Acne Magazine

Someone had written and asked about the L’Oreal Sublime self tanner and whether it was safe for people like us (people who have acne) - in other words, whether it was comedogenic (pore clogging).  I advised her it was not pore clogging for me.  See the question and answer below :

Question (she posted this in response to the original post on this issue before)

hi. I am having the exact same problem!!!! I am really interested in this product and you say you have had no trouble with acne at all with this product?

Thanks for your post thats great to know someone feels the same way as me.

Answer :

Hello, and thanks for reading AcneMagazine.com - we love when people share their experiences with products, techniques and skin care regimens, so it’s always great when one of my personal experiences can help another reader.  As far as the Sublime self tanner from L’Oreal, I did not have any problems after using it several weeks in a row (applied a couple nights apart of course, to avoid that orange look).  It did not cause any breakouts or any smaller bumps, and did not appear to clog my pores.

Further, it did go on nicely.  It’s consistency is a bit thick, which concerned me as far as it being possibly pore clogging, but I had no problems, and I tend to have somewhat sensitive skin on my face to new products sometimes.  Hopefully it works the same for you! 

Well, this is probably a very far fetched conclusion, but I believe that being active and exercising as a daily or every other day occurrence, or at least 3-4 days per week getting some cardio and some muscle work in, could be good for your acne and for your overall skin.  I speak out of personal experience, because out of all the other numerous health benefits that I know I get from maintaining a regular exercise routine, I know that working out also helps me maintain my skin, keep it younger, acne free and also with that special healthy glow.

Like I said, I make this statement out of personal experience rather than reading somewhere that it’s been medically proven or the like, since I’ve never actually heard acne and exercise correlated in the same sentence before.  However, when I thought about it, it really does make sense that exercise can help us maintain clear skin and healthy pores, since exercise helps regulate our hormones by helping to alleviate stress, which can trigger certain acne causing hormones to release in our bodies.

Just the fact that exercise helps us to relieve stress and anxiety makes me believe that it’s good for our skin, and that part of it anyways, has been medically documented, that it helps reduce stress.  We always talk about how stress is a very common acne breakout trigger, and it’s true.  The more we stress out and feel anxious, the more likely we are to experience an acne breakout in the near future some time.

Exercise also helps to release endorphins, which can help us regulate our homones, and it also increases circulation, which is great for luminous, clear skin as many regular exercise enthusiasts will tell you in a heartbeat.  Last but not least, it benefits our heart health, and also our many other organs, and when our organs are functioning properly this usually will show itself in our skin.  Bottom line, even if exercise does not help acne specifically, it definitely can make a huge impact on the overall appearance of your skin. 

Dr. Perricone’s book, a best seller back in the nineteen nineties when it hit bookstore sheleves called The Wrinkle Cure, is one that I am on my second time reading.  First, because I remember the book containing invaluable information not only about how to keep the skin smooth, supple and wrinkle free for as long as possible, but also because it had great diet advice that was excellent advice to follow for acne sufferers. 

In fact, the book is a must read in my opinion for everyone because it explains how the skin gets damaged and its defenses are broken down by both environmental pollutants and intrinsic factors such as stress and anxiety, as well as external factors like sunlight and smoking.  One of the biggest features of the book is a guide on how to eat in what he calls the “anti inflammatory diet”, which as you all know if you’ve been reading this blog for very long, I highly advocate and have had a lot of personal experience with in my life. 

This book is available in most free libraries, and I know it’s available online several places for dirt cheap, especially if it’s paperback.  It’s a fast, easy read and it’s actually fascinating to read how he describes the aging process, free radicals, collagen’s role in healthy skin, and the factors that break down our skin’s elasticity and health quicker than you can say “acne and rosacea“.

Perricone has since come out with a couple of other excellent books on the subject of skin.  He is a dermatologist and author, and he has also come out with his own line of Perricone skin care products, which are made with the highest quality cosmeceutical ingredients.  I’ve used them before and they are truly high quality, but you will pay a pretty penny for them. 

I think the most important factor to taking care of one’s skin, no matter what you are trying to combat, is diet, and he really drills it home in this book, the Wrinkle Cure.  He also does briefly address acne directly, and alternative treatments for acne, but believe me, this whole book is not just how to prevent aging and reverse the signs of aging in the skin, but it also may be applied to how to prevent and treat acne. 

I read an interesting blurb a few days ago about how this new fangled (but really only a slightly different take on other popular diets) diet called the Mediterranean Diet is supposed to help people with acne clear their skin up.  My first reaction was DUH, but that is unfair, because it’s only my personal experience with similar diets and the helpful clearing of my own skin that I can make this conclusion!

