Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

I am a fanatical fan of the hit show Big Brother. I may have even posted some stuff on here about Big Brother cast member’s skin, who knows! It’s a great show, and has a great format that never gets old and always keeps it interesting by the personalities they choose to go into the high pressure situation of being locked away in a house with strangers for three months, with no TV, computers, or interaction with the outside world.

People’s tempers and nervousness almost always inevitably blows, and it is really a guilty pleasure to watch the mayhem unfold every year. This year is no exception with the drama that has already gone on in the house, and the low blows that have been exchanged between house guests on a few occasions. First, we had the adorable little petite blond Britney (who has perfect porcelain skin, then again, she’s very young, but she must not have any hormone issues ’cause I’ve never seen any on her face).

She dealt a blow to the outrageous, bodacious Rachel’s house love interest Brendan by calling him a neanderthal then making ape like movements making fun of him. Not too nice at all. Then, we have the latest of another cast member attacking Rachel, who is a very outspoken, fiery woman that rubs a lot of people on the show the wrong way.

Rachel is a really beautiful women, but she can rub a lot of people the wrong way because she is outspoken and has a lot of opinions and has a loud obnoxious laugh. She also happens to break out when the pressure gets intense on the show. Hey, she’s pretty much like most of us on this blog, right?

Well, one of my favorite house guests, Ragan, who’s usually kind, got a little too personal with Rachel, attacking her appearance. More specifically the zits on her chin which had appeared probably from stress. Hey man, I like you, but really, attacking someone’s appearance like that who has problems with acne isn’t cool! I know she egged him on a bit, but he went a few notches lower on the belt with his comments.

I know this is a blog about acne, but sometimes I like to address the many other skin problems we face. Wrinkles and aging skin is a biggie, it’s something that eventually happens to all of us, like it or not. And something funny led me to tell you about this common theory.

I just woke my husband up this morning and laughed at him because he had creases going allover his forehead and all down the side of his face that he slept on all night. He’s a big time side sleeper, whereas I’m more of a toss and turn from my side to my back all night kind of girl.  I would love it if I could be a person who could sleep all night on their back, because sleeping on your side every night really does lead to permanent wrinkles.

Case in point, have you ever slept on your side all night if you’re a woman (with breasts) and had a giant crease running down between your breasts because of the compression they were under all night?  Well guess what?  If you do that every single night, the giant crease can turn into a permanent wrinkle, which is something you definitely want to avoid.

To offset this wrinkle between the breasts problem, because I do like to sleep on my side once in a while, I put my body pillow, which I’ve now been addicted to for years, between my breasts when I sleep on my side.  I wedge it right in there really good, and that seems to work to offset the forthcoming wrinkling.

However, even though I take precautions, I still end up with random wrinkles and crinkles and creases when I sleep on my side, which is why I really try to minimize my time on my side and get myself used to always sleeping on my back.

Another way to minimize side sleep wrinkles might be to buy a memory foam pillow, so that your face kind of “sets in” and creates a spot where it won’ t be rubbing on something all night, or squished in any positions where it might create additional wrinkles for the whole evening.

It can be really hard for people to try to sleep on their back all night, after all, sometimes it’s easier to breathe on your side if you’re congested, and it’s also just more comfortable for some people.  However, the rewards for back sleeping when it comes to anti aging can be worth the occasional preference for side sleeping.

If you’re wondering what brought this post to mind, it’s because I’m sitting her at my computer, exhausted, after a long day in a close to ninety degree day in the hot sun, working my you know what off in my gardens and also helping my hubby with the lawn and yard care.  I dug holes, plants shrubs, got down and dirty digging rocks out of the ground, spread mulch, spread heavy topsoil, and pushed a heavy mower back and forth.

It’s safe to say that I’m pretty pooped, and yes it’s safe to say that I also got extremely sweaty. I wear sunglasses when I’m working outdoors to protect my eyes, and the sweat was just rolling down my face, into my eyes even multiple times, so I had to take off my sunglasses just to wipe away the profuse sweat intermittently.  It stung my eyes very badly. Not only that, it stung my face as well.

