looking over documents that I didn’t understand for hours, as well as catching up on many things for work that were on deadline.  One minute it wasn’t there, the next I happened to look in the mirror and there it was!  Oh well, what are masks for.  Hopefully this one will be tamed by the mask! 

Well, this is probably a very far fetched conclusion, but I believe that being active and exercising as a daily or every other day occurrence, or at least 3-4 days per week getting some cardio and some muscle work in, could be good for your acne and for your overall skin.  I speak out of personal experience, because out of all the other numerous health benefits that I know I get from maintaining a regular exercise routine, I know that working out also helps me maintain my skin, keep it younger, acne free and also with that special healthy glow.

Like I said, I make this statement out of personal experience rather than reading somewhere that it’s been medically proven or the like, since I’ve never actually heard acne and exercise correlated in the same sentence before.  However, when I thought about it, it really does make sense that exercise can help us maintain clear skin and healthy pores, since exercise helps regulate our hormones by helping to alleviate stress, which can trigger certain acne causing hormones to release in our bodies.

Just the fact that exercise helps us to relieve stress and anxiety makes me believe that it’s good for our skin, and that part of it anyways, has been medically documented, that it helps reduce stress.  We always talk about how stress is a very common acne breakout trigger, and it’s true.  The more we stress out and feel anxious, the more likely we are to experience an acne breakout in the near future some time.

Exercise also helps to release endorphins, which can help us regulate our homones, and it also increases circulation, which is great for luminous, clear skin as many regular exercise enthusiasts will tell you in a heartbeat.  Last but not least, it benefits our heart health, and also our many other organs, and when our organs are functioning properly this usually will show itself in our skin.  Bottom line, even if exercise does not help acne specifically, it definitely can make a huge impact on the overall appearance of your skin. 

L’Oreal, one of my favorite “drugstore” makeup and cosmetic product brands, has a line that is relatively low priced that includes some creams that are suitable for the daytime that contain a high SPF of 15 in them that I have found do not break me out. 

I happened to find the line Noticeable Difference when it was on sale at a TJ Maxx type store by where I live for even less than drugstore prices I’m sure, and thought I’d use it this summer on my face as a light moisturizer under my foundation which also has an SPF of 15 in it to keep sun damage at bay during the harsh sunlight months of the summer here in Ohio. 

The one I chose is a simple moisturizing cream that helps to keep moisture in, and is not any kind of intensive moisturizer or intense anti aging cream, sometimes of which can be harmful to acne prone skin since they contain way too many heavy emollients that can clog the pores and cause acne postules to form on the face, namely in the chin, nose and forehead area where oil tends to form the most to begin with.

It’s a very light formula, and it has no artificial coloring in it which is great for the skin as well.  It is almost a whipped consistency.  As far as moisturizing I would say it doesn’t do any better than any other drugstore brand and there is nothing really miraculous about the way it makes my skin look, but I love that it has the SPF in it, so I use it primarily as a sun proection factor and not really as a skin improvement cream.

A reader had this further to discuss on the possibility of ibuprofen and antibiotics affecting skin breakouts, and I thought I would share.