What Causes Your Acne And What You Can Do

Acne (the medical term is acne vulgaris) is something that pretty much all of you will have to deal with at some stage in your life. It happens most commonly during the teenage years so that you have the pleasure of being hormonally unbalanced and also having an embarrassing skin problem. Teriffic eh? For others acne can be a problem that follows you into adulthood. Some 85% of the people reading this already have or will suffer from acne at some stage in their lives. But what exactly causes this annoying skin complaint and what can you do to treat it?

Acne, as a skin condition, is far more complex than most people think. As skin pores become blocked and the sebaceous glands in your skin become overactive (hyperactive in some cases) you begin to see spots and pimples all over your skin. These blocked skin pores then provide the perfect breeding ground for a bacterial infection which spreads rapidly across the skin and leaves you with an acne outbreak. As the bacterial infection spreads your skin becomes inflamed and sore as your body reacts to the presence of yeast in the bacterial infection.

One of the most popular misconceptions is that spots, zits and pimples are caused by oily skin. This excessive oil then causes your skin pores to become blocked and all of a sudden you've got acne. There's only one problem with this theory - the oil produced in the skin pores actually moves through the blockages and onto your skin. It's part of the process but not actually the cause at all. This of course means you now have oily skin and an acne outbreak so it's easy to see why people might make this connection between the oil (sebum) and the development of the acne itself.

So what is at the heart of your acne problem? There isn't one single cause for acne itself - there are several. What may surprise you is that the ones you expect to find here aren't the ones you may expect. Hormonal activity (puberty and the menstrual cycle for examples), family history, poor skin care, steroids and stress are amongst the most common causes of zits, blackheads and pimples. You may have noticed that junk food wasn't included and that's simply because there's no proven link between junk food and acne.

The appearance of spots and blackheads isn't the only thing to be concerned about if you suffer from acne. If you leave acne untreated and to spread all over your face or body it can have longterm consequences in the form of scarring. Just ignoring it and pretending it will go away on its own isn't an answer. Those scars can be there for life so why not take steps to prevent them right now?

What acne treatments are available to you? Fortunately the treatments for acne are many and varied. You can start with basics of skin care which is exfoliation. Then you can start looking at natural treatments like taking lots of Vitamin A. Next we have the topical and oral antibiotics, Retinoic Acid (also called Retin-A), laser therapy and light therapy. Last (and by no means least) is the simple option of following a healthy lifestyle, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, drink lots of clean water and get a fairly reasonable amount of exercise. This puts your body in balance and allows it to function properly and prevent skin conditions like acne.

Acne is something which can be dealt with so take action today - your skin will thank you.

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