When I say similar diets I mean diets that are based on omega 3 adequacy, which means they incorporate things like olive oil, olives and fish into the diet to give the person adequate omega 3 fatty acids, which provide a number of health benefits, including clearer, smoother skin when combined into a health and balanced diet.

Health and balanced means lots of lean protein, limited refined carbs to none, and tons of veggies and a smidge of whole grains.  If I’m not mistaken, that is what the Mediterranean Diet is based in, and this is why it is being lauded as one of the diets that can help people with acne obtain clearer skin. 

I’ve recently been trying to give attention to my skin, in particular my chin area where the result of years of acne has been made apparent by periodic rough patches that come and go, and get better with treatment.  My preferred method of treatment is to exfoliate with a home microdermabrasion kit for acne scarring, as well as a light acid peel afterwards. 

Problem is, I have to do this when I have a couple days of really no important events, because it usually ends up resulting in flaking, irritated skin, especially since I usually will do it a couple nights in a row.  I will try to do it on the weekends when I don’t have to be to work or anywhere important for that reason. 

After using the microderm kit, and the peel, the skin, especially where extra attention has been given, should begin to slough off.  Although it is unsightly at the time of sloughing, this is exactly what you want, so fresher, more even textured skin can be revealed and smoother, less damager and rough skin can be revealed.  It’s a process!

I have one suggestion though, and that is to only try to rub off the flaking when the skin is wet and well moistened for a while, such as after a warm shower, since this soften it up and causes greater ease and less irritation in removing the excess flaking.  Don’t try it when it’s dry, you’ll only end up with a flaky, red mess.  At least I do!

Well, we all know the answer to this one!  Yes, quitting junk food will definitely help our acne, although just doing this alone is of course not the full answer as to how to permanently rid the skin of acne and acne rosacea.  It’s not that easy to quit those bad junk foods that we all love. 

For me, it might be my love for chocolate or salty and fatty snacks like Fritos that occasionally attacks that I have to watch myself with.  For others, it could be those trips to  fast food joints like McDonald’s and Taco Bell that they need to watch and severely curb to get them off the path to larger thighs, bellies, and worse skin. 

It’s different with everyone, but there’s no doubt that most of us have something programmed into our appetites that makes us crave certain foods almost daily or maybe once in a while when we’re either feeling stressed or certain hormones have taken their hold (ladies, you know what I’m talking about, ’cause i know certain times of the month, I find junk food nearly irresistable).

Whatever it might be that you have a natural appetite-admiration for, you may find the following helpful in helping curb your intake of skin destroying junk food, so you can at least help your acne as best you can by the food you put into your body.

1.)  Find all the reasons you can for quitting junk foods, meaning whether it’s to lose weight, feel better or save money, just add them all up and hopefully they will constitute enough benefits to get you to kick them for good.

2.)  Start preparing healthy foods in an enjoyable way.  In other words, look for tasty alternatives that you enjoy eating, but that also rank high in nutrition, like high antioxidant juices, meat substitutes, cheese substitutes like rice and almond cheese, salads prepared with lower fat, dressings made with olive oils instead of cream bases, whole fruits, even some dried fruits like dried mango (excellent for digestive and colon health, tons of fiber), and other little discoveries in the health food store. Trust me, there are some very tasty choices to eat healthy, they’re not all flavorless.

3.)  Start to enjoy exercise more, in other words, find the exercise you actually like.  This always encourages healthier eating for some reason, probably because we begin to feel so good after the exercise, we don’t want to put bad stuff in our body.  Not very scientific I know, but it’s definitely true. 

These components add up to kicking junk food to the curb - at least most of the time, and makes for healthier, clearer pores down the line.  Trust me, I know that it’s not possible to just stop all this cold turkey and never do it again - that’s just not realistic, and let’s face it, also not very fun, but if you can cut them out of the majority of your eating repertoire, you’re golden, and you’re skin will definitely look better as a result. 

What is one of the top reasons you want clear skin? I can tell you one of the main reasons I want clear skin, and it is so that I can attain that coveted smooth finish that so many models are famous for. It’s usually apparent in photographs whether you have smooth skin or not, and increasingly apparent for actresses on tv as well with the advent of high def tv.

I hate to break it to you, but while the holiday season does make you all warm and fuzzy inside, and is thought of as a time of great joy and comfort as the famous Christmas carol says, it also brings with it something else for most people - stress and anxiety.  And we all know what stress and anxiety often times lead to - acne breakouts.  At least for me, and as dozens of other readers have shared, it does for them as well. 