I noticed when I came back in from the outside, the sweat had made a lot of dirt and dust stick to my face that would not have otherwise stuck there (we had a lot of dust swirling around since he was weed whacking too).

When your face is profusely sweating like this, it can definitely make an acne breakout more likely, especially the longer you let the sweat, dirt and grime that it attracted sit on your face for too long. You have to wash it off immediately once you get inside, so that you don’t risk some of that sticky debris getting in your pores, infecting them, and getting a big ol’ whitehead.

That’s exactly what I did. I came in and got my shower pronto, didn’t even sit down to relax for a moment because I knew that the shower would energize me as well as cleanse my skin.  Not only can sweat make things stick to your face more readily, but it can also irritate any open acne lesions on your face because of the high salt content it has. Of course, it also reddens your skin because it has irritants like salt and possibly toxins in it too, so it’s important to get that stuff off with gentle soap and water asap.

I’ve blogged a few times about how I have a little beauty routine that I do when I work out at my work gym, and have been doing for some time. It’s not just to clarify and beautify my skin though, it’s actually really relaxing as well.  As soon as I walk into the sauna at work, after it’s been heated to a toasty hundred and some degrees while I’ve been hard at work on the treadmill, recumbent bike or elliptical machine, it’s like a wall of very dry heat hitting me.

And as soon as it hits me, my body goes limp. My shoulders and tight neck and back instantly relax from the day at the desk, and I feel like I could go to sleep – right after a workout mind you. So it’s not just about the intense heat helping to kill bacteria on my face and help with any future acne breakouts, it’s also about the relaxation aspect of it.

Relaxation of the body and mind are another great acne buster as you may know, because stress really wreaks havoc on the skin, and a lot of people with acne can tell you that stress and anxiety make them break out because it causes hormonal imbalance which leads to acne.

So really, hitting the sauna after my hard workout is like a one two punch against acne.  Saunas can help your skin look better because they not only are such a high heat that they do help kill that acne causing bacteria on the surface of your skin, but they also help to open the pores, and detoxify the skin of impurities.

Not only that, but they help to increase your circulation, which makes your skin look more radiant and colorful and also helps to detox further because when your circulation is better, you transport any toxins out of your body more easily.  It’s sort of the same principle as massage, which also is supposed to help detoxify the tissue through manual stimulation and circulation promotion.

I have mentioned before that I do something that may be questionable, but I make sure I really limit the time I do it since it’s such intense heat. I put my face nearer to the coals since it’s a traditional sauna, and get a sort of steam/heat facial in the process. It really makes my skin glow for a day or two, but you have to be careful not to burn yourself – just get a pleasant heat and steam bath, and back away after about 30 seconds or so, and if you feel any discomfort don’t do it at all.

I don’t know if you’re a fan of the pop phenom show Big Brother, which is in it’s twelfth season, if that tells you anything about it’s popularity, but if you watch it, then you are very familiar with a woman on the show named Rachel. Rachel could be quite a divisive character actually.

She’s a woman who a lot of women probably love to hate because she’s got big boobs and can sometimes come off as a bit dingy and too loud, laughing and twirling her hair a lot, but she’s actually smart as a whip. She can just be sort of annoying and over the top, that’s all.

Rachel won the Las Vegas Planet beach competition, and it’s no surprise with her curvy figure and over the topness.  However, although she’s got a killer body that most women would love to have, I’ve noticed that Rachel, like so many of us (myself included) tends to break out when under stress.

When you’re on the show Big Brother, the stress of the game is notorious for not only making people freak out on the show and act totally out of character for themselves, but a lot of the women and men on there exhibit their stress by breaking out. Rachel’s skin has erupted a few times, alternating between clear and erupted, since she’s been on the show.

It’s no wonder, because she and her “shomance” Brendon, who has a perfect bod and perfect skin, have been under constant attack from the other houseguests, targeted because they are an alliance, and have had to fight tooth and nail to stay in the game. Which they have, because they keep winning POV’s and HOH (Head of HOusehold, oh boy do I sound like a dork if you don’t watch the show right now).

