Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

I just happened upon an interesting therapy for acne, which happens to include one of my favorite relaxing treats to myself – massage. If you’re a fan of going and getting massages, then you know the ultimate health and mental benefits massaging on a regular basis can impart into your life. Massage undoubtedly has the power to relax and detoxify me, and I think that it has multiple implications when it comes to your overall mental health, especially if you lead a high stress life, tend to get stressed out easily, or have a very anxiety-producing job, which is pretty common.

And guess what? Anxiety leads to acne, so anything you can do that can naturally eliminate, reduce, or make your anxiety tolerable and lower, is going to ultimately benefit your skin. Have you ever heard people refer to the “happy glow”? Well, when your mind is at peace or happy, your skin tends to follow suit. Of course there are other elements like diet, exercise and hormones that enter into it, but funny how these all tend to follow one another when you’re in your best states of mind. You tend to eat right, exercise more and look better when you’re happier, and vice versa.

Ayerveda, an indian philosophy in medicine and natural treatment of one’s body and mind, employs a specific type of massage with essential oils that benefit those with acne, to help one get rid of acne naturally by giving their body what it needs to fight acne, which is calming, anxiety and stress reduction, and essential oils that help to fight acne on the external body. The rest is all internal, which is what supplements like my favorite one by Zenmed help to do – they help to calm those raging hormones inside that tend to get out of control when our emotions are out of control.

Through massage, you not only get the benefit of some detoxification and stress reduction and ultimately peace of mind, but you also get the benefit of increased circulation, which can help your skin looks it’s best and most glowing at all times, and gives your skin the tools it needs to internally fight acne off and to have clear, clean skin with reduced oil production more often. Plus, massage feels awesome and makes you feel like a million bucks. Hence, it’s a huge industry with lots of customers in this wild and crazy life we have these days of no rest and running all the time.

I reviewed the Body Shop Tea Tree Oil toner about a week ago, when I had first started using it. I had used it about four times when I reviewed it and wanted to follow up, because I’ve been using it about every other night and I do really like it. You have to be careful with using this every day, in my opinion, if you have any tendencies toward dry skin. I have very oily skin, but I do tend to get dried out by some products that mop up oil, and this is one of them. I still feel it’s a great toner – one of the better ones I’ve ever used, and reasonably priced.

I think you would be best served by using the Body Shop tea tree oil toner every other day, or at least just once a day, especially if you have combination skin. Those with extremely oily, problem skin may be able to get away with twice a day, but I think once a day or once every other day totally suffices if you’re looking to help keep surface debris off your skin that causes acne lesions, and are also looking for a great product to help seal up your pores and also to act as an antibacterial and antiseptic.

Bacteria does also contribute to acne, so tea tree oil based products are a great way to go to get the antibacterial aspect of acne fighting under your belt. This oil is known to have great astringent and antiseptic qualities, and is used for an array of purposes, even in addition to acne fighting, it was just found to help those suffering with acne a few years ago and hence became a popular base for acne products.

I really love the earthy smell of it too, and it’s in a really pretty bottle. I know those things don’t really matter, but it makes these products more pleasant to have around, look at, and smell!

Well, it’s long been speculated that so many skin problems, including acne and acne rosacea, are partially attributed to genetic factors, meaning that parents and other family members who have the skin condition increase the child or teen’s chances of developing the skin care problem, rather than solely a draw of the cards. Well, it turns out that it’s true, at least in many cases, that a parent’s struggle with acne may definitely predict a teen’s likelihood of developing the embarrassing and skin condition.

I’ve always thought about this, since my female side of my family, but not my mother, my aunt and my female cousin, had really bad acne, and I also had bad acne as a teen (and still suffer from it on and off today, although not as bad as I did in my twenties at times). Now they are saying that if your parents, whether it’s your mother or your father, and whether you happen to be female or male, had acne as a teen, this may help predict your likelihood of having it.

So, yeah, I guess you can say that your parents are to blame, so to speak, for your acne problem when you are a teen. My dad tells me that he suffered acne a lot in his teens, but I never really saw a zit on him as an adult, so I pretty much had to take his word for it.

