Guide to Over-the-counter Acne Treatments

How many over-the-counter acne treatments have you tried?

Well, just to begin, I have tried about three dozen.

I searched all over the internet, picked my friends' brains, looked for the acne treatments in the magazines, TV, and even the books, and I tried all of them that seemed promising.

The result?

Just a big dent on my bank account and a drier and flakier skin with maybe more acne than before.

Those methods that I used to find the perfect acne treatments do not work AND it is a big waster of money, so if you are doing that, STOP.

I do not have all the answers about acne and I am not claiming that I do.

I'm just simply trying to save you a lot of money on acne treatments.

And maybe, just maybe, give you some tips to get that acne treatment that works for you.

Just to get you straight, first of all, no matter how much the company raves about their product, saying that it will cure your acne and you will have a perfectly clear skin, like in 10 days, you will not get the results like this. Just check out that results not typical find print at the bottom. So, you should never expect this kind of results.

When I first started out, I tried the persa gel 10 by clean and clear, because that was the acne treatment that all the magazines were raving about. But, I should have never fallen for that trap. After the first night of trying it, thinking that I was going to wake up with perfect skin, I woke up with a burning skin. I looked at the mirror, my face looked red! It turned out that I have a big sensitivity to benzoyl peroxide. This is the thing that you have to watch out for the most!If you have sensitivity to something, say benzoyl peroxide, like me, you should not buy another product with the same active ingredient again. Just so you know, a lot of people have a sensitivity to benzoyl peroxide.

But, here's the thing, benzoyl peroxides do work. They do help clear up acne, maybe not perfectly, but they do. So, if you have tried a product with benzoyl peroxide and it does not have any negative effect on you, there is a good chance it will help you clear up your acne. So, you should use one. A good one to start out is Neutrogena On-the-Spot Acne Treatment because it has only 2.5% benzoyl peroxide so that you will have less complications, it's very cheap, and I have seen this work on a few of my friends.

For the people like me that cannot use benzoyl peroxides, or just do not like them, there are still many great products for you.

But another thing to do is determine what type of acne you have.

If you have cystic acne, a big red one that hurts, you need a different treatment than the whiteheads. I used to use the same treatments for the two very different types of acnes, and I found that it works so much better when using two different ones. And don not worry the treatments don notcost that much.

Most of the treatments available on the market are mainly formulated to treat cystic acnes. So, you have a lot of options for treating cystic acne. I personally do not like the cheap products that you can buy at any drugstore for many reasons. Most importantly those aren not as good as just a little more expensive ones that you can buy at the cosmetic stores like sephora or Macy's, so I usually go to the cosmetic store to buy anything that I put on my face, at least.

The one that helped me the most is Origin's Spot Remover, and this has so many positive reviews over the internet, I have to say, if you have not been trying this, you should try it. It works quite fast. Origins swears that acne will clear up overnight but it take a couple of days at best and normally three or four days. But this is the quickest I have seen, so I highly recommend this. If you have tried this but wasn't for you, try Clinique's or Benefit's acne spot treatments. I hear those are quite nice.

If you want to try something that prevents cystic acnes, Philosophy's on a clear day H2O2 works really well.

My main concern always is whiteheads. They are so hard to get rid of. If I get one, they just seem to stay for a few months and nothing works on them. But I have found my answer! It's Mario Badescu's Drying Lotion. It works!!! I had not gotten a sleep in a few days and got so many whiteheads on my forehead and nothing cleared them up, but after a day of using this, the number of my whiteheads shrinked to almost half. After a week or so, I only had a very small number left. If you are suffering from whiteheads, I just want to tell you this worked for me!

Just as a last tip, I don not recommend that you buy a acne line by one brand. I don't know, maybe it works, but most of the moisturizers in that lines are horrible, so if you fell like you can, buy just that cleanser or the treatment.

I hope you got good tips from this.

And, remember, find what you need to treat before you start buying treatments!