Acne Treatment

A few healthy habits and little bit of care will go a long way toward preserving your healthy, radiant complexion.

You have enough issues, challenges, and drama right now; why add acne to your stressors? Every adolescent breaks-out from time to time.

Stress does it; hormone fluctuations do it; lack of proper sleep and a steady diet of junk food contribute to it. And sometimes it’s just bad luck.

Of course, you will get a big pimple just before your big date with your dream lover.

1. Minimize Coffee Intake

Give your favorite barista a break. You love coffee because it sends your system into overdrive. You probably realize coffee’s risks to your heart, but you may overlook the other risks associated with your love of latte.

Stimulants promote your skin’s production of excess oil, and they throw your endocrine system out of equilibrium. In other words, that grande mocha you just enjoyed put two out of three acne causes into your system. Stay too long in the coffee house, and the inside air will add bacteria to give you the complete set.

2. Eat Healthy Foods

No matter how desperately you want to believe the hamburger is Nature’s perfect food, you must turn the page. Rediscover the green group; explore the fruit group. Give low fat yogurt a try-out. Two out of three American adolescents are over-weight; and obesity takes its toll everywhere in your body. Therefore, everything you do to control your weight contributes to your skin’s health and vitality.

Just as important as adding a lot more fruits and vegetables to your plate, you should choose fresh foods in preference to packaged and processed items. Nutritionists believe the additives in processed food make you more susceptible to acne.

3. Follow a Daily Skin Care Regimen

Thoroughly cleanse your face first thing each morning and just before you go to bed at night. A proper “beauty” regimen and a healthy anti-acne program are almost identical, and the three-step process takes very little time.

Carefully, completely wash your face with an anti-bacterial soap. All-natural soaps with essential plants oils both cleanse and heal. Try pure glycerin soaps enriched with lavender, chamomile, and oatmeal for maximum cleansing, soothing, and nourishing.

Then, use a relatively gentle skin toner to get the microscopic stuff your soap might have missed. Apply toner with a cotton ball, taking advantage of the cotton’s gentle abrasive to free trapped dirt and dead skin. Complete your routine with a healthy, lightweight moisturizer to nourish emerging skin and protect it from sun, wind, and pollution. Of course, when you go outside, use sunscreen.

Minimize your make-up, and use all natural powders in preference to heavy oil-based foundations.

4. Do not Smoke

Among the millions of serious and compelling reasons for not smoking, count your concern for your skin. Toxins from cigarette smoke accumulate in your hair and skin, making skin cells more prone to blockage and infection. If you do not smoke now, don’t start. If you do smoke, make withdrawal from nicotine one of your top priorities. If you cannot quit for health reasons, then quit for the sake of your vanity.

5. Purchase Safe, Natural Acne Products

Pay far more attention to healthy habits than powerful products. Changing your diet and sleeping well may do far more good than raising the concentration of benzoyl peroxide in your skin toner.

When you do try new acne remedies, consult your physician, dermatologist, or pharmacist; and, even after you get professional recommendations, take time to study product labels. Keep in mind that all this stuff goes on your face, where you can inhale and ingest it. Many dermatologists strongly recommend all-natural lotions enriched with aloe, Tea Tree oil, lavender, and chamomile—at least as effective as their chemical equivalents, and safe for your body and Mother Earth.

6. Care for Your Hair

Oily hair contributes to clogged pores and annoying break-outs across your forehead and around your hair line. Just about all your healthy skin care habits apply equally to your hair: Use an all-natural shampoo enriched with essential botanicals, and avoid waxy conditioners that make your hair shine and fluff by coating it in silicone. When you wash your hair, wash it all the way down to the roots, and aggressively massage your scalp, too. Limit your use of heavy hair products, many of which put-back the oil you just washed away and add to the damage by clogging hair shafts and your scalp with wax, silicone, and petroleum by-products. In fact, the most popular leave-in conditioner on the market today contains exactly the same lubricant you use to free sticky wheels around your house.

7. Exercise. Play. Dance. Move.

Exercise to boost your body’s immune system, build healthy circulation, and reduce stress. Your skin has its own life cycle, and your body completely replaces all of your skin cells in a regular pattern and rotation. Everything you do to condition your body promotes development of healthy skin. Of course, in order to maximize your workout’s benefits and reduce your risk of clogged pores, shower well immediately after you exercise. When you shower, use pure glycerin soap—no harsh chemical additives to irritate delicate skin.

8. Hydrate.

Nearly three-quarters of American teen-agers and adolescents suffer chronic dehydration. Many people mistake thirst for hunger, and many mistakenly believe soft drinks and heavily sugared teas and fruit drinks replace vital fluids. Even electrolyte replacement beverages cannot effectively substitute for pure, cool water. Gatorade, Propel, and Vitamin Water contain excessive sugar and salt, and some of the flavors and mixes contain additives likely to harm your skin. Don’t even think about energy drinks.

Water cleanses and detoxifies your body, promoting healthy digestion and perspiration. Although you can, in fact, drink too much water, triggering a kind of intoxication, you should try to drink at least eight 10- to 12-ounce glasses of filtered water each day.

9. Use All-Natural Skin Products

Learn to read and analyze product labels, keeping a sharp eye for petroleum distillates, waxes, silicones, and alcohol in cleansers and lotions. All those synthetics not only sabotage your skin care regime but also contribute to pollution of the water supply.

Instead of grabbing the most popular commercial skin care products, look for and invest in all-natural products enriched with essential botanicals. Plant extracts gently cleanse and nourish your skin, and they have anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-oxidant properties chemicals cannot match. Many acne patients rave about deep-cleansing products that include Dead Sea Salt, a great exfoliant and a source of minerals your skin craves. Also a stand-out among the naturals, Tea Tree oil especially fosters growth of healthy new skin. Lavender ranks first among Nature’s most powerful cleansers, and it, too, comes fully equipped with anti-bacterials and anti-oxidants. Chamomile—same story. Many “aromatherapy” products combine these three plant essences not only for their cleansing properties but also because they work as potent anti-inflammatories. During your worst acne break-outs, infected bores become inflamed—puffy, extremely red, and sensitive. Especially chamomile soothes and relieves your most painful and embarrassing blemishes. Best of all, plant-rich products smell absolutely wonderful.

10. Relax. Chill. Let go of your stress.

Stress also sends your system into overdrive, triggering its production of adrenalin and cortisol. Cortisol makes your body store sugars and fats—precisely the two nutrients you want to reduce. Stress also makes your perspiration more acidic, contributing to break-outs and irritating blemishes you already have. Most importantly, stress depletes your immune system, compromising your body’s capacity forwarding-off infection.