That’s REALLY not a good idea, as it will irritate and dry out the skin too much. Many astringents have some alcohol and/or witch hazel in them, and are mild enough to use a couple of times a day.
Laser treatment is useful.
This is not a burning or etching process, there have been some very recent developments and discoveries which are so new that most clinics have not updated their websites yet.
Here is a typical webby,
http://www.lakewoodlaser.com/laserAcne.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/features/acne.shtml
It now seems that the sabeacious type which is caused by overproduction of oils by glands in the skin may well be caused by stimulation by deep seated bacteria. How these get there is another matter.
Experiments are still ongoing, but laser treatment is now thought not only to reduce the size of the glands but also to directly kill those bugs.
Experiments have included a combined anti-biotic therapy alongside lasers.Note that the more common laser treatment uses CO2 lasers, the most recent one uses on emitting a blue light - I’m afraid that does not mean much to me since I know little about lasers.
I do not know how the antibiotics were administered, nor too much else, but we had a report on tv about the treatment and how revolutionary it was.
I tried to get a cite this is as close as I can get,
http://content.health.msn.com/content/article/49/40203.htm
Hope this helps, it is not just for severe cases either, it is effective on much milder symptoms and it lasts well.
Here is some good medical advice on acne.
There are four different degrees of acne. All types of acne are “serious” if they affect your body image, but more severe degrees of acne require stronger medications, which come with greater side effects. IN SPITE OF WHAT ABOVE POSTERS BELIEVE, YOU ARE BETTER OFF WITH THE WEAKEST MEDICINE THAT DOES THE JOB. ACCUTANE IS NOT A SUITABLE FIRST-LINE TREATMENT FOR YOUR ACNE!! Accutane IS sometimes the only thing that will work for very severe acne but you should try safer medicines first.
The breakdown is this:
Grade I acne - benzoyl peroxide or antibiotic (erythromycin, clindamycin, etc.) ointments applied 1-2 times/day, wash face twice a day (no more)
Grade II acne (cysts) - oral antibiotics
Grade III acne - isotretinoin creams (may cause skin discolouration)
Grade IV (severe) acne (scars) - Accutane (may cause psychosis, birth defects and other severe side effects I have mentioned in previous posts).
Usually, a gentler and cheaper medicine than Accutane does the trick. In medicine, the goal is not to use nuclear bombs when a little missile will do the trick.
Dr_Pap, MD
I had continuous and bothersome skin problems, but probably not acne, technically. I think that I was just transferring germs to my face without realize all the ways it can happen.
I now do a number of rituals to reduce the re-infection of my face. The effects have been very noticeable and good for about 5 months now.
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before scrubbing my face, I make sure my hands are washed and disinfected, especially after going to the bathroom (TMI)
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I change/launder my pillow case very frequently. I figured that I was putting my face down on a bacterial petri dish. This one has really helped.
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Daily, I use one of those one-use face scrubbing cloths containing salacylic acid, then throw it away. I guess I could use a new face cloth every day, but that’s more laundry.
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I have a handpump thing with 70% propanol for quick sterilization of my fingers if I’m going to poke at my face.
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I use a benzoyl peroxide lotion if my face is starting to develop bumps. I’ve learned to use it early and often before the problem turns into the deep zit from Hades.
I’ve had acne and blackheads since I was 11 or 12. Getting into my mid-30s helped a lot. I didn’t have so many breakouts, but I did get them still, and blackheads continued to be severe. I hate to give in to advertising, but I did try Proactiv, and it really worked well for me. I get NO full-on breakouts; if one starts, it’s usually gone by the next day, and my blackheads are almost non-existent. They’re hardly noticeable at all.
There are all different kinds of acne; my guess about my own is that a major cause was that my skin doesn’t exfoliate very well, and needs lots of help. Before I found Proactiv, the best things that worked for me were the following (expensive) cosmetic combination: Erno Laszlo Sea Mud Cleanser (amazing) with a Pond’s scrub (can’t remember the name, but it comes in a tube and it’s got little bitty silicon beads), followed by Clinique’s Stop Signs and Total Turnaround cream. Oh, and I would use the Body Shop’s self-heating mask a couple of times a week. It softened my skin and made my blackheads at least appear smaller.
