Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I get acne in the same spots?

When an object is placed on the skin for a long time, occlusion or moisture and irritation may develop. However acne is not contagious because the P.acnes bacteria is located deep down in the follicle base. There are other type of bacterial infections such as staphylococcal or streptoccal infections which could cause rashes that mimic acne.

Can I use tooth paste to clear my pimples ?

Yes. Tooth paste does work for pimples - the new red blemishes and cysts but we advise against using it. It works by drying out the pimples,tighten the pores and surrounding skin area making them easy to come off. Picking your pimple after the tooth paste might cause bleeding in the corresponding spot area. Furthermore, you will experience burning and stinging sensation on your skin. You can expect great burning sensation and scar if you accidentally apply it on open pimple wounds.

Tooth paste definitely make your skin feel dry. Don't ever leave it over night. Even leave it longer than 15 minutes will make red spots to appear on your skin. So you should follow up with a mosituriser such as Clean & Clear Oil Free Day Moisturizer,SPF 15 which contains sunscreen to protect your skin from sun rays.

However, using tooth paste seems to be a INSTANT home remedy to reduce your pimple swelling. Apply tooth paste to pimple spot only, not the surrounding skin surface.

Does lemon juice help in clearing acne ?

You can either apply lemon juices onto your skin or drink it. Both method will help you reduce your blemished but it does indeed take time, around 3 to 4 weeks. Combining lemon juice with a gentle cleanser such as Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser will produce significant improvement. Dab cotton pad soaked with lemon juice onto your acne pimples and leave it over night. If you experience burning sensation, dilute the lemon juice to a lower concentration. Lemon juice also fades scar spot.

Lemon juice contains citric acid which is a form of Alpha Hydroxy Acids that is normally used in acne medications to exfoliate skin surface. It will slough off dead skin, promote skin elasticity, and enabe new skin cell growth rise from underneath. It also flushes out pores and keeps your skin feeling fresh and bright.

Is acne contagious?

Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes) bacterium plays a significant role in the inflammatory types of acne. However, this acne causing bacterium lives deep down in your hair follicle where it is not easily from the upper layer of skin, even by close contact. P.acnes bacterium is not typically active except under very low oxygen concentration such as when the opening of the pore is blocked. The clogged pores makes the chances of spreading the bacterium even less likely as there is less access to the outside world.

By the time a pustule is visible on your skin, it means that your body has already reacted to the infection and the pus is actually a mixture of dead bacteria, white blood cells and skin cells.

P.acnes can also colonize the nose, where it can spread acne locally to the face and back through touching the nose and then touching the face or back. However, acne is not know to spread from person to person and is not considered contagious. Furthermore, P.acnes rarely present in animals.

Why does my face feel oily throughout the day?

How often should I wash my face?

Washing the face keeps it clean and oilless. This lessens the chances of having acne flares due to clogged pores and bacteria infection. For this reason, acne sufferers tend to wash their faces excessively to reduce the oiliness of their skin. However, there is no scientific data to show that the lack of face washing causes acne or frequent washing improves the acne conditon. However, overwashing or scrubbing your face will not only make your skin irritated and redden but also worsen the inflammatory stage of acne.

Normal washing actually does not affect the reservoir of oil in the follicle which is the place where acne originate. Furthermore, antibacterial soaps that contains triclosan and chlorhexidine can be irritating and do not kill P.acnes bacteria. However, a benzoyl peroxide wash does reduce and kills P. acnes bacteria even when used as a cleanser but even with a benzoyl peroxide wash, overwashing still irritate the skin.

Sometimes, you may not get acne but an irritant dermatitis (a skin inflammation) that look likes acne. When you treat your face with acne medication, the rashes can get worse. So in these cases, what you should do is wash your face less; twice a day by using a gentle surfactant free cleanser followed by a moisturizer.

Generally, washing in the evening is more important than in the morning. However, if you have heavy exercise and sweat a lot during a particular day, you should get your face wash. Do you know that you should use different products according to the season. A gentle, moisturizing product is more suitable during the winter, with only occasional exfoliation. For the warmer and more humid summer, use a more drying, foaming cleansers and more frequent exfoliation.

Cleansers come in various forms. Some are foaming washes which are drying and irritating while others are nonlathering that is less irritating and foam. Microbeads cleansers exfoliate while they clean and some other types comes in cleansing cloth use with or without water which are great for travel use. Finally, medicated cleansers generally contain benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid or AHA.