It just goes to show that all of our skin is susceptible to breaking out from stress. Some of us do break out more easily than others when we’re under pressure and our hormones go temporarily insane, and some of us pretty much skip right on by that huge problem.

If you’ve ever taken an acne drug prescribed by a professional doctor or dermatologist, then I have something to share with you that one of our readers sent us. It’s from a graduate student who has set up a website that takes surveys on people who have taken various drugs to gather data about things like how it worked for them, side effects, symptoms and all that jazz.

Here is the email I received, and it contains all the information you need if you have taken an acne drug and are interested in participating in this interesting study/information gathering experiment.

I am a graduated student of Roosevelt Academy working on an internship project in conjunction with rateadrug.com to collect primary user data about side effects and benefits from commonly used treatments for Acne.  The goal is to build a large, public access database of unbiased, anecdotal data about Acne treatments.

We want to let both patients and practitioners know about how they can participate in or benefit from the project.  Users can add their experiences with a treatment and learn more about how the treatment is affecting them by taking a short, confidential survey.

They can also use this website to compare aggregate data for different Acne treatments- both conventional and alternative (http://rateadrug.com/Acne-symptoms-feedback.aspx) – and forward the results of their own surveys to their doctors or family members.

Rateadrug is an independent data gathering and information website that does not accept funding or advertisement from drug companies.

Would it be possible for you to make this information available to your viewers so they can help us collect important data on Acne treatments?

Thank you in advance. I’d be happy to speak with you if you have any questions or comments.

Yolanda Mabuto

We’ve all had them, and we’ve all hated them, and most of all, we’ve all gotten them at some of the most important times in our lives, when all eyes would most likely be on us. Of course, when all eyes are on us, this triggers certain hormones to come out in abundance, and those little hormones cause havoc when it comes to keeping your cool and controlling your stress levels.

Stress zits are the worst. They can really feel like a slap in the face when you’re anticipating something huge in your life that’s really important to you like a wedding or a class reunion of something to that effect.

They always seem to grace your face when you have a big event to go to, because you are cranking out the stress hormones so much, and this is effecting your hormonal balance, creating “hormonal acne” which is the biggest, most painful zits and which is also some of the hardest to treat if you don’t know what you’re doing or try to take the easy way out by using the harshest ingredients on your skin.

Many times when we get a big old hormonal zit, we tend to try to drown it with harsh chemicals and the harshest of surfactant cleansers and gels and creams, when in fact we are probably going to make it inflame further. Not only that, but these harsh chemicals also cause redness, dryness and flaking and often can result in scabbing that isn’t the most becoming sight either.

One of the biggest points you want to remember when treating stress acne is to treat it with care and also to make sure you are incorporating lots of lifestyle changes and tweaks to alleviate the stress, the underlying cause, or your acne.

Some say that stress doesn’t cause acne, but that quite simply isn’t true for a lot of people. It depends on the person and how they manufacture hormones when their body is stressed out. Some people respond by cranking out cortisol, which has a domino effect on the delicate balance of testosterone and estrogen in the body, which aggravates skin conditions.

When you are outdoors in this current midwest heat and humidity streak we’ve had for a long period of time, it’s pretty much inevitable that you are going to be a sweaty, soaked mess when you do finally come inside to the cool, clean air conditioned air.  I sweat profusely when I’m working out in a flower bed, or helping my husband mow the lawn. When I come in, I’ll often have sweat marks in places where I didn’t even know I could sweat.

One such place is the area right under the crease/fold of my breasts.  The sweat just pours right out of there, and I can often feel it coming down to my belly when I’m really working up a sweat.

Even if I’m just working out, I have to make sure I’m wearing a very light cotton sports bra, or else I end up with a breakout under my boobs from the irritation and rubbing and friction of an underwire, which is my preference of bra for work since it gives more support and coverage.

