Acne Magazine

Well, it’s no surprise that a lot of people who have prescription to drugs share their prescriptions with others.  How many times have you heard of someone “borrowing” a few prescription pain pills, or muscle relaxants, or even sometimes something like an antidepressant of anti anxiety pill, especially one that has enjoyed recreational use called Xanax and Cymbalta to name a few are shared as a purely recreational drug because people enjoy the effects they have on their mood, psyche, or how it makes their body feel. 

One that is a little perplexing though is that it was reported that out of respondents who admit they have shared or are sharing prescription medications, about six percent of them claimed they have shared or are sharing acne medications with someone else.  This could mean they are sharing the less dangerous and side effect laden ones like antibiotics, but it could also mean they are sharing something like Accutane, which we all know must only be used under a doctor’s careful supervision and can have serious side effects if not monitored by a doctor or taken correctly by the patient.

Another baffling one was that patients will also share their birth control pill prescriptions.  Not only is this strange, but it also seems like the people sharing wouldn’t be getting adequate dosages to keep themselves from getting pregnant, so I’m not exactly sure why anyone would want to share a prescription for birth control knowing that they are only getting a partial dosage of hormones that they know will keep them from getting pregnant, so maybe there’s something I’m missing on that one. 

Also, the concern with sharing acne antibiotics is that if one is sharing a prescription for that, they may not get the dosage or length of treatment they need for optimal results, so it may render their acne treament with antibiotics totally ineffective if they do not take the full course of treatment because of sharing pills.   

Well, let me clarify the title of this one.  I’ve said over and over again how I can only drink very little caffeinated coffee or any other highly caffeinated beverage without getting a breakout.  I am especially susceptible to breakouts when drinking the high octane ones like Starbucks brews that are stronger and others that are super caffeinated, but have little problem when drinking weaker coffees or coffee that I have diluted down a lot with hot water.

However, I wanted to include some information here on recent health benefits that have been confirmed by research recently, which confirms that drinking coffee actually may reduce mortality rates (make us live longer), and has shown in women to be a beneficial prevention measure when it comes to heart disease.  Other health benefits are bound to follow, since the mechanism by which they think coffee, both caffeinated and decaf, works is because it has a high antoxidant count.

So, for those of us that are sensitive (our skin) to coffee that has a lot of caffeine, it may be an option for us to drink half caffeinated ( a new hybrid that contains only half the caffeine of regular coffee), or decaffeinated coffee to get the health benefits.  However, my choice would be to go for things like green teas if you’re looking to get an antioxidant power punch, or maybe the stimulant drink yerba mate, which also has a lot of antioxidants. 

Remember though, anything that has a lot of stimulants in it, regardless of how natural it is, may cause you to break out, so if you are concerned about that, then you could always just take a few sips of acai juice a day, which is a highly concentrated source of antioxidants, and I must say a very tasty and satisfying drink. 

We know that smoking cigarettes, and any other smokeable substance is not a good thing for our health.  In fact, it can cause a number of leading health issues that we see here in the US, or at least contribute heavily to them.   Smoking is definitely not something that “healthy” people do, or usually choose to do if I may phrase it that way, because the Surgeon General has been so kind to inform us of the health hazards we subject ourselves to if we do smoke cigarettes (tobacco). 

The thing is, tobacco in itself is not so much carcinogenic (cancer causing), it’s the fact that we smoke it and pollute our lungs with tar and smoke inhalation that causes it to be carcinogenic, and it’s the nicotine that’s added to cigarettes that is what makes it addictive and so hard to quit for those who have been doing it for any length of time. 

But what about what smoking does to your skin?  Of course, smoking also may appeal to our vanity because many people see it as a hip or cool thing to do, and as a way even for some to control their weight since it can both reduce appetite and even speed up metabolism for some (this does not always work this way).  However, it also appeals more greatly to vanity to quit smoking or never pick up the habit, because the habit actually does more harm than good when it comes to your skin.