Put in mind that an exfoliating cleanser should be used only once or twice a week or less depending on the sensitivity of your skin. For some acne sufferer, cleanser is the only acne treatment that is needed.

For acne sufferers who are allergic to topical benzoyl peroxide based products, a benzoyl peroxide cleanser may be the ideal solution as their acne treatment. As the benzoyl peroxide is only left on the skin for a few minutes before being rinsed and then followed by a face moisturizer, the chances for getting a skin irritation is very low. However, benzoyl peroxide is still effective in killing the acne causing bacteria even with such short time of contact with the skin. Thus, a benzoyl peroxide cleanser is successful in treating acne with minimum irritation.

Do I need to treat my pimples ?

This question is often asked by people with one or two pimples at a time. Of course, the decision to treat the pimples is entirely up to each individual. Some people have many acne lesions and do not seem to mind while others are full of worries even with one pimple, especially on their nose.

Let us put it this way. If you get one new acne lesion per month with each lesion leave behind a scar, you will have 12 new scars per year. Therefore, it would be wise to treat the acne in order to prevent new acne lesions from forming and clear existing one so as to minimize the occurrence of permanent scarring.

Wherever possible, avoid squeezing your acne lesions at this might lead to permanent scarring. Picking or squeezing at acne lesions also leads to a longer existence of your lesion and not to mention the associated pain that developed at the acne spots.

Anyway, by observing factors such as the duration and severity of your acne lesions, whether they are itchy and painful, the duration you have acne, your past response to acne treatment and the tendency of scarring and hyperpigmentation can greatly guide you in seeking treatment.It will help your dermatologist to decide the appropriate treatment for you too.

Does facial treatment help clear acne?

A typical facial treatments by beauticians in salons and spas consists of cleansing, massaging, heat wrapping, extraction of blackheads and application of creams. Simple procedures such as cleansing and extraction of blackheads (open comedones) by aestheticians are usually safe. However, in the extraction of the blackheads, the beautician normally uses a tissue paper or blackhead remover to extract the contents which can lead to redness and swelling. Furthermore, this is only a temporary improvement as the pore will be clogged again over the next few days.

The cream or lotion used might cause irritation to your skin. And the skills of the beauticians or aestheticians in different salons vary tremendously. An aggresive facial can leave your face worse than no facials at all.

Should you decide to have a facial, ask your dermatologist or friends who have had facials on a good beautician. Ask your dermatologist on the products they recommend to you and try them one by one in order to minimise the chance of skin irritation and acne breakouts.

Is blood test needed in diagnosing my acne?

In general, blood test is not routinely required unless your doctor suspects your acne conditon is due to hormonal imbalances. In these cases, there may be excessive androgen production from the adrenal gland or the ovary. Blood test conducted here would measure the selective androgens hormone in the blood that are produced by these glands. However, most acne sufferers do not typically have significant hormonal imbalances. That is the reason your doctor is taking your blood to exclude mimics of acne and to identify the medical conditions that cause or aggravate your acne. But this does not mean that hormones are not affecting acne. It simply means that your body is not overproducing the androgen hormones. It may be the oversentivity of the sebaceous gland to the normal amounts of circulating hormones.

The sign that hormonal treatments might be suitable for a woman is when acne is unresponsive to conventional oral and topical acne treatments or if the acne recurs very fast after stopping oral antibiotics. As hormone treatment has an feminiizing effects on those treated with it, the treatment is normally used on women only.

What are the factors that can make acne worse ?

There are a myriad factors that can worsen acne. It can be a change of seasons or residence. Acne can be worsen from makeup or moisturizers that we used or cleansers that we don't use. However, individual might share the same acne triggers as well as different triggers with one another.

We list down the most common factors that leads to the worsening of acne below :

• changing of hormone level in adolescent girls and adult women about a week before the menstrual cycle.
• friction from bike helmets, backpacks or tight gears.
• pollution and hot, high humidity climates.
  Pollution causes dirt which can clogged our pores leading to acne flares.A hot and high humidity climates causes our outer layer of skin to swell tremendously. The pressure from swelling could clogg our pores that cause acne.
• squeezing at pimples.
• hard scrubbing of the skin.
• stress.
  Acne often worsens during period of stress, tension and anxiety. A study by Stanford University published in the Archives of Dermatotology reported that acne suffering students worsened in hte examination period. This indicates changing hormone level during stress may have a significant influence on acne. In additon, acne flares during this time is made worse due to failure to use acne medications regularly.
• durgs
  Drugs such as corticosteroids given orally or by injections, lithium for treating manic depressive illness and testerone pills or injections used by professional athletes and bodybuilders may acts as acne aggravators. Danazol which is sometimes given to women for endometriosis (promote growth of tissue from the uterus on other parts of the body) has a similar effect as testerone which worsen acne.
• poor skin hygience.