The study took place on about 1,000 Iranian high school students, and the findings were such that it was strongly suggested that of the teenagers that had severe acne, which was a portion of about 14% of the total study population (geez, they must have a low occurrence of acne in Iran, compared to here in the US) you could say that about 20% of them had a direct link to parents that had severe acne when they were in their teens, or may even have severe acne now still in their adulthood.

The recommendation coming from the researchers on the project is that teens who are identified to have parents with serious acne be treated at as early as possible to avoid further complications and to perform a sort of preventive maintenance before the acne really gets out of control. This way you can at least get it before it causes seriously deep scars that will never go away completely or cause serious scarring.

The mother’s acne actually tripled the teen’s risk, so a mother’s acne history is most important when determining whether a particular teen’s likelihood of acne may be elevated. This makes sense, since my cousin whose mother had severe acne also had severe acne growing up. She has beautiful, luminous skin today though, thanks to a host of acne treatments!

Remember when Wal-Mart first rolled out it’s dirt cheap prescription drug plan, where you could get the most common prescriptions for just $4, which, depending on what medication you were taking, could save you hundreds of dollars a year? Well, apparently they are expanding this program greatly to include drugs that are used for fertility, birth control (including Orto Tricyclen, one of the only proven acne fighting birth control pills), and also certain drugs that are used to treat acne, although the article I read did not specifically say which ones.

I suspect it will be the least expensive ones, like antibiotics such as erythromycine and tetracycline, both of which are not all that expensive to begin with but which I believe have negative long term health effects, so I encourage people to try different methods for getting rid of acne if they are encouraged to go on antibiotics long term.

This program, while met with the usual anti Wal-mart criticism that complains that they take out all the competition and created monopolies, actually spawned a lot of competition from other pharmacies, so maybe in the end, although the entrepreneur in me says that Wal-mart is bad for small business, it will be better for the consumer who ultimately benefits with reduced health care costs and better complexions due to lower prices, as well as reduced overall living costs which helps them to perhaps spend more and stimulate this dismal economy.

I’m sure that more expensive acne drugs like say doxycycline and accutane are not included, as these are more expensive to make, and may even have patents on them as far as I know. Accutane is also a very tightly controlled medication due to it’s ability to greatly increase birth defects in fetuses, and it’s current status as a controlled medication with a watch list for current patients, as well as the requirement to go on birth control if you are not already.

Did you ever pick up a great acne or general skin care product when you were least expecting it that turned out to be a really good buy? Well, that’s what happened to me. If you’ve ever tried any of the Body Shop line of body and skin care products, and now their new makeup line (which I think happens to be pretty fantastic too, I’m a huge makeup fan, and have a large collection of it – probably too large!), you know that they have a pretty high quality line.

Well, I just had returned from visiting my sister in Berkeley California, and we were on a layover in Chicago when my mom and I wandered intoi the Body Shop at the airport. It was a really big one too, bigger than the smaller Body Shop stores that I’m used to seeing in a few select malls around me.

They had walls and walls of makeup, skin care products, body care products and hair care as well, so I was basically like a kid in a candy store for about an hour, looking through all their products, testing them out (yes, you can test any of their products), and basically making myself into a big stink ball at the end (albeit a good smelling stinkball).

The one product I picked up that I wanted to talk to you about today, along with one other one that I feel may benefit acne prone skin, but which I have not gotten to try yet, is the Body Shop Tea Tree Oil toner. This product cost me about twelve dollars, and came in a pretty generous bottle which should be lasting me a while, especially now that I know it actually works better if you DON’T douse the cotton pad with it, instead using sparing amounts.

It had a mysterious white sediment in it at the bottom (all of them have this) and the wonderful sales person told me that these are additional astringent and acne fighting ingredients (yay), that settle to the bottom every time and need to be shaken up with every use.

It is a dark green color, and the smell of tea tree oil is unmistakeable. It’s a smell some people don’t care for, but I personally love the smell. It’s sort of earthy, woodsy and a little bit like camphor I guess is the way I would describe it best. This stuff works great too. You just use a little after you wash your face at night, I only use it once a day since the weather here in Ohio is getting a bit drier already, but in the summer I will probably use it in the morning and at night.

This stuff is great. You really do get a lot of dirt that you didn’t realize didn’t come off from a simple cleaning off with the stuff, so it does get down deep into the pores, and tea tree oil is a great natural toner and pore cleanser, and the reason it is used to acne is because it has natural antiseptic properties. All in all, it’s a great product, left my skin refreshed and very CLEAN feeling with no tightness afterwards.

