Acne

Acne and spots can make your teenage years miserable, and for many people carry on into adulthood.  Here are some ideas to try out:

Tips

Pimple patches

These are tiny patches to place on your spots over night. Try the ones that contain salicylic acid and hydrocolloid. They are a fantastic way to cover up and heal your skin at the same time, drawing the gunk out of the spot overnight, and speeding up the healing of the skin. A. Try a plain dot or go for something more outlandish with a colourful star.

Cleansers

Generally, the cleansers that you can buy that are targeted at spot tend to be antibacterial.  That’s great for getting rid of the bad bacteria that aggravate your spots, but leaves your skin stripped of all its good bacteria.  I would recommend something probiotic like Elizabeth Arden Probiotic Cleanser instead.  The idea is to increase the number of good bacteria on your skin, making it healthier to fight off the bad bacteria on its own.

Prebiotic lotions

Instead, why not try using a prebiotic lotion to promote good bacteria? Dr Andrew Weil’s Mega-Mushroom treatment lotion will soothe your skin and help it to heal itself.

Diet

Good foods to try to improve the condition of your skin include green leafy vegetables, avocados, onions and garlic and carrots.  Try to eat brown bread, rice and pasta instead of white bread, rice and pasta.

Vitamins and minerals like zinc, selenium, vitamin E and fatty acids are useful too.  Good foods for these include lamb, pumpkin seeds and chickpeas (zinc); eggs, cheese, mushrooms, oats, and chicken (selenium); sunflower seeds, salmon, avocado, red pepper, mango and kiwi fruit (vitamin E); salmon, anchovies, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds (fatty acids).

Finally, if your acne is affected by your hormones, make sure you eat lots of foods containing soya like edamame beans and tofu, to help balance your hormones.

Click here for recipe ideas.

Light therapy

The idea of light therapy is that blue light is antibacterial, whilst red light reduces inflammation.  You can have a treatment in a salon, or there are quite a few products on the market using light therapy to treat spots.  The best reviews are for those that just use red light, but they are the more expensive options.

Self-Care

Find the NHS Self-Care factsheet on acne here.