5 Explanations for Your Adult Acne

Guest post by Laura Jane Williams

 

I’ve just spent months researching adult acne and skin care for my new eBook “ACNE: a comprehensive guide to identifying, treating, and generally showing spots who the boss is”. You can download your (free!) copy here. You’re welcome!

 

I wrote this book because adult acne is a misery, and what I learned is that often, we don’t understand what our body is trying to tell us. Using these 5 insights from the experts can help establish how you can fight your skin care battle…

Hormones

Testosterone is the hormone that surges in adolescence, and is thought to be directly related to the size of the oil glands under our skin: rising testosterone levels see oil glands grow. The enlarged gland then produces more oil. More oil causes the cellular walls in our pores to break down, causing bacteria to grow, and then spots appear.

Try a daily dose of evening primrose oil, designed to help maintain hormone balance.

 

Touching

The bacteria that causes breakouts, propionibacterium, are supposed to be in our skin. But, whilst it’s a myth that touching our faces excessively directly causes acne, fingering, touching, playing and rubbing can drive bacteria into pores and make our skin worse. So stop!

 

Makeup

Cosmetic acne- acne cosmetic– is mild but common. It’s a distant cousin of other types of acne, because it’s caused on the skin rather than in the skin. Cosmetics work to block the pores from the outside to the inside, rather than hormones that do the work from the inside out, causing small, rashy pink bumps on the chin, cheeks and forehead that can persist. Your makeup could also be exacerbating acne bacteria, so make sure to use clean applicators, choose powder bases over liquids where possible, and look our for the magic word: noncomedogenic.

Noncomedogenic is a term applied to lotions and skin creams that do not block pores. And if you want to reduce the incidence of pimples, noncomedogenic is the way to go when choosing your beauty products!

 

Diet

For every time we’ve been told by well-meaning friends, family, doctors, strangers or even a girl at work don’t eat that, it’ll make your spots worse, put down the chocolate bar/pizza slice/can of Coke only long enough to file that useless piece of advice under LIES.

Greasy or sugary foods do not cause acne. There is zero concrete evidence to suggest diet plays a role in acne treatment. But. But, but, but, a healthy diet means healthy skin in general, giving us at least a fighting chance of doing some good from the inside. If skin is the body’s largest organ, food that is good for the rest of us is good for our skin, too. We know that high fat and sugar is bad for the rest of us, and so whilst those things won’t make skin worse they certainly won’t help either.

 

Stress

Like diet, our lifestyle doesn’t give us acne. But also like diet the way we live affects our entire body- including the skin. Where we work and for how long, how we play and until what hour, all of it contributes to our skin. But the biggest thing we need to figure out how to control? Stress.

Stress is a chemical. When we’re tense, adrenal glands flood the bloodstream with cortisol in order to boost blood glucose. In turn, sweat glands produce more oil. It means there’s a higher likelihood that excess oil will mix with dead skin cells and clog pores, trapping bacteria. Then what happens? Spots.

It’s impossible to avoid stress, but absolutely possible to reduce its effects. Make sure to get well rested, well fed, and find at least 30 minutes for ourselves every day. Relax.

Whatever you think might be causing your acne, remember one important thing: it took time for your skin to deteriorate, so it will take time for it to get better again, too.

Be patient- and kind.