Best Acne Treatments Start With Understanding Your Current Lifestyle
Tuesday, December 7th, 2010If you happen to be searching for the best acne treatments, before you choose your treatment I would suggest that you take a little memory trip back to your teen years, and assess how your skin used to be back then. For individuals still in their teens, I would recommend that you check and see what is going on in your life right now, and see what may be different or has changed prior to you having your problem skin! I know most of you may think that it’s all part of nature, or it’s part of your family genetics, and you would like to find that miracle cure! However, the true problem may exist because of your lifestyle choices, and until you fully understand why you’re currently experiencing severe blemish breakouts, or increased blackheads in your pores, you can then follow the cycle of your consistent outbreaks that cause you to feel helpless in your battle. It’s a fact that our society is placing more pressures on students, and many working individuals. Schools are placing more study loads on the student, and the business industry is downsizing, causing more hours to be placed on the employees! What this does to your body and your mind is that it places an incredible load of stress on you, as well as the affects, which can easily change your daily lifestyle. You may be asking, how does this all come into play with my acne condition, and how do I connect these facts to my acne treatment? There are many studies out today indicating that “stress” and the way you take care of your body, and the products you may be using are a contributing factor to your pimples and blackheads. If you can look back when you had good skin and see what you may have been doing differently, you could hopefully make some lifestyle changes for the better. With these changes, you could possibly see positive results, and avoid having to take acne medications prescribed by your dermatologist. There are many elements that can be contributing to your skin blemishes, and the ingredients in the select treatment product you’re using can also be the cause of your skin irritation, which is causing your reoccurring pimple breakouts. So let’s look at some topics that have come up in some studies, and see if we can clarify some of the elements that may be affecting your current lifestyle. Facial Medications, Caffeine, Stress, And The Sun! What Do They Have In Common, And How Does It Affect Your Blemish Situation? I’m not a doctor, and I don’t have any professional skin care background, but what I do have is a common sense approach to issues. When I read about certain acne products, and also the food and drink we consume on a daily basis, plus the type of life we live makes sense to me when we mix it all together and try and link it to our skin condition. First we should talk about coffee, pop and alcohol, and see what the connection is to skin problems. In my opinion, the way I interpret coffee, pop and alcohol is that they contribute several elements to your body that assist in major changes to your skin. Caffeine and sugar in coffee and pop, plus alcohols are partial diuretics that assist in drawing more water out of your body than bringing water back in, plus they’re a stimulant and can prevent you from getting the recommended amount of sleep that your body needs, which ranges from at least 7 to 8 hours per night. What this all means is that by consuming these products daily, they could be changing the entire dynamics of your body, and affecting you dramatically without you even realizing the changes. What happens is this: your body may become over stimulated with all these items going through your system, and either consumed separately or in combination, your skin may seriously become affected by these products. Depending on your body’s tolerance level, your reactions could be reflected by the daily consumption. Let’s look at the connection of the cleansers, creams, and acne cosmetics you’re currently using, and see why some may not work to prevent your acne breakouts or increased blackheads. When taking a common sense approach to the ingredients, avoid any product that will shrink your pores! Now this information may contradict products that say they reduce pore size, and make them look less visible. What that means I don’t know. But when you think about it for a moment, if you have a product that shrinks your pores, that’s going to increase the chance that you will have more oil trapped in your skin. The more of the skin’s oil that is potentially blocking your pores, the higher chance you’re going to form blackheads and whiteheads, plus the trapped oil will be tasty food for bacteria that feeds off the oil and dead skin, eventually turning it into a nasty blemish. Think about that, and if it makes sense to you, then avoid products that have any astringent agents in them. The sun is one that I have been very confused about for a long time, but again when it was explained to me, it made total sense, and now I really understand the benefits and the damages it can cause. The sun actually can help you in your battle on acne; however, the time you spend in the sun can make the big difference. I found out that the sun actually aids in killing bacteria on your skin, but you should limit your time to approximately 15 minutes per day, because when you spend long periods of time in the sun, it will eventually dry and reduce the pores in your skin. Now like above, what happens when the pores shrink? Absolutely, trapped oil and the formation of zits! Stress, in my opinion, is the biggest contributor to your body’s lifestyle changes, and believe it or not, it seems to tie in with everything above, because stress is caused by many elements from the types of food you consume, to the everyday lifestyle you lead with your work and play. Again, I’m not a doctor, but even with my own body I notice that if I don’t get enough sleep, or I worry about a project that has to be completed, and the everyday choices I make in cleaning my skin all is in some way a contributor to stress, and the changes in my body. So when you sit back and see if you can adjust anything in the way you live your life for the better, you may be on the right track to not only a healthier lifestyle, but also clearer, blemish free skin!
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For some people, acne represents nothing more than the key to the door into adulthood - almost a rite of passage as the body changes. As the most common disease in the world, it is often taken for granted that spots, blackheads and greasy skin will stake their temporary claim on the faces of almost everyone in the world.
However, for approximately 15% of people, these spots will persist, or be widespread and scarring. With surprisingly poor, inadequate information available to teenagers about acne management, many do not even realise the pharmacy assistant and pharmacist are able to provide help.
How much do you really know about acne and its causes? Do you know that there is no proven link with diet and acne? Did you realise that not everyone grows out of having acne, with 5% of women and 1% of men in their 40’s still suffering from a ‘teenage’ problem?
What are the Common Acne Myths?
The starting point of correct acne management should start from clearing up the myths:
1. Acne is caused by food. Scientific studies have not found a link between diet and acne. Prisoners in the United States were enrolled on a trial to determine whether chocolate had a direct effect upon the sebaceous glands. At the end of the trial, it was concluded that acne was not affected by chocolate consumption. However, it is always sensible to advise a healthy, balanced diet, whilst reassuring that food will not affect acne.
2. Acne is contagious. Doctors have studied the effect of extracting pus from one spot and injecting it directly into unaffected skin. This experiment concluded that it did not spread spots.
3. Acne is caused by dirt. Spots are caused by activity beneath the skin and therefore surface dirt will play only a small role in the formation of acne. People think that the black in a blackhead is caused by dirt, but it is the skin’s natural melanin, which turns black once it comes into contact with the air. Some people will even claim that over-washing can cause acne, but this may be hard to prove.
4. Acne is caused by too many hormones. Hormones have a large role to play in the formation of acne, but it is easy to misunderstand this as the body producing too many hormones. In one acne clinic held at a top Leeds centre for acne research, all patients attending that day’s clinic were asked to provide a blood sample, which was later analysed for hormone levels. There was no significant increase in male hormones in these patients, which suggested that it is therefore sensitivity to male hormones present in normal levels in the skin that is to blame.
5. Everyone grows out of acne. Acne usually has a four to eight year timeline from start to finish. If you get it when you are 12 you should se the end of it between 16 and 20. The average age range for acne is 14 to 22. However Acne can persist into adulthood and 8% of acne sufferers are over 40 It is rare to have acne for a lifetime, but some people will not grow out of their acne. Research from Leeds University suggests that acne lasts on average for eight years.
6. Acne and spots are not same. Many people will try to distinguish between acne and spots. In fact, acne is just the medical name doctors give for spots. However, someone with the occasional, mild spot would not be described as having clinical acne. Approximately 15% of all people who have ’spots’ will require further help from a doctor to treat their skin.
7. Stress causes acne. The ordinary stress in day to day living is not an important factor in acne. Only situations of extreme stress, such as divorce, exams or death of a close family member may induce acne or make existing acne worse; however this is not common and will usually respond well to usual acne treatments.