Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

Oh, lucky us who have had acne for years and years, at least we know we are in abundant company, since acne has won (again) the top spot for the most common of all skin disorders. I supposed the silver lining to that fact is that it is also the least hazardous skin condition, it’s just one of the most embarrassing and pervasive since it usually occurs on the face, our body part that is exposed to the world every day, by which we are judged and scrutinized by some.

Acne, out of the top five skin disorders, is still the most common skin condition that is seen by dermatologists. Although we have some great alternative acne treatments at our disposal, there are also some medical ones that can work, like blue light therapy, certain laser therapies, and other topical treatments, and of course there are medications, which I’m a little more opposed to only because they are mostly either controversial in their safety, or they are antibiotic in nature, and taking antibiotics over a long period of time, I believe, it very detrimental to your health.

So, what are the other skin disorders that hold top court along with acne? They are as the order follows, after acne : eczema, seborrheic dermatitis, skin cancer and psoriasis. You may even have one of these in conjunction with acne, as some of them are also inflammatory in nature, as so many skin conditions are.

Psoriasis is a skin disorder that can appear on the skin or on the scalp, and of course skin cancer has become more prevalent since our sun’s protective ozone layer has worn away with the ravages of environmental pollutants and other conditions, and of course, because of the advent of the tanning bed and young girls going out and getting burnt in them over and over.

The most common type of skin cancer, and luckily the most treatable, is still basal cell carcinoma, which is one that I’ve gotten removed a couple of times out of safety precautions. To avoid basal cell carcinoma, avoid direct, prolonged sunlight, and use sunscreen as often as you can.

I know we’ve talked a TON about how diet affects your complexion on this blog, and there is a good reason for that – diet really does have a huge impact on your complexion. But that does not mean that you are forced to live a life where you can never enjoy another sugar, fatty, deep fat fried, or chocolaty delicious morsel again. No, it really doesn’t. The trick is to not do it all the time, and just not to over do it when you decide you do want to indulge in some of the more “no” foods for your complexion.

For example, I indulge in chocolate about once a week .Sure, sometimes I go a little nuts and over do it and end up sugar bombing out, but I know how bad I feel and how my skin reacts when I do that, so I’ve really cut those chocolate and sugar pig outs down to a minimum now.

I remember when I was younger, I could probably have easily downed a whole quart of chocolate ice cream, but now that I’m a little older, my sweet tooth and my overeating gene have kind of taken a back seat to common sense.

Valentines Day is a huge chocolate time for me. My husband knows that all I want for V Day is chocolate. I tell him not even to bother with anything else. No, I don’t even want a fancy dinner and a bottle of wine or flowers, I really just want some of the best chocolate I can get my hands on, something really decadent, like chocolate covered strawberries or pretzels, or turtles from one of my favorite chocolatiers around here, Malleys chocolates.

As long as I get some chocolate to pig out on, it’s all good from there on V Day. What do you think – are you guys gonna get some chocolate from your special one on V Day?

I just wanted to take the time to say to all you readers out there, Merry Christmas! I say this, of course, presuming that you celebrate Christmas, because that is the holiday I celebrate. I don’t want to leave anyone out though, so I wanted to wish everyone a warm, happy, holiday season which I hope brings you all good luck for the new upcoming year, and great promise for a bright future. Everyone, enjoy being with your loved ones today, and let’s all be thankful for what we have, because there are still a lot of folks out there having a hard time in this trying economy.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. Until next time, cheers to good skin, good times and great family and friends.

We’ve FINALLY created a page where we’ve asked you, the readers and fellow skin care enthusiasts, to share your own experiences with product ranging from medical acne treatments and acne scarring treatments to at home cleansers, creams, makeup, toner, microdermabrasion and peel treatments, masks, serums, and you name it. Basically, any experiences you’ve had with your own products at home, the dermatologist’s office, or your local spa, please share them with us.

We feel passionately that the web was created to open dialogue about these things so that we could all share information that will help us make decisions about our skin that are more well informed. The new page is right here – submit your own product reviews, and we hope that you will all take advantage of it. Have a product that was awful for you and want to vent? Share it. Have a problem that worked wonders for your skin and made you feel like a prince or princess? Share it. Do you have a recommendation for certain types of skin? Share it!

We want to hear from you, please take the time to write us and let us know about your experiences. Thanks!