How fast can I see the results with the acne medication that I am using?

Most acne sufferers give up too soon before deciding the acne medication that they used is unsuitable. Although for some of us, results can be seen in days, it often takes 4 to 6 weeks to see significant improvement. So it is paramount to continue the treatment for at least 6 weeks before deciding the treatment is not working.

When you starts to use the treatment, your pimples will dry up. Acne leave marks or pigmentation will be left behind that last days, if not weeks or months. These marks are not affected by the acne treatments because they are simply the remaining of the acne that was present earlier. They should not be touched or picked in order to allow the skin to recover as soon as possible.

By continuing the treatment, you will get lesser new acne lesions and the appear lesions will clear more quickly with less redness. The red marks will turn brown as time goes by and if you are in a hurry, you can use a fading creams to help them fade faster.

At all time during the treatment, you should use the medication as directed or followed the instructions on the label. Applying too much or too frequent will only irritate your skin which will cause acne breakouts.

Why does my acne treatment stop working?

Acne treatment occasionally need to be adjusted to prevent acne from becoming resistant to the existing treatment. You normally start and continue with one acne treatment that works for you. However, over the time, you may notice that you start to get new acne lesions on a regular basis even with using the products as directed.

By now, what is needed is to change one or all of the treatments. When the new treatment again becomes less effective, it is time again to make another rotation of products, whether to new products or products that have not been used for some time but was effective in the past.

This is similar to using anti drandruff shampoo, in which you should rotate or alternate the products in order to prevent the dandruff hairs from becoming resistant to the products.

If oral antibiotics are taken indefinitely, resistance to the medication can occur. What to do? Take the oral antibiotics for 3 to 4 months ,then stop. At the same time, use a topical benzoyl peroxide such as Neutrogena On-the-Spot to minimize the resistance to the topical or oral antibiotics. Retinoids are also used together with oral antibiotics but can increase the skin irritation.

Why use oral antibiotics? Oral antibiotics present a good way to guickly control your acne. Use together with topical medications so that when you stop the oral antibiotics, the topical medications can continue to maintain an acne free skin for you. Beginning with an oral antibiotic also allows the topical treatment to be gradually applied increasingly for the skin to adapt to it.

You should also adjust your acne treatments by using them more often when your skin is oilier or during the time when the acne breakouts increase which can happen in summer. On the other hand, use less often when you feel your skin dry and becoming irritated.

The key here is you should tweak and tune your acne medications until you find the suitable products and frequency of usage that are suitable to you.

Should I use moisturizer in conjunction with acne medications?

Choose a lighter cream moisturizer which come together with a sunscreen of SPF 15 or more such as Clean & Clear Oil Free Day Moisturizer with SPF 15 if you are using it in the morning. By doing so, you can keep your skin moisturized and at the same time protect it from the harmful sun light. Select a nonacegenic or noncomedogenic moisturizer by checking the label. Use a moisturizer that is more rich and creamy at night such as Clean & Clear Night Moisturizer because there is greater water loss from the skin at night.

I always hear people saying your acne will get worse before it gets better. Why?

Normally, when use an acne treatment, your skin will try to adapt to it. That is why you see your skin look red and feel irritating or more senstive. Scaling of the skin can also results in which you will feel layers of skin are peeling off. However, this condition can be minimized by applying moisturizer on the area and start the acne treatment slowly.

Do not apply a multitude of acne medications at the same time so that you would know which treatment is not suitable for you in trying new medications. Begin treatment by using less acne medication and then increase it as your skin adapts to the medication. Don't use too much of the product at one time; just use enough to get a thin coating over your skin as too much of a product might increase the risk of skin irritation.

Why do people say their skin get worse when they start an acne treatment? Because of the irritation and peeling from the adjustment made by the skin to the acne treatment. If you have comedone acne (blackheads and whiteheads), your skin may look worse initially as these acne lesions move up to the surface and get expelled. This can take a month for it to happen.

Does garlic help in treating pimples?

Why are there so many type of acne treatments?

As no one treatment is perfect and suitable for everybody skin, a great number of acne treatments are available. Furthermore, as acne is caused by a multitude of reasons, internal as well as external, we need different approaches in treating acne. Medications are combined and delivered in various forms to make them more effective and convenient to increase your usage in using the products regularly. There are many variations of treatments available even if they are aimed for the same purpose.

