Acne and Acne Prevention 101

Acne is a horrible thing that is more than just a few bumps on your face, it can end up lowering confidence, self esteem, and even lead to physical damage such as skin cancer.

What is acne and how it forms

A pimple is just dirt/dust/stuff/oil inside the pores (microscopic holes) in your skin that is stuck. There are germs in all that gunk and so your body sends white blood cells to fight them, with all the dead white blood cells and gunk floating around, your skin swells up into a pimple.

A pimple is formed when dust/dirt/whatever float into your pores and is mixed together with the oils from your face. they coagulate and become too big to just wash out of your pores, and hence, a pimple forms.

How to prevent acne

A general way to prevent acne is to wash your face three times a day, twice with soap, once without. The soap you use should be a gentle soap, don't fall for those "Blah blah extra ingredients fight acne blah blah". The point of washing your face is to lessen oils and wash off dust/dirt. that's why it's called washing your face.

The soap that i recommend would be Cetaphil facewash, it won't feel like much, but you'll get used to it. It is gentle on the skin and does the job.

If you can't use cetaphil, just use a bar of Dove.

If you have a bad case of acne, you will also want to invest in benzoyl peroxide cream or gel. Benzoyl peroxide comes in different strengths, weakest would be 2.5%, strongest would be who knew what, i've seen 20% before. ALL YOU NEED IS 2.5%, anything higher will not have any better effect and will only dry out your skin.

Depending on your condition, you can either apply a layer onto your skin once a day(at night) or twice (night and morning), After you wash your face.

The benzoyl peroxide cream I would recommend is either Neutrogena 2.5%On-The-Spot Acne treatment. It's a small little tube, you can find it at your local Longs Drugs, Walmart, Walgreen etc.
The Neutrogena OTS is expensive for it's size, so if you know you'll be using a lot you can also get the Clear Skin Regimen 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide gel at www.acne.org (Also a great source of information btw)

Benzoyl Peroxide can and most likely will dry out your skin. That is why I would also recommend getting a lotion for your skin.

I recommend Cetaphil lotion, apply it as needed, usually in the morning after applying benzoyl peroxide.

There are also many myths surrounding acne, I'll address a few.

Your Diet

There is no set ground for your diet, everybody is different. Myself for example, chocolate will break me out almost instantly, but I can eat as much fried foods as I want and be fine. If you know something breaks you out, obviuosly stay the fuck away from it.

Acne has been known to be caused by friend foods, dairy products, chocolate, sugars, meat among some to list. None of these are in cement, see what works for you.

Also, just improve your overall health and your acne will improve. While there are many foods that won't exactly break you out, it would be best in the long term to stay away from proccessed, greasy, and sugary foods.

Sleep

If you get on a regular sleep schedule, your acne should get better.

How to TREAT acne

By all means, do NOT pop a pimple, if you don't get the clump of dirt/dust/oil out, it will bury itself deeper into your skin and your pimple will just get deeper and bigger. Scarring can and likely will occur if you pop your pimple.

If you really MUST kill that pimple, heat up a needle to kill the germs, or dip it in alcohol. Gently poke a hole on your pimple, and using a tissue, carefully drain out the white goo, don't go too far, just enough to let the pimple die down a bit and lose the whitehead.

NOTE: only do this if you can see a whitehead, if you don't see anything, don't fuck with it.

That is a last resort, I do NOT recommend popping your pimples, ever. No matter how bad it is, people aren't going to remember it. Well maybe if you know you're going to go somewhere where you will have cameras snapping at you =P

The best way to approach a pimple is to just SMOTHER it with benzoyl peroxide. In addition to your nightly and/or morningly benzoyl peroxide, just give that area an extra dab of benzoyl peroxide. You can also spot treat it throughout the day if you wish. Using this technique, the pimple should die down in 2-4 days o the point where no one will notice it.

Try to keep away from your pimples, do not touch them.

Remember that physical scars can occur from pimples even if you do not mess with them. However this is rare, so don't touch your pimples.

There are two main types of scars.

1. Red mark - These will probably last 1-3 months, then they go away. hooray.

2. Physical scars (Indents, enlarged pores, raised skin [hypertrophic scars] among some) - These ARE PERMANENT, well maybe not permanent, you may notice them start to fade after 10-20 years. Enjoy popping your pimples

There are many other things you can do to help prevent/treat acne, you can read about all of them on www.acne.org

They have a forum there also, I'm Kev07 there too, though I dont frequent that forum anymore.