Do NOT use scrubs made from things like apricot pits. They are rough on your skin (can cause very minor tearing) and, in my experience, just don’t work.
Good luck. I spent many very miserable years trying to clear up my skin–I hope that you find the right solution for you in this thread!
isn’t that the stuff that used to be recommended to clean wounds?
My brother is a paramedic and he told me that they don’t use that stuff anymore. It not only kills the bad germies but also the good cells.
Be careful with it… if it is what i think it is.
I’ve got fairly bad acne, but have yet to been able to get a perscription that doesn’t suck every last drop of moisture from my skin. However, I can say - DON’T, repeat DON’T use those Biore pore strips. The ones that supposedly, like, pull blackheads out? They don’t work at all (at least for me), and the hurt like the dickens.
I just wash with VERY mild soap 3-4 times a day and am beginning to swear by Clean&Clear’s Dual-action Moisturizer. It’s got salicylic acid and moisturizers in it, which is a must for my skin. Also, I’ve heard that the less you touch your face, the better your skin, as can keeping your hair off of your face.
Good luck!
I think you might be thinking of hydrogen peroxide. It is a pretty good disinfectant. It does have “oxidant” properties. Oxidants may be bad, they certainly do have a role in how cells naturaly destroy themselves. Vitamins C and E may be helpful due to their anti-oxidant ability.
Benzoyl peroxide is in medicines like Clearasil, Oxy pads, etc. It is helpful, but only for minor cases of acne. Blackheads are caused by closed comedones, and could be considered similar to mild acne.
So nobody has any experience with the pore suckers?
Well its really simple. Find someone about your size and build that doesn’t have acne. Drug them. And have someone perform a skin transplant. I know I cured my acne that way.
My daughter had pretty bad acne; I’d say she was between stage two and three. We tried Proactive, all the over-the-counter stuff… even poked around for “natural” cures like lemon juice/strawberry scrubs.
Nothing helped. I was preparing to do the dermatologist route as soon as my insurance kicked in, but something really odd happened.
Now nobody jump on me, because I’m not actually recommending it…
But she did the Atkins induction and has been on the diet for about two months now. Her face is pretty much cleared up, just a few scars here and there. No blackheads at all, and that was the worst. And she hasn’t changed her cleansing routine. She uses clean and clear soap and some Avon brand astringent twice a day.
I have no idea why this helped. Maybe she was sensitive to sugar or starches? But it did help.
just going to mention that for girls hormones might be the place to go.
Cyproterone Acetate is a progesterone-like drug that blocks testosterone receptors in the skin.
i take it combined with 35mcg of ethinylestradiol as Dianette for birth control ( i react really badly to EVERY other progesterone on the market), but it’s really helped my skin.
i think that Dianette isn’t available in the US, but Cyproterone acetate is certainly worth investigating for the ladies if they can.
it has basically the same side effects as any other progesterone (in my case, much less) and helps the problem without stripping anything off your face or having to use antibiotics or retinol compounds.
Acne can be cause by birth control pills, though. In this case, playing with the hormone levels is helpful. But I don’t know if the OP is on BCP (or female).
Dermatologists tell me acne is NOT caused by diet. Personally, I think I get more blackheads after eating very fatty foods, or fasting. I don’t know if I agree with this one or not. Certainly, exposure to oils, french fry grease, oils, paints, chemicals, moisture can make things worse.
They can say that all they like, but I distinctly remember the Great ‘Snickers’ Incident of 1989.
These days I have trouble with cystic acne in particularly TMI-type places. A dermatologist recently put me on Minocycline, which is an antibiotic but also an anti-inflammatory. So far, it’s been just short of miraculous how well it’s working.
“Dermatologists tell me acne is NOT caused by diet.”
Neither dermatologists nor anyone else can say with certainty whether or not YOUR acne is caused by YOUR diet.
What dermatologists or any other kind of acne researcher CAN say with some certainty is that if you take a large number of random people and give some of them a diet popularly believed to cause acne (e.g., french fries, chocolate) and compare the skin of the two groups, you will not see significant differences between the amount of acne in the two groups. This suggests that for any random person who has no information on what causes her to break out, changing her diet is unlikely to affect her acne. This also strongly suggests that the percentage of people whose acne is exacerbated by diet is small.
