Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

If you read this blog, you know how I feel about some conventional acne treatments, and I’m not one to give any of them a very ringing endorsement, some more than others.  Well, you also may know that I’m against long term antibiotic acne treatment, or even sometimes short term I think is unnecessary and can cause problems.  The BBC has recently reported that a young teenaged boy of 14 years died suddenly after taking antibiotic acne treatment tablets.

The family has declined to name the actual brand or type of antibiotic acne treatment until the inquest into his sudden and untimely and obviously devastating death has been completed.  The upsetting part is that it was his first dose of the medication.  The medication is labeled with a warning that warns of possible breathing problems from taking the medication but also does say, and rightfully so, that risk of death is extremely rare. 

As soon as the boy was seen having trouble breathing, he was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late and doctors were unable to revive him.  Can you imagine the devastation and utter horror this family feels? And it’s really no one’s “fault”, but more than likely just a freak accident, a very severe allergic reaction, but that is yet to be found when the inquest (the name for British investigations into deaths) is completed or there is more information to be had that can be more conclusive evidence about why and how he died.

The father of said that the whole family is still in a state of shock because one moment he was here and the next he was gone to them.  He also says that the doctor that prescribed him the medication for his acne is completely devastated, but that the family does not blame him, it’s just one of those things that no one knew, and how were they to know?  My heart truly goes out to this family.  It sounds like their son was a really good sportsman, and will be sorely missed by his family and friends. A life taken too early that is this bright just never seems fair or right in any way, accident or not. 

In yet another finding that cigarette smoking is bad for you in almost every way, and doesn’t have any saving graces, there is now a lot of evidence to support that female smokers aged twenty seven to forty four years old experience a much more severe form of PMS, or premenstrual syndrome, which includes lots of fun female time symptoms such as a sore lower back, more severe mood swings, stomach bloat, cramping, and finally, acne. 

Acne is unfortunately one of the things that flares up around the time of a woman’s period, especially if a woman already has tendencies toward acne and oily skin.  This is because female hormones are all in turmoil during this time of the month, and often times your estrogen dips or spikes, causing acne to become more likely since the skin begins to produce more sebum and the pores are enlarged and more likely to become inflamed and irritated. 

If you are a smoker, not only are you depriving your skin of adequate oxygen access since smoking restricts the amount of oxygen taken in by your lungs, and hence your blood stream, which carries oxygen to the skin, but you are also increasing the likelihood that PMS will include worsened acne.  Smoking is overall a very bad thing to do if you want nice skin.  It tends to lend itself to a dull look to the skin, and also lends itself to premature aging, sagginess and an overall pallor to the skin.

I’ve seen women who quit smoking literally go from grey looking to having much more luminous, bright and healthy looking skin within just a few weeks of quitting. I myself used to smoke back in college, and when I quit, my skin looked so much better.  It had more color to it, and it also seemed to not have as many fine lines.  This may have been because it was not oxygen deprived any more though too. 

So, the bottom line is that smoking cigarettes not only can take years off your life, it can also greatly increase the occurrence of acne during your PMS cycle, and we all know that it’s bad for your skin in general.  Maybe you should start thinking of making it your new years resolution to quit if you’re still smoking!

I remember seeing the name of this condition before, and I never quite knew what it was.  In my ignorance of what it was, I assumed it was some sort of rosacea-like skin condition or something that was fairly minor, but I was wrong.  It’s actually a skin condition that turns the skin white on people of color. 

It usually occurs as a lightening of skin on darker skinned people.  It’s that same disease that pop star Michael Jackson claims to have since his skin turned suspiciously white over the years, but of course that’s up to speculation since it also appears that Mr. Jackson has gotten numerous plastic surgeries as well.

At any rate, vitiligo (pronounced vit-el-eye-go), is a serious skin condition that causes a lot of torment to it’s sufferers because it is a condition that is not easily treated and that there is no cure for.  About 80% of the people who have it can be treated with some degree of success, but the other 20% are not so lucky and they have to live with the condition. 

Vitligo can strike at any age, so one could not have it for years and then be in their thirties of forties and suddenly discover that they are getting white patches on their skin for no apparent reason.  Just like the spots appear, they can also disappear as well, but this doesn’t mean they won’t come back.  Some of the therapies for vitiligo include UV treatments, laser treatments, and some other newer therapies.

The condition is definitely a startling one to see.  I had watched a short video on an African American reporter who has the disease, and he had the disease all over his face, and his entire hand turned white.  He tells his story of the hardships he’s had with it, including being ashamed of the condition, but he decided to come out and tell his story and stop putting makeup on all the time, except when he’s on the air for professional reasons, when a boy with the same condition contacted him and asked him to share his story to help others with vitiligo. 

 

Many of us, especially those that read this blog, have run the gammut when it comes to how our skincare routines have changed over the years.  You start off as a child, probably using whatever your mom and dad provided in the bathtub and shower to wash your face, and then begin to care about how you wash your face when you get into those formative teen years, especially if like many teens you start to see your skin erupting into zits once in a while. 