You should make sure that when you are going to be out for a long time in the hot sun or in the humid heat, you are wearing only the lightest (and of course cleanest) cotton bras. Cotton is a very breathable material, and that makes it “noncomedogenic” to the skin that it’s surrounding.

When you wear nylon and cotton mixes or anything other than 100% cotton, then you are basically inviting in a buildup of sweat, dirt and ultimately bacteria which lead to breakouts. Actually, the breakout I had under my boobs almost looked like a combination of inflammatory acne and a heat rash, so I treated it like both, first washing it, then putting a soothing acne product on it that wouldn’t just dry it out with chemicals.

I know that not everyone is a fan of fish, but it really does have some outstanding health benefits if you can eat it a few times a week. Of course, the media has trumped up the fear of mercury in the news, but the health benefits of fish may far outweigh any mercury possibilities. Not only that, you can minimize your risk of mercury contamination by choosing fish that is wild caught instead of farm raised.

Farm raised fish actually has much higher levels of mercury typically than the fish that is swimming around freely in the ocean of fresh water.  Have you ever noticed how asian women have really beautiful skin usually?  Well, of course some of this boils down to genetics, but it’s also no coincidence that the asian diet is typically high in fish consumption.

Fish really is good for your skin, and if you consume it a few times a week, you can really start to see the benefits in your skin’s suppleness, it’s moisture, and it’s overall balance. If you don’t like fish, you can definitely take a good fish oil supplement. However, if you do take a fish oil supplement, don’t buy the el cheapo brand, and try to get one that has been filtered for mercury.

Purified fish oil is a much more potent form of the oil since it contains only the good stuff, and not all the extras that you don’t want in your body.  Fish oil has been known to help the skin to retain moisture more. It is also excellent for the heart and also for your circulation since it helps keep the vessels and passageways limber rather than rigid, which is a problem as we age.

Guess what better circulation does? You guessed it – it makes your skin look better!  There is also some evidence that fish helps you feel fuller for longer, so it has some weight benefits as well. The fact that it helps you feel fuller longer also means it stabilizes blood sugar long after other types of protein do, and when your blood sugar is stable, your hormone levels are more stable.

One thing we’ve learned is that all acne is hormonal in nature, one way or another, and if you can find a way to keep your male and female hormones balanced, then that is half the battle with acne. It’s all in a comprehensive approach, including diet, exercise and using the right acne products topically and internally to keep your skin clear.

Just like air that is too dry, air that is too humid can definitely make your skin go a little nuts. When the winter time hits full on and the air gets really dry and you’re sitting in stuffy, recycled air all day at the office, your skin definitely takes a hit and starts to look bad.

Excessive dryness makes flaking, redness and irritation all that much more apparent. Oh, and your wrinkles look worse too, so it’s pretty much all all around bad thing for your skin.

But what about the opposite? What about these humidity drenched hot days we’ve been having here in the midwest pretty much all summer? Does that do a number on your skin or not?

Well, it definitely makes you skin look much more oily since the humidity adds to the oily look by making it “sit” on the surface much longer, and accumulate more often. So blotters have DEFINITELY been in order all summer long for this oily faced girl!

Other than that though, can humidity actually contribute to acne at all, or is it really just an environmental annoyance that makes your skin appear more oily to the eye? Well, humidity can definitely help contribute to a breakout, but if you take some minor precautions, your skin will be fine. Especially the skin on your back and chest, which is prone to accumulate the dirt and oil that builds up under your clothes.

You have more oil glands in these areas, so sebum can get trapped more easily when you are sweating all the time, which tends to happen pretty much nonstop when you are out in the elements in the summer heat. The good thing about humidity is that your skin will almost never look dry, and it’s much harder to get dry skin.

Humidity keeps the skin moist, and if you drink plenty of water as well, this acts as your sort of “internal skin quencher”. This makes for smoother, more supple looking skin, but us with the oilies really need to break out the blotters a couple times a day.

I swear, in this humidity, I’m blotting several times, and it’s not just when I step outside, it’s inside as well since some of that humidity seems to translate into higher humidity indoors as well, even when the A/C is on.