My first experience with using tea tree oil for anything was with an acne product combo I had purchased that included a small bottle of tea tree oil toner. That was absolutely my favorite part of the kit, and I decided from that time that I would buy more tea tree oil toner (astringent basically) whenever I was out of that. Since I love to try new brands quite a bit, I ended up with a tea tree toner made by the Body Shop. Sure enough, it had that same strong, slightly medicinal smell that the first tea tree oil product I used had.

Believe it or not, I really like that smell. It almost smelled a little bit like eucalyptus if I had to compare it to something that is readily recognizable to the sense of smell. Tea tree oil is recommended for oil and acne prone skin because it has an astringent and antibacterial quality that helps us acne sufferers maintain clear pores so that we don’t have as many problems with the bacteria seeping into our pores and infecting it, making it into a whitehead of blackhead zit.

I just had an appointment with my hairdresser today and he advised me that since I have a very dry scalp and it looks like it is irritated and flaky, that he would also recommend a tee tree oil scalp treatment for my head as well, to help with the flaking and irritation. He said that the astringent quality would help with any itching I was experiencing, and an extra emollient that is usually added to most scalp treatments, like aloe vera or maybe vitamin E, would attack the problem of dryness.

So, if you have problems with an oily or irritated scalp, or dry scalp, apparently tea tree oil can help with all of the above, just make sure you don’t get it on your hair, and try to keep it on the scalp itself as much as you can. He advised that most scalp treatments are good for the scalp but not necessarily the most flattering thing to put in your hair since they are made specifically for the delicate skin of the scalp.

If anyone tries it, let us know how it goes. Just because we have oily skin, doesn’t mean our scalps aren’t falling apart too. Heck, often times skin irritations like acne go hand in hand with scalp issues, so it’s quite common if you can believe that.

Recent news has not only implicated the chemical found in plastic, coined “BPA’s” for short, in a potential link to breast cancer, but it has also now linked this chemical, which many believe is more dangerous than the companies who manufactured products made with hard plastics, which contains BPA’s in large quantity, have lead the public to believe, but also that it might even be linked to higher levels of impotence in men. What this suggests is that the main concern behind contact with BPA’s, which is an interference with natural hormone balance, may have numerous other implications, not just in certain types of cancer, the majority of which tend to be hormonally related.

BPA’s have been shown to interfere with the natural hormone balance in the human body, because they are essentially synthetic estrogens, that basically mimic the real hormone estrogen in the body when they are released. How are they released and ingested, you ask? Well, say if you have one of those really popular large, hard plastic water bottles that so many people have these days. You let your water sit in there for a while, perhaps even in a hot car. Well, unbeknownst to you, these chemicals called BPA’s have been leaching from the plastic into your water, and you are unknowingly drinking in BPA’s which ultimately can interfere with your hormones.

This has caused a lot of concern, and even if the health threat isn’t as large as some would have you believe, it’s probably better safe than sorry not only for your skin and the potential issues that the resulting estrogen imbalance might cause, but also for the many other health issues this may impose if it’s true, you may want to buy yourself a glass or stainless steel water bottle. Neither of these leaches any type of harmful chemical into your drinking water.

And, if you really must still drink bottled water in a plastic bottle, make sure that you do not let it sit for long periods of time, and especially don’t let it sit in a warm or hot car, as the leaching takes on a whole new level when the temperature is elevated. It’s better to be safe than sorry, and believe me, your water tastes much better out of stainless steel and glass anyways, you’ll be amazed at the difference, there’s no plastic taste at all, which only lends further credibility to the argument that it leaches chemicals.

We recently rented a hot tub for two weeks. Well, it was actually a charity raffle item that my (now husband) won, and we of course were more than happy to take it. Although I still prefer the dry heat of a sauna, it was nice to experience the wet heat and muscle relaxing power of the jets in the hot tub for a few days. I must say though, getting out of it into the cold night and running inside was not my cup of tea! They are, however, a bit more romantic than a sauna is, and that was our goal since we just got married a few weeks ago.

I remembered, since the intense smell of chlorine set it off in my memory, that when I was younger and really struggle with acne pretty badly, that my acne used to actually clear up when I happened to go in the pool several days in a row. I always wondered if the chlorine or the combination of the usual chlorine and sun exposure had anything to do with my suddenly pristine skin. Of course, then the hormones would come along and the days when you couldn’t go swimming because it was just too cold, and you’d inevitably break out again, but it was nice for a few days to have a clear complexion after going in a chlorine soaked pool.