Smoking constricts the passageways that carry oxygen throughout the blood stream, and that means that the skin does not get enough oxygen.  This accelerates the aging process in a big way, and many times even gives the skin a sallow and unhealthy appearance.  It can also aggravate acne because it does not allow lesions to heal properly and makes the skin a slower healer because of the lack of circulation. 

It’s summer time again, or at least darn close to it in most places, and that means something that us women hate - or maybe I’m only speaking for myself, but I doubt it.  It means way more leg shaving.  And that takes time, and lots of shaving cream or gel, or whatever it is you happen to use on your gams.  One thing I really can’t stand sometimes in the summer is how after I shave, I seem to sometimes get these razor irritation bumps that resembe and acne postule on my legs.

It begins as a red irritation bump, and once in a while one of them will fill with puss and act like a whitehead.  I’m thinking they are actually acne, because perhaps the pore got infected, just like it can happen to varying degrees on other parts of the body but only where acne can be normal there, like the back and the chest, which women often get and men as well.

I’ve started using an epilator, which rips the hair out by the root, and it just seems to compound the pore irritation problem, and it seems that because it clears the pores of the hair completely, it might leave it more open to infection and dirt getting trapped in there, and will be more subject to becoming an acne bump.  I’ve found that the problem starts to subside after you’ve been epilating a while, but at first my legs were nothing but bumps.

You can use aloe vera gel (I recommend an organic one so it’s not filled with alcohol, but most aloe gel itself), and that does seem to help with the acne-like irritation bumps on the legs, but you may also have to let your legs adjust to, once again, getting shaved or epilated weekly, whereas in the summer ladies, let’s admit that we like to slack a little in the hairless legs department.  Or maybe I speak for myself there too

A customer posted this as a comment on a product I had never heard of called Environ.  For more acne product reviews see Acne Treatment Reviews page, as it looks like this product may have limited availability by the sound of it.

Hi,

I’m from Australia and am using a product from South African that I’m finding very successful. It is called Environ and my using it for my acne. My acne is hormonal and I’m 23 and over it! I’ve only just had this outburst of acne so it is quite devastating and depressing having gotten through my teenage years with little more than the occassional T-zone break out.

I’m finding that this South African product is helping control my sebacious glands and the consequences my hormones are having on my skin. They have a website, enter Environ into google. There are articles on the website about the products that are interesting. The rest of my skin surrounding my breakouts is so pretty, I can’t wait until my entire face looks like these patches of beautiful skin!

Remember to be patient and focus on the small good changes that continously happen and know that you will have good skin if you follow a good skin care regime designed for you acne, a good diet (if you want good skin, you have to cut down on the carby sugary stuff….am sorry but this has to stop if you want clear skin), low stress and lots of sleep….and of course water, water, water! There is no such thing as a quick fix, but the better you stick to the above the quicker the results will be and will last a life time!

I’m using this skin care with a weekly-fortnightly Environ facial. If you email them and see if there is a distributor of their product near you (don’t got to a beautician unless they are trained really well, otherwise it will take twice as long to fix you acne as most of them just don’t get it. You may know someone who is very knowledgable but on the most part, beauticians just regurgitate information that they don’t thoroughly understand themselves.

They need to know the answer to your every question thoroughly not just regurgitate information to you they learnt from a 5 hour training day). I see the rep for Environ that trains beauticians around Australia. She is extremely knowledgable and this is so important. You need to understand what exactly is going on with your skin and why this product my be helping it. She is educated about the workings of the skin and the effects of the product on your skin.

Hope this helps. If you are in Australia and want the mobile number of the lady I see, email me at tashigye@spin.net.au. Read the articles on the website and try and understand them as much as possible. Any questions, email them, they are very helpful.

Tashi.

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.

It almost never fails for me. If I wear a somewhat tight and confining piece of clothing on my upper half, and I happen to also sweat profusely while I’m wearing it, I almost always will break out in that area. Case in point is the fact that we used our infrared sauna last night, and I stayed in a bit too long, which means I ended up drenching myself in sweat, especially on my upper extremity.