As your skin and the acne causing bacteria can adapt to any particular treatment , it means we should rotate the acne treatment to maintain a blemish free skin. Topical acne treatments are used alone or together with oral medications to treat and control acne breakouts.

Most acne treatments are often used together in various combination for effectively treating acne as these products works in different modes. Combination treatments such as Clearpores and ZENMED® Derma Cleanse System are now the standard of acne treatment theraphy. That's why you see new products launches often include a system consisting of a few products for simplify acne treatment.

Is there any difference in brand name medications and the generic brands?

Once the patent on any give products expires, other companies can bring similar products to the market by getting approval from FDA for medications using the same ingredients to treat acne. This new product is known as a generic product.

However, other than the active ingredients used in treating acne, the base ingredient is equally important as well. For example, two topical medications can have the same percentage of active ingredients in them and yet the performance and side effect in treating acne might vary substantially. It is the base ingredient in which the active ingredients is framed that allows for the medication to be absorbed into the skin and exert its effect. In additions, the difference in preservatives and fragrance used in the formulation might make a big difference in the skin tolerance of the products being used.

Why Neosporin and Rite Aid cannot clear my acne?

These antibiotic treatments are very effective against bacterial skin infection such as staphylococcus or streptococcus skin infections. Not only are they not effective against P.acnes bacteria that causes acne, these ointments can clog your pores which could worsen your acne conditions.

We have heard some reports in which some people reported that they had successfully treat acne with Neosporin. Perhaps what they have is not acne blemishes but some rashes that mimics acne.

Why do my pores getting bigger and bigger?

Pores are the openings of the follicles in the skin surface. We all have them. They are more obvious in some people than in others. As big pores size make us look unsightly, we are very concerned with pores sizes.

Genetics, sun exposure and hormones affect our pore size.As we age, our pores appear larger and more prominent.There are treatments available to help minimize the appearance of pores. Regular exfoliation used with retinoids can help the skin cells regenerate more and control the sebaceous glands activities that make the pores look larger.

Protecting your skin against harmful sun rays by using a sunscreens such as Clean & Clear Oil Free Day Moisturizer,SPF 15 go a long way inmaking your pores appear smaller. In addition to this, many cosmetics companies are marketing powders, creams and lotions that help conceal your pores. This is the simplest way to manage the pores size problem.

Topical treatments containing retinoids improve the pores appearance as they affect the sebaceous glands activities. However, this treatment can cause extreme dryness and irritation to our skin and might not be everyone cup of tea. Another temporary method is having facials treatment.

Lasers and intense pulse light treatments do offer long lasting, safe result in minimize pore appearance over time. However,multiple treatments are necessary and result vary from person to person.

Are there any difference in creams, gels, lotions or foams in topical treatments?

The base of the product that frames the active ingredients determine how well the active ingredients are being absorbed in the skin. It can also make the active ingredients stronger or weaker.

If our skin is very oily, gels are much better for it. When the skin is dry, creams or ointment products are more suitable. Lotions and oils are usually used in the summer months where humidity is higher.

Products that are more moisturizing are normally greasier, making it unsuitable for most people. While a more drying product will make our skin irritated. Sometimes, a combination of more drying and more moisturizing products can be used to achieve good results as in acne treatments. As most acne treatments are drying, we recommend them to be used with moisturizers to make them less irritating for the skin to achieve an acne free complexions.

Benzoyl peroxide is known to be more active when used in the gel formulation than in other forms. However, it may be too irritating for some people. Hence the options are to use a lower concentration of benzoyl peroxide in the gel formulation, choose a higher concentration in a cream or use the cleansers in various strengths.

When do adolescents start to get acne?

Girls start to get acne about 11 to 13 years old when they start to have their period.Boys get it at 9 to 15 years old. On average, boys mature later than girls.

In teen acne, the blackheads and whiteheads are most prominent. Later in puberty, inflammatory acne lesions will develop around the center of the face and forehead.

Using a combinations of oral and topical treatments such as ZENMED® Derma Cleanse System work very well in treating acne problems in teenagers. As it is a system of 3 products covering everything, you don't have to go round to look for compatible oral and topical products. It just likes buying hi-fi. Unless you are a pro, get everythings in a hi-fi system and not buying different modules from different companies. You are bound to get some incompatibilities in sound performance.

Acne need to be treated as it cannot outgrow by itself. Moreover, it can be a very serious disfiguring condition. There are many treatments available to help to control acne and prevent scarring.

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