I have to admit, I don’t like chlorine, and the smell of it makes me nauseous sometimes, which is why I’m not particularly a fan of highly chlorinated pools and spas, since they have to continuously pour this noxious chemical in them to stave off mildew and mold, but I do think there is something to it helping to keep clear skin. Although now, with my more mature skin that I’m in my thirties, I actually noticed it really dried my face out and I had to heavily moisturize.

However, I believe the reason it has benefits against acne is because it kills surface bacteria, and bacteria on the surface and in the pores is essentially what causes acne lesions. I’m sure that over time chlorine isn’t good for the skin, and I even have my doubts about how good it is for your body in general, exposing it to high levels of this potent chemical, after all, it does turn blond hair green, so what should that tell you!? However, I can’t ignore the fact that it does seem to help clear acne in some ways.

You’ve probably heard the fact reported that adult acne has been on the rise over the past few years. So, what could be the reason? It can’t simply be that we’re all under the same increasing amounts of pressure over the every day dealings of life in general, or some sort of a mass shift in genetics, could it? Not really, but there are probably several contributing factors to the increase in both adult acne, and teen acne.

One of the reasons that has been looked at, but never really proven one way or another, and keep in mind that the reasons in general can be additive in nature, especially since we consume tons of soybean oil every day in processed foods that we don’t even know about, and this has been known to mess up the hormonal balance by adding too much phony estrogen into our bodies and throwing off the hormone balance that’s supposed to be there. Meat though, unless it is bought from a butcher that does not add artificial hormones and antibiotics, usually is treated with some sort of hormones.

This is because adding hormones to a chicken or a cow’s diet actually increases their growth and meat, and makes them ready to slaughter earlier than the animals that don’t get the hormones. In other words, it’s a cheap and dirty trick the meat companies use to help them turn profits faster and make their chicken, beef, or whatever other meat they are packing, grow into marketable pieces of meat much faster.

However, those hormones aren’t without their negative human interactions, some think. It’s been considered that the addition of hormones to a lot of our meats has actually contributed to several things, among them potentially the increases in adolescent and adult acne, increases in breast cancers and even prostate and other hormonally charged cancers, and a variety of other health problems and other basically harmless but nonetheless annoying issues.

What you might want to try, just to be safe, if you are a carnivore and not a vegetarian, is to start buying the hormone free meats. There are usually hormone free options now even at grocery stores that you can buy. They cost a little more, sure, but honestly they taste worlds better than the other stuff with the hormones and antibiotics in them. After all, every little bit of healthy living choices makes a difference in your overall health and well being, so it might not just benefit your complexion, but also your overall health and longevity.

Well, the countdown is on to my wedding to my fiance of a few months, in Las Vegas, and it’s only another week until we leave! I’m really excited, but I am starting to get nervous about “being on stage” and also getting everything in order before the trip. Whenever there’s a lot to think about, you can almost count on me breaking out in some large zit that inevitably won’t go away for at least a week, so I’ve been preparing my skin to equalize and my hormones to stay calm for about a month now by taking the dermacleanse capsules and also by using a tea tree oil astringent every single night to make sure that every trace of makeup, bacteria and any other acne causing stuff is gone.

I’m also making sure I blot the oil off my face several times a day at work, as my skin seems too ooze oil there for some reason, and since oil collecting on the surface of the face causes acne, at least it makes me feel like I’m doing something else preventive to keep those nasty zits at bay. When I start to feel my breath get rapid and shallow, I know that I’m panicking and getting nervous, so I have been good about “talking myself down” and calming myself so that I can make sure all those hormones that cause acne don’t get stirred up, and my cortisol (stress) hormones aren’t stirred up, which cause problems for your other hormones getting stirred up.

SO far, knock on wood, I have not gotten any major breakouts or zits for my wedding, and I’m hoping that it stays that way. I’ve found that by internally and externally limiting my stress triggers and then managing them properly when they do happen, as well as doing the surface treatment to my skin it needs to stay clean and oil free, yet not dried out and irritated, I’ve averted a potential wedding photo disaster. Wish me luck! I’ll let you know how it goes once I’m back from Vegas. At least the air there is dry, and I won’t have too much excess oil production or sweat!

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!