I was reading this over and this statement really concerns me.
A piece of advice, when treating acne: there are a lot of sufferers out there, and so many of them who have found a working treatment for their acne assumes that it is the cure for acne. I work in customer service for a company who sells one of the products listed in this thread. I talk to a lot of people who have been successful and they are wholly convinced that other treatments (including Accutane) are hokum and don’t work at all because it wasn’t the solution for them, and for people who feel the same way about our product of course as well.
Accutane is great and I’m glad when it improves someone’s life. However, it’s not for everyone. Leaping to the most powerful prescription treatment right away is not a good idea. Sometimes people do need Accutane, oral antibiotics, and what have you. Sometimes, they’d be better off (or at the very least spending less) with a milder course of treatment.
Whatever you do, make sure you follow the directions to what you’re using. I see the most failure because people don’t use a treatment long enough, or they don’t follow how it’s supposed to be used, and they skip from one thing to another because the first one doesn’t work right away. Accutane has a long course of treatment, for example. Virtually any preventative product is going to take upwards of a month or two to really take effect because acne can take weeks to show up on the skin from when it starts.
Hang in there. I could never believe, as someone who doesn’t suffer from this problem myself, how emotionally difficult it can be, but it is.
If you read any acne boards a lot of people* have had success with taking the supplement B5. You need to take a rather large amount for it to work (and then taper it off accordingly) though but many people seem to get relief with it and it isn’t as severe as Accutane afaik.
I don’t think there is one cure-all for acne. There are different reasons why people have skin problems which would be why a derm. is a good first step.
Ihad the same problem and now take 100mg of Doxycycline. I took two years and a good Derm. to solve my problem. Once I started the meds though it took about two-three months for maority of it to clear up though.
I’m on my second bottle of Carley’s and I love it. I didn’t have severe acne when I started it - but I do have very oily/breakout-prone skin. I have even bought bottles for other people because I like it so much. I came across the recommendation on another message board.
This might be little condolence, but I had bad acne from 16 to about 24 when it suddenly almost disappeared completely. I’m now thirty and have very few occurences of breaking out. It is complete hell though. From 16 to 24 is the age when I wanted women the most. The acne can just starve someone’s self confidence. But age is typically the ultimate cure for a lot of people. Was in my case, and I tried every astringent and antibiotics available. Could strange my dermatoligist for not prescribing Accutane. He didn’t feel my condition was severe enough for it. But the psychological pain I experienced during those years would have more than justified it’s use.