Why did I name this post Sleep, Skin Enemy Number 2?  Well, because I believe that lack of good, solid and fulfilling sleep is probably just about the number 2 enemy of good skin.  Even though it’s right up there with what I feel is the number one enemy of good skin, which is sun exposure.  Or would that be a bad diet? 

Hmm, those two are probably a tight race for the top honor of number one skin enemy, but I really wanted to talk about why lack of sleep can really open your skin up to all types of problems, including rashes, acne, worsening rosacea, and just plain old slackened, discolored and tired looking, sallow skin.  As we age especially, a good sleep regimen is necessary to maintain a good skin tone and healthy, clear and luminous skin that “glows”. 

Sleep does a couple of things for our bodies.  It allows our hormones to regulate, it rejuvenates our skin because our skin is at a resting metabolic rate with the rest of the body, which gives it time to rest from the environmental pollutants and assaults that come it’s way all day long.  This also allows the skin time to repair. 

Adequate, solid sleep allows us to function in a rational, calm way throughout the day, which facilitates even hormones, and you guessed it, inadvertently facilitates clean and clear skin because our hormones aren’t sabotaging the sebum production, as they do when one has acne problems.  It is thought that cell turnover happens a lot more at night on the skin, so allowing the skin adequate time to turn cells over and renew themselves certainly lends itself to pristine skin and a nice tight appearance that looks healthy and vibrant. 

I don’t think that anyone escaped the dreary news that our drinking water in infected with a ton of pharmaceutical drugs that we unknowingly imbibe on a daily basis, unless of course we strictly drink bottled and purified drinking water.  One of those drugs that have been identified in some city’s drinking water supplies is the class of acne drugs, such as antibiotics and other drugs that are commonly used to treat acne in both adolescents and adults.

Other drugs that were identified in water supplies around the US were hormones, such as the kind that are found in hormone treatments given to women and men, antidepressants and anticoagulants, blood pressure medications and more.  The really sick part is that it is because the water purification process that purifies water from waste byproducts emitted by the human body does not include a filter for prescription drugs, instead it looks for other microorganisms and other harmful substances. 

It must be noted that these levels of pharmaceutical drugs that have been detected in our drinking water supplies is supposed to be so miniscule that it should not affect the way the human body operates.  However, some fear that after years of accumulation, these trace amounts of drugs could indeed create problems for tap water drinkers.

The amount of pharmaceuticals this country takes continues to skyrocket at alarming paces, there is no doubt about that, and the fact that there is so much excreted from our bodies collectively that trace amounts still show up in our water supplies is a scary testament to the fact that our country is too drugged!  Not to mention the fact that these substances could potentially become toxic to our bodies over time, and through no fault of our own.

Pseudoephedrine, I believe, is bad for you for several reasons, and not just because I know for a fact in myself that it causes me to break out the next day after I take it, but also because of what it does to your heart rate. 

Every time I’ve ever taken pseudoephedrine, which is now somewhat of a controlled substance because cold medicines with this ingredient are what I believe is what is used to make the illegal street drug methamphetamine.  Just for that fact alone, I’d say you should stay away from it.  Think about it, it’s the base for an illegal and highly destructive and dangerous street drug, what more is there to say? 

Sure, it may have some qualities that help you to drain fluid faster or to declog your stuffed nose, but is it really worth it? I for one, hate the way it makes me feel and therefore never use it any more.  It would make my ear pop, make me feel extremely restless, and also make my heart race a mile a minute, all of which I believe are extremely unhealthy attributes. 

As for why it makes me break out, and I’m sure other people, it’s anyon’es guess - my guess is that it’s stimulant properties mess with the hormonal balance in the body and throw it off so quickly that your skin reacts with fast inflammation, AKA acne.  I know I’ve written about this stuff a lot, but I really feel it is not good for the skin or the body.