I’ve discussed this topic often in the past, about how anxiety and nerves can really wreak havoc on your skin, especially if you are a person who’s
skin is extremely susceptible to emotions like embarrassment, acute anxiety or depression in one way or another.  I know that my skin, personally, is
extremely reactive to stress and anxiety.  In fact, so much so that I can have a really stressful day where I’m sweating that “nervous sweat” and getting downright tweaked out by the amount of stress I’m in, and I’ll almost certainly get a big zit on my chin (it’s almost always on my chin for whatever reason), the very next day.

One of the things I’ve learned about acute anxiety is that if you really listen to and feel your breath when you get anxious, you’ll notice that is become very rapid and almost feels like you are losing your breath and having a hard time catching it, almost like you’re constantly running a marathon, only you’re not moving at all.  There’s also a great weight on your chest, which signifies further proof of what anxiety does to your lungs and your breathing pattern, and the importance of practicing slow, long, deep breaths when you get stressed out. It can actually make a difference in how you feel. Let’s talk about why, and why deep breathing may also help you save your skin if it’s prone to acne breakouts under stress.

So, what does breathing deeply do to your body, physically? Well, it actually signals for the heart to slow down, so that you can begin to be in a more relaxed “zen like” state.  This then causes a sort of chain reaction that goes from your lungs, your heart and your brain, to the very source of the anxiety.  Then, in turn, you’ll notice that your body functions seems to slow down, and your mind begins to calm itself.  This causes a whole chain reaction that involves the hormones as well.

Stress triggers excess hormone production which in turn can lead to breakouts, which is why deep breathing and relaxation techniques can definitely lead to better skin.  So, try some yoga, tai chi, or other exercises that are more focused on breathing and relaxation if you’re concerned about your anxiety levels, they can really make a huge difference not only in your skin but in your life.

One of the treatments that you may not have heard of to treat acne topically is something that is rather stinky actually.  It’s the smell that you inhale when you smell hard boiled eggs that have just been cracked open – sort of, but it’s also the reason behind that smell you inhale when you strike a match for an instant.  It’s called sulfur, and it’s actually been found to be quite an effective tool against acne for some who use it topically incorporated with cleansers and the like.

Sulfur actually dates back for many many years as a treatment for skin conditions, including acne, and it’s even an ingredient in one of my favorite dandruff shampoo and is excellent for the scalp because it helps to address itchiness and flakiness pretty well too.  The actual physiological outcome of using sulfur on the skin topically is that it dries the skin out and ultimately makes it peel off.  This sounds somewhat like the idea behind one of my favorite topical additives, salicylic acid, which uses the principal of sloughing off dead skin cells to keep the face clear of debris and the pores clear so that nothing can settle in them and cause a zit.

Because it makes the skin peel off, it does help to keep it clear and helps to keep oil out of the pores as well.  Sulfur can be found in a wide array of acne products if you want to give it a whirl in one of your favorite products, so go out and look at the ingredients on the labels of some drugstore brands of acne products, such as acne clearing masks, topical spot treatments for individual spots of acne, cleansers, lotions, and serums and try it out.  For some, it may be too drying, but a lot of people have found that sulfur as part of their routine does help to take the oily surface off the skin, which in turn of course helps to reduce acne formation.

I’ve talked a lot about using blue light acne treatments, with good reason.  If you buy the right in home system, you can experience dramatic results from this interesting and unique therapy, that just so also happens to be drug free and all natural.  So, it’s definitely worth talking about.  Don’t forget though, even if you’re getting blue light acne treatments at home or at a dermatologist’s office, you still also need to use the right topical products for caring for acne prone skin, so your cleansers and other topically applied skin care is still vital as well.

I want to review and talk about one today that is particularly interesting because of all the good feedback it has received, one called the Blue MD light therapy device.  It looks like a lamp that you would see in a bleak office.  It’s a silver metal, and reminds me of one of those old school, plain looking desk lamps from the fifties that’s very utilitarian in nature.  The blue MD has four light bulbs in it that emit pure blue light onto your facial skin or other affected area of your choice that you need to treat for acne vulgaris.