So, you usually go along with one of your parents to the grocery store or your local Target or Wal-mart, and seek out one of the over the counter acne care products, which by the way have exploded over the years since I’ve been a kid, and end up picking out something that is supposed to help acne prone skin but in fact dries it out more than is necessary and in fact may even irritate acne more on those with sensitive skin, which is not uncommon to be coupled with acne.

For those of us who continued to have acne into our twenties and thirties, we then tried to find more gentle products that would not just help with our acne but would also help soften and smooth the skin and give it that glowy look that came in in the mid nineties and hasn’t seemed to lose it’s appeal.  So, you opt for a product that may not be on store shelves but instead needs to be purchased at a department or specialty cosmetic store, so you’re moving up in the world.  At this point you’ve experienced so many products that you know what’s good and what’s bad for your skin and you’ve discovered what works for your particular brand of skin.

Then we come to now, which is where a lot of people have access to the internet and are able to not only find tons of new products, but are also able to read reviews on products that other people have posted and share their views on acne skin care, but they are also able to access some products that are not available in stores. 

We also many times look for products that are gentle and moisturizing, but at the same time noncomedogenic so that we are not just addressing the oil clogging of pores which causes acne, but we are also addressing skin that has begun to age by adding nice extra ingredients such as vitamin C and other soothers.

I’ve long held that drinking coffee, personally, for my skin type which is the oilier side of combination type, makes me break out if I drink it a couple days in a row, especially if it’s strong coffee. Well, today I had a large cup in the morning because I could barely lift my head off the pillow, and found that all day long I was blotting the excess oil (sebum) off of my face with blotting tissues. They were literally soaked with oil every time I used them too.

You’ve probably always heard that little bit of sometimes annoying advice if you’ve ever had acne in your life.  Whether it was from your parents or maybe even your dermatologist or doctor, you probably at some point heard that part of keeping an acne breakout free face was keeping your hands away from your face as much as possible.  Now, with this latest little bit of research, you may want to be all that much more dilligent in your hand washing regimen.

Researchers have found that women have much more of a variety, and much more in general, of the bacteria that tend to get on the hands during the day.  Why this is exactly is not known, but when they looked at these bacteria under a miscroscope as compared with male subjects hand bacteria, they found a much wider range of bacteria on women’s hands. Not only that, but on both women and men, they found that the types and amounts of bacterium on each hand could vary quite greatly, which is kind of unexpected since you’d think your hands usually have to work together and would usually have the same bacteria on them as the other hand.

It’s important to keep your hands away from your face if you have acne because bacteria is what gets into the pores and can aggravate acne, although it is the hormonal factor that actually causes the pores to enlarge and fill with sebum, which allows for the bacteria to get in and inflame the pore in the first place, so it is still in fact a hormonally based skin problem, but the bacteria actually is the part that comes in after that fact and makes itself at home in your pores, creating inflammation, and you guessed it - acne in the form of a whitehead of a blackhead which we’re all too familiar with.

It’s also important to not touch your face though for your health in general.  Most people get colds and flus not because they have the virus on their hands, but because they have touched an open orifice on their face, where the virus can get into the body, such as the eyes, nose or mouth because they’ve put their hands on their face. 

Just remember to wash your hands every time you go to the restroom, but also remember to wash them periodically if you’ve been touching a lot of door handles, staircase railings, or anything else that the public may be using as well.  You can use Purell or some other similar hand sanitizer, but I’m more a fan of washing them since this actually gets the dirt and the bacteria off. 

Many of the acne treatment products that we talk about here at AcneMagazine.com are excellent in that they work in tandem with eachother.  We don’t generally advocate a one pronged approach at treating acne, which many different products do advocate because they want to treat it solely from the inside or solely from the outside (using topical treatments, cleansers, creams, gels, etc.).  Neither of these is a comprehensive approach to the treatment of acne.

You have to incorporate both an equalizer that helps balance the body’s mechanisms (hormones namely) from the inside of your body, which can be done by several different means, such as those shown by Acnezine, which uses the benefits of super antioxidant power to help blast away acne causes from the inside of the body, and then you have more of a Chinese medicine, hormone balancing method in the ways that the Zenmed Dermacleanse comprehensive acne treatment system uses.

Both work, it just depends on the person taking them, and unfortunately, as with acne meds prescribed by professional dermatologists, there may be a little trial and error involved.  No one wants to spend their money for things that just don’t work, but depending on the product, there may be a money back offer if it didn’t work, you just need to read the fine print. 

I remember going to the dermatologist when I was in my early teens, when my acne problem started, and they tried a couple different things before finally putting me on tetracycline for a long time (which I now regret, the long term effects of prolonged antibiotic use are quite simply, not good to be honest). 