How long did it take to kick in? I’ve been on them for 2-3 months and haven’t noticed it reducing the oil production.
Full sympathies to the OP and anyone who has to contend with this kind of persistent problem. It must be a real downer at times.
I appreciate that what follows may not be what anyone wants to hear, and may not even be useful, but I’m just offering it in a constructive way and I hope it helps someone.
I’m not a keep-fit freak or a gym bunny. At school I was never into sports and games (I was one of those whose name was last called when choosing sides). In later years I used to think that all the poor saps in a gymnasium needed to get a life.
Then in my mid-thirites everything changed. I started eating and exercising right, based on the excellent advice and information in a book by Bill Phillips called ‘Body for Life’. I think it’s the best book ever written on eating and exercising correctly (and no, I’ve no commercial interest here!). It dispels a lot of myths and mis-information, and is the only book I’ve ever read that offers you the whole picture, integrating attitude, diet and exercise. A very ‘holistic’ approach. I don’t follow the BFL plan to the letter, but I’ve adapted its wisdom to suit my own needs and schedule.
So what’s this got to do with acne and skin problems? Well, the BFL plan does involve a very specific type of aerobic cardio-vascular exercise, just three x 20 minute sessions per week. The book contains the specific details as to how these 20 minute sessions are structured. I have noticed that this regime has produced a quite marked difference to my own skin, and indeed the workouts deliver a very ‘flushed out’ and ‘clean healthy glow’ kind of feeling to the skin.
I realise I’m not a doctor, and I don’t have letters after my name to do with dermatological expertise. There can be many different kinds of skin problems, and underlying causes. But when you’ve tried every kind of chemical and cream, and every other ‘dab it on’ solution, maybe you could try looking at the information in the BFL book. There’s plenty of advice on diet and nutrition which I found really useful in sorting out my own problem (being overweight), but which I believe would also help people with skin troubles. The book is also very useful when it comes to building a regular exercise programme combining some aerobic workouts with weights work.
Unlike many creams and chemicals and treatments, it cannot do your skin any harm, and it can only do good. And there are a zillion other benefits too.
Good luck.
oh… well… the guy is right. if the shitty stuff that did nothing for me works for you then of course dont use accutane. accutane can also kill your liver too, and something in there about cholesterol… cant be too high cause accutane will make it go up.
i didnt have bad acne, it just WOULD NOT GO AWAY.
oh, yea, blackheads would not go away before accutane even after i washed my face 5x a day. i could sit there and squeeze them all out and in 2 days they would be back no matter what.
now, like another poster said, i never wash my face except what it gets in the shower and i have no problems at all. its not really due to dirt, according to my dermatologist, its due to the skin cells that line pores or something like that not flaking off like they are supposed to, and piling up, then blocking the pore, and blah blah red puss ugly stuff… etc.
also, i seem to actually break out a tiny bit if i take hot hot showers… maybe its just me but it seems to happen 100% of the time, i try to not take super hot showers because of this.
also, the whole chocolate causes acne… well, no one i know ever believed that, but my mom (shes about 39 i think) does get 1 or 2 pimples if she eats a chocolate candy bar… weird huh.
so pretty much try everything in this post starting with the cheapest thing you can first… if nothing works well try the big gun, it WILL work, but there can be consequences.
Well, I took Accutane my senior year in high school and it totally wiped out my acne (which has come back somewhat since then, but nowhere near as badly as I had it before). I did have very chapped lips and dry nasal passages. But, I did beforehand (and still do, though not nearly as bad).
This was after I tried Retin-A and Binzamaycin and whatnot. None of those worked at all.
My understanding was that the birth defects with Accutane only occured when the babies were conceived while the patient was taking Accutane or while it was still in their system (up to a year or so after). Is this not true? Are any future babies I have going to look like “E.T.”? Can a doctor assuage my fears?
Eep…
Daphne, you’re safe. Accutane causes birth defects IF it’s taken by a woman WHILE she’s pregnant.
So, you know, . . . don’t do that.