Types Of Acne Care That You Can Live With
No matter what your age, acne care can be tricky business. What works for everyone else might make your acne worse. Plus, there are a lot of half truths concerning acne, as well as myths that keep people from using proper acne care.
The fact is that acne can affect your self esteem, as well as how people look at you. This is especially true if you have cystic acne or acne scars.
While acne care for people with mild to moderate acne is not usually a terrible enigma, people with cystic acne, considered the worst type of acne, can be very difficult. For individuals that consistently develop cystic acne lesions or have lesions that will not go away, the majority of over-the-counter acne medications have little effect. In this event, the help of a dermatologist is usually needed.
Depending on the severity of your acne, your complexion and how oily your skin is, a dermatologist has a wide variety of acne care options to control cystic acne or even remove acne scars. Oral medications are the oldest type of treatment for severe acne, but many of these medications are very harsh and have some very undesirable side effects. If a dermatologist does suggest an oral acne medication, you should inquire to the side effects and possible alternatives.
Lasers are becoming a more common solution for severe acne care. Lasers can even be used to remove acne scars, if used properly. However, an inexperienced laser operator can cause permanent scarring.
There are two types of lasers used to treat acne, called ablative and nonablative lasers. Ablative lasers are the oldest type and the most potentially dangerous. Both types of lasers shrink the oil glands, which slows oil production and prevents acne breakouts, but ablative lasers destroy the outermost layer of your skin. This causes the area treated by ablative lasers to be very red, sensitive and painful until the skin fully heals. Because the scar tissue is destroyed, the skin that grows back will lack acne scars or wrinkles.
Nonablative lasers, on the other hand, do not harm the outer layer of skin, but get rid of acne scars by stimulating collegen growth. However, nonablative lasers, because they are gentler, require multiple treatments, while ablative lasers only require a single treatment.
One over-the-counter acne care product that can help reduce acne scarring and wrinkles is Azelaic acid. It is commonly found in the form of a lotion that increases skin moisture. Although it does not work for everyone, many people do report a reduction in acne scars if they use Azelaic acid.
Proper acne care can be costly and heartbreaking when you find out it doesn’t work. Rather than spend your time with one miracle remedy after another, it might be best to seek out the advice and guidance of a professional dermatologist to deal with cystic acne quickly before scarring occurs.
Acne is a common skin problem for most adolescents and also afflicts some adults. People of all ages and backgrounds have had to deal with acne at some point. Hence, there has long been a desire to prevent it or cure it. We will look at some of the causes of acne as well as some of the ways in which people have followed treatment. Our hope is that you will gain a better understanding of why people get acne and what they can do for treatment and prevention.
What is acne?
For thousands of years, people have struggled with acne. Known in some cultures as a curse from the gods for immoral behavior, acne has largely been misunderstood. Only within the past century or so has the medical field been able to identify the true causes of acne. As one might expect, this has allowed those who suffer the blemishes to gain a certain sense of relief.
An inflammatory disease of the skin, acne is the result of severe changes in the skin’s structure. Acne is thought to be the body’s unusual response to a relatively normal production of testosterone, a male hormone. Rather than a sign that one’s skin is not clean, acne is more closely associated with the hormonal and bacterial activity beneath the skin, which eventually leads to the irritation of the skin. The result is the red swelling we know as acne.