Why would light that’s colored different, or emitted at a different frequency have any benefit to your skin you ask?  Well, blue light is known for being excellent at killing bacteria. And guess what ultimately contributes to the formation of new zits?  You guessed, it, bacteria.  Blue light therapy for acne is actually an FDA approved treatment for those that suffer from it, so it is used commonly in Dr. offices as well, but only of course it’s much more expensive than if you buy a home unit that actually meets the FDA standards for the treatment as you get a lot more out of it that way.

The Blue MD acne therapy system is one of the ones I’ve seen the best reviews on, many many customers are satisfied with it and they even have some impressive before and after photos of people who have had acne pretty badly and cleared up beautifully.  You only have to use the unit for twenty minutes, 3 times a week, which is a huge bonus since a lot of people will abandon something that takes up too much time since it’s just a pain in the you know what.  The product costs just over $200, and although that sounds expensive, you will get many uses out of it.  I think it’s well worth the money for what it does, and sometimes that benefits outweigh any reservations about cost.  It could save you a fortune in professional skincare too, so I always try to think of it as an “investment in myself”.

A lot of people probably don’t know that there is actually a different purpose for the two most popular over the counter acne fighting ingredients in topical acne skin care treatments, benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid. I know that I didn’t really know there was a difference until I did some research to find out which one was better.  Turns out the one that works better for my particular skin type and specific issues is salicylic acid. I also like this particular ingredient because it tends to not dry me out as much as benzoyl, but that definitely will depend on your skin type whether the same holds true for you.

Here is the main difference between benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid.  Benzoyl peroxide is more of a bacteria killer than anything.  It goes after and attacks surface bacteria, which in turn helps to prevent and clear up acne since bacteria getting into the pores is a main reason for acne developing.  The reason that acne develops is because the over production of sebum causes bacteria and debris, such as dead skin, to get caught in and stuck in the pores, which causes inflammation in turn, which causes the acne you see.

The sebum causes the skin to be more “sticky” and attract this debris and bacteria, which is why some of the ways acne is treated is through the reduction of sebum production, making sure the debris is cleared away at all times, and attacking the bacteria that causes the acne to grow.  Salicylic acid comes in where the debris is.  Salicylic acid is a sloughing or exfoliating agent which helps clear away debris such as dead skin flakes and cells that eventually get caught in the sebum and cause inflammation.

It is great for sloughing off dead skin cells and revealing newer skin cells, and for this reason, there are salicylic acid acne treatments where you can swath it allover you face and let it sit, sort of like any other acid peel, and it will help to clean off the debris that so often causes acne to occur. A lot of people love this one too because it helps to fade old acne scars while also helping to treat the acne that’s there or soon to crop up because of it’s exfoliating properties.

I personally prefer it because it has dual uses and makes the skin look vibrant while also contributing to the demise of acne.

I remember my first real job, and how much grease was just “in the air” all the time there.  You walked into the joint and you could smell the grease and feel it’s heaviness in the air, especially if you were working anywhere near the general vicinity of the fryer where the french fries, chicken tenders and potato patties and chicken patties were fried.  I worked at a Burger King for my first job when I was sixteen years old and could drive.  I remember at that time I was struggling and off with acne so bad that I couldn’t really figure out what do do about my skin.

I had been to dermatologists, but my family didn’t have a lot of money so I couldn’t go back all the time if something didn’t work and just pretty much had to figure out what did work on my own. At that time, before the internet you didn’t have all the wonderful products and tips available to you that we do now, so it was tough to kind of just wade through it and figure it out on your own.  I remember one of my reservations about getting a job at a place where there was grease hanging in the air is that it would aggravate my acne.

And it did, especially when I was working long hours by the broiler where the meat comes out, or where there was alot of airborne grease, like in the “pit” where the fries were done and everything else that was deep fried.  I tried to stay far away from them, but sometimes when you were the only show and working multiple stations, you had to work in that area and you had to work closely in that area with the grease. I often would come home smelling of grease, even if none of it actually touched me, which just goes to show that it does hang in the air.

If I worked a day where I had to be in the pit with the fryers, then I knew I would at least get some sort of breakout on my face after that, so it definitely did affect my complexion to my dismay.  My only advise if you work around grease is to try to wear a foundation that protects against it but that is also noncomedogenic on it’s own, that way the grease may not be able to penetrate and irritate your pores .