Home | Beauty | Skin

Your Acne And What You Can Do About It

The problem of acne (also called acne vulgaris), spots and pimples is something that pretty much all of you had to endure at some stage in your life. For most of you it was during your teenage years (some of you might be at that stage right now). As a matter of fact more than 85% of teenagers suffer from acne problems. For others acne and similar skin disorders follow on into your adult life. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself exactly what's causing your acne or how it might be treated?

Acne is normally seen as a very common thing with easily identifiable causes and cures. This isn't really the case and acne is a more complicated matter than many of you reading this may think. The problem starts with skin pores becoming blocked with dead skin cells and your skin secreting more oil (called sebum) than it actually needs. The blocked skin pores are the perfect growing environment for certain types of bacteria. This type of bacterial infection then causes your skin to become inflammed and sore. Other skins pores become infected and within a few days you can have a total acne outbreak.

A commonly held belief is that acne is caused by excessive oil and grease from your skin. This then clogs up your skin pores and causes blackheads, zits and pimples. Here's an interesting fact - the oil that many people believe causes acne actually moves through the blocked pore and out onto your skin. This then gives you the double whammy of having both acne and oily skin. The fact remains, however, that the oil itself is not the actual cause of your spots and pimples.

So where do your acne actually come from? What causes it? The answer is a lot of things can cause acne. Several of the most common are stress, steroids, genetics and of course "abnormal" hormonal activity that you might experience during puberty or as part of your menstrual cycle each month. Wait? No mention of junk food? Nope! Why? Simply because there's no proven medical link between eating junk food and getting acne. Junk food will make you fat but won't cause zits.

The spots and pimples are not, however, your only concern when you have acne. Acne that's left untreated and allowed to roam wild over your face can and will leave your face scarred with dozens of tiny holes. Don't just ignore the problem and hope that it will vanish. You'd be better off taking action now to treat it instead of living with the scars for the rest of your life.

So how can you go about treating your acne? Well that's where there's good news - there are plenty of treatments for your acne both natural and otherwise. Proper exfoliation should be the first treatment to look at - this simply means keeping your skin clean. Next comes the medicinal treatments like anti-biotics (both oral and topical) and treatments like Retin-A (Retinoic Acid) and Azelaic acid. You can also look at the light/photo therapy treatments and even go as far as laser treatment (lasers can also be used to remove acne scars). Nature can play its part here too with Vitamin-A and Teatree oil being popular alternative treatments. Living a healthy lifestyle is also one often overlooked "treatment". Cut out the junk food, get exercise and drink plenty of fresh water. Give your body the "fuel" it needs to repair your skin and prevent those bacterial infections in the first place.

You can conquer your acne. Take steps today to cure or prevent it. Your skill will thank you in the long run.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

About the author: Aaron Walker is the owner and content author of www.AcneOrPimples.com which is an online resource dedicated to those who want to raise their acne awareness Click here for other unique acne articles.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which means you may freely reprint it, in its entiretly, provided you include the author's resource box along with LIVE VISIBLE links (without "nofollow" tags).