Not only does holiday time bring stress with the constant holiday gatherings, family “discussions” or fights in some families, and anxiety about visiting family in certain cases, as well as the stress of the enormous expenditures in Christmas gifts, but it also brings with it lots of skin unfriendly foods.  Those foods I speak of, of course, are primarily the plethora of sweets, in the form of cookies, chocolates, cakes, pies, and other dessert foods that are high in sugar, almost void in nutritional and antioxidant value, and are high on the acne-causing scale. 

We’ve talked numerous times about how sugars can really wreck havoc on the skin, causing breakouts, skin flushing, uneven skin tone and more of a tendency toward bumpiness and uneven texture.  We all do it though - every year, who can resist the temptation of these nutritionally void, acne-contributing foods?  And of course it’s ok to indulge - a little.  However, we all find ourselves over indulging during the holiday season.  I find myself gorging on bad foods for almost the whole holiday month many times! 

To try to alleviate a little of the holiday sugar overdoses, at least maybe try to drink fresh squeezed lemon juice in your water.  The acid in the lemon juice actually helps reduce internal acidity (I know, seems like a contradictory statement, but lemon juice is actually a very alkalin-izing food, which helps neutralize internal acid), and hence helps to reduce likelihood of acne breakouts, since they can be increased in severity by an overly acid diet.  When sugars break down, they cause exessive acid in the blood stream, which can increase inflammation, hence acne likelihood increases since acne and acne rosacea is an inflammatory skin condition. 

To reduce stress around the holiday, perhaps you can take up yoga or tai chi or something of that nature, where the concentration is on peace of mind, and the quiet, body moving time helps us to calm our nervous systems.  You could also try an herbal acne supplement to try to offset the bad eating and the stress and anxiety as well.  Not only that, just plain old fashioned exercise helps to work stress out in a healthy way, instead of it working itself out in the form of a new acne cyst on your face!   

Exfoliation can be a tricky thing for people with tendencies toward acne breakouts, and I, as usual, tend to overdo a good thing.  Well, I’ve been really into exfoliation lately, because my skin is aging now and I’m in my early thirties, I really wanted to focus not only on keeping my skin as clear and acne free as possible, but now I’m also staging the battle against Father Time, and to do that, one needs to exfoliate to turn over the skin cells faster and reap the benefits of fresh, new skin.

Well, you have to be a little cautious when your skin is acne prone, and of course I over did it, because I’m about to go on vacation and wanted to have fresh clean skin that was line-minimized as well.  I ended up breaking out with a new little blemish on the bridge of my nose as well as a new two blemishes on the side of my face, by my eyes, which was exactly where I was being most vigorous in my exfoliation, because that is where my crow’s feet originated and I was trying to target that area the most.

Exfoliation is good, but as I learned, you can’t be too rough with acne prone skin or do it roughly every night a couple nights consecutively, because you may actually irritate the skin or over dry it in areas and cause an acne eruption.  So, if you like to exfoliate (which I think is good, no matter what type of skin you have) you may want to opt for a more gentle exfoliater (sugar happens to make a wonderful exfoliater, and I’ve even heard baking soda works well), and also cut down on the vigorous scrubbing as well as how many times a week you do it if you’re doing it three or more times. 

I just read the most interesting article online, and it had to do with acne and food combining.  Well, acne was just one of the side effects that this article brought up, which was about the negative health effects that people experience when they combine foods improperly.  Food combining is not a new concept.  Actually, when I initially lost all my baby fat when I was about 16 years old in high school, I became fascinated by a book called “Fit for Life” which touted the benefits of proper food combining, and was by and large an advocate of vegetarianism and said that meats were the devil basically in the stomach. 

The advocate that talked about food combining in the article is named Herbert Shelton, who has written a book on proper food combining outlining why you should combine the right foods when eating, as well as what the food groups are that should be consumed together, how they chemically interact in the stomach, and what enzymes they require to digest called “Food Combining Made Easy”.

The principal is that improper food combining causes distress in the system that causes chain reactions and can give a person gas, intestinal problems, acne, and a host of other health issues.  By food combining, the principal is basically that you should not combine certain food groups together during one meal, such as meats and starches.  The specifics in the food groups are outlined in the various book advocating food combining, but in general it’s using common sense and only combining veggies with meats and fleshes. 

So basically the big no no is combining meats and starches or dairies and starches, which is basically a staple of the American diet - think cheeseburgers and pizza.  They’re all sorts of wrong according to the principal of proper food combining. 

I have to say that this does work for me personally.  I don’t practice it all the time, but I do find in practical application that when I combine foods I do experience increased gas and intestinal discomfort, so it definitely works as far that aspect goes.  I also believe this probably could help people with acne, since it reduces distress and inflammation on the body, and may also effect hormone activity.  Who knows, this could be one of the best natural acne treatments that can also help you in other facets of your life, including your weight, mood and health issues.