They tried putting me on Retin-A, which dried my face out terribly and made it so cracked that it becamse painful and began to bleed.  They also recommended soaps that were too drying, like Basis (I’m not even sure if that’s still around), and then other cleansers that didn’t even get close to cleansing my pores, but were gentler, like Cetaphil. 

Why put yourself throught the visit fees and then the medication fees of a dermatologist unless you want to pursue a very serious acne medication like Accutane when there are so many awesome, natural products that are remedies which work from the inside out, and also offer great, gentle cleansers and other products that make the skin glow from the outside with health and clear pores? 

Like I said, take a look at some of the offers over the next few months, and I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised that many have started to offer lower prices and incentives to buy because of the depressed economy.  Hey, at least there’s one good thing about a recession I suppose, good sales on premium products! 

The season is coming upon us where our skin will start to tend more to the dry side – yes, even those of us with severe acne can get extremely dry skin, to the point of cracking, it’s one of the conondrums of having acne, you have both dry and oil skin sometimes, especially those of us like me who has a very combination complexion.  My oily spots are on my forehead and believe it or not on the sides of my chin and the chin itself, but mostly extending out from my chin in my lower cheek area is where I get the most oil if I’m blotting at work in between breaks. 

One thing I absolutely love, which also usually happens to be in acne friendly formulas for a moisturizer, is any product with pure, natural vitamin C ester.  This is one of the best skin brighteners in my opinion.  If I ever stop using it for a few days, I notice that my complexion does get duller, so I try to use my vitamin C serum every night, and sometimes I even put a little on in the morning underneath my normal cream moisturizer, I just make sure i let the serum dry completely before I put on the moisturizer. 

Vitamin C serums are  my favorite.  For some reason I just have better luck with this vitamin in a serum.  It may be that a serum formula allows the product to absorb better into the skin, or perhaps my favorite formula just happens to have other great ingredients in it and also happens to be of a very high quality. 

Some people may be sensitive to vitamin C topically, but that’s usually rare, and it’s usually only with people who are extremely sensitive to all sorts of products.  Vitamin C is calming for most skin types.  It helps topically reduce inflammation, and it also helps to naturally slough off the dead skin cells on the top of the skin that make for a duller complexion, which is, I believe, the reason that it works so ideally as a skin clarifier and brightener. 

Eczema is another skin disorder, just like acne vulgaris is.  And by the way, I hate that they call it acne vulgaris, it makes it sound so much “uglier” than it can be, and only adds to the stigma people feel who suffer from it, but that’s my humble opinion.  Eczema is a skin disorder that causes rough, often red patches of skin on the body.  Common areas might be the face, elbows, knees, and other body parts more exposed to the elements. 

People usually go to a dermatologist for treatment of eczema, but there are also tons of good natural alternative treatments for eczema now too, which actually may be gentler with less side effects than those prescribed as a pharmaceutical solution.  There are creams and ointments that may be used to help lessen the severity of the symptoms of eczema, and there are also even some homeopathic treatments for eczema that some have good luck with.

You even have to be careful when sunning yourself if you have eczema. You want to be sure to cover all affected areas thoroughly with sunblock, and you also want to make sure you use a completely nonirritating sunblock so that you don’t aggravate your condition even more. 

Those with ezcema and other similar skin conditions that cause rough patches of skin also have to be careful when they self tan, because self tanner, which we often talk about here because it’s a great way to help camouflage skin irregularities and bring color to the body and face, because the dry rough patches of skin caused by eczema will soak of the self tanner much more, causing the pigment to become darker in those areas and resulting in quite a strange looking “tan”. 

We’ve talked so much about how caffeine can trigger acne breakouts in those of us that have problems with facial and body acne, but we’ve never really talked about the fact that there is also another flip side to caffeine, in fact more of an aggravator to the breaking out than it seems, that happens when one consumes caffeine, especially when they consume too much caffeine or do not consume enough water.  Their skin can dry out immensely.

Caffeine has a diuretic effect on the body, meaning that it disable the anti diuretic hormone, which prevents you from peeing out all the liquid you take in, kind of like alcohol does.  What this means is that you are peeing out most of the liquid you take in, making your body less moisture retaining.  Drinking water helps keep your skin hydrated, no matter what you hear, because I’ve had personal experience with this, and know that when I’m dehydrated from the inside my outside (skin) also gets dehydrated and dry looking.

Any product with caffeine in it, not just coffee, has the ability to drain your body of liquid and water which has the potential to make you feel tired, not to mention annoyed at the fact that you seem to have to run to the bathroom every half hour, especially if you’re like me and have a bladder the size of a walnut.

If you must drink that cup of coffee in the morning, or two cups even, make sure you are drinking adequate water along with it.  This dilutes the acidity of the coffee as well, and also may offset coffee’s potential acne-brewing effects since it won’t have as much effect on the hormone levels in the body, as it would if it were fully acidic coffee.  See if you can go without your caffeine for a day or two.  You may get headaches at first but many people find it easy to stop caffeine after the initial discomfort of the first few days.