How to Manage Adult Acne

1.) Wash your face every morning and every night, without fail. For people with acne prone skin, skipping even once could lead to a small breakout. So it's important to develop a routine that you can stick to consistently. To increase the effectiveness of your washing routine, make sure to massage your face with your soap and warm water for at least 60 seconds. Don't rush the wash, or you'll leave dirt behind.

2.) Wash your pillowcases at least once a week. This goes double for anything that touches your face on a regular basis, such as scarves in the winter. Pillowcases especially can collect bacteria because as we all know, we drool when we sleep. It may be gross, but it's true.

3.) If you wear makeup, use cold cream to remove your makeup before you wash your face. If you don't do this, the soap intended to wash your face will actually only remove the makeup and leave dirt and oil on your skin.

4.) Use astringent after washing your face. Even the use of cold cream and soap can leave dirt on your face, and for acne-prone skin, this can create problems. By swiping a cotton ball with astringent over your face lightly after each wash, you can ensure that you'll have squeaky clean skin. Astringent, it's not just for teens!

5.) Don't wash your face more than twice a day. If you wash your face too many times, this could dry out your skin and cause your pores to overproduce oil in order to try to re-moisturize naturally. You want to clean your skin without interrupting its natural rhythms.

6.) Start paying attention to how often you touch your face. Sometimes, we can subconsciously touch our faces multiple times throughout the day. It could be a nervous tick or an old habit. When you start paying attention to this, you may notice that you are touching areas that could be trouble spots for you. As you touch your face throughout the day, you could be getting dirt, oil, and bacteria on your skin. This is fairly common, but can cause problems for people with acne-prone skin.

7.) Use oil-free moisturizer. Some moisturizers are loaded with colors, dyes, and worst of all, oils. So know that just any moisturizer won't do. Experiment with natural moisturizers and oil free lotions to see if these make any difference. Sometimes the very products we use to try to prevent acne are actually causing it. Every person's skin is drastically different and reacts to products in vastly different ways. Don't assume that a product will work for you just because it's formulated for the treatment of acne or blemishes. Pay attention to how it affects your skin personally, and if it's not working for you, try a new product.

8.) Exfoliate gently and regularly. Try a facial scrub with some slight abrasives in it, something like St. Ives Apricot Scrub. Scrubs like these are great for acne prone skin for a number of reasons. They help prevent blackheads and other blemishes, and they are better than using loofahs or other scrubbing tools, which can often collect bacteria and make acne worse.