Common Acne Treatment Mistakes

Common Acne Treatment Mistakes

For the nearly 50 million Americans affected by acne, the many available medications and treatments can be confusing and overwhelming. It’s easy to make mistakes treating acne or even make it worse, despite the best intentions.

Here are list the most common mistakes.

Mistake No. 1: Not Trying an Acne Treatment Long Enough

• Skin reacts slowly to treatment. Even if the acne came on fast, it still requires time to heal. That usually takes between 6 and 12 weeks.
• Give a product 1 month and then keep using it if you notice any improvement.
• In some cases, your skin might feel a bit irritated the first couple of weeks of treatment.
• It’s not an infection, it’s an inflammation. It can even get worse before it gets better

Mistake No. 2: Trying Too Many Products at Once

• People usually layer on products when they don’t get results in the first few days of treatment
• What then happens is that people start trying different products, abandoning them very quickly if they do not see results in a day or two. They also add one product to another. Sometimes the products can cause irritation of the skin and add further insult to the owner.
• When someone self-treats their acne, they may accidentally distress their skin. This can make the acne lesions bigger, more likely to pigment, and heal with spots and scars.

Mistake No. 3: Over-Scrubbing or Over-Cleansing the Skin

• Acne is not from dirt. Many people tend to over-wash and over-scrub when they get acne. As one of my teachers used to say, ‘If acne were from dirt, you would have it on your feet!'”
• Harsh cleansers, alkaline bar soaps may worsen acne.

Mistake No. 4: Choosing the Wrong Products for Acne-Prone Skin

• Look for “noncomedogenic” or “for acne-prone skin” products. Noncomedogenic products don’t contain ingredients that tend to clog pores in people with acne-prone skin.
• Certain ingredients found in products such as cosmetics, sunscreen, and moisturizers are more likely to clog pores. They include isopropyl palmitate, isopropyl myristate, butyl stearate, isopropyl isostearate, decyl oleate, isostearyl neopentanoate, isocetyl stearate, myristle myristate, cocoa butter, acetylated lanolin, and D & C red dyes.

Mistake No. 5: Popping and Picking at Pimples

• People tend to groom the lesions. They examine them very closely several times a day. So they pick and the lesion gets worse. Popping and picking pimples prolongs healing time and raises the risk of scarring. Infected material can get pushed further into the skin, leading to more swelling and redness. 

Mistake No. 6: Waiting Too Long to Take a Professional Treatment

• People don’t conceive of acne as a medical condition, but rather as something entirely under their control, like coloring their hair or getting in shape. If you read any teen magazine or women’s magazine, you’re constantly getting advice on how to treat acne as if it were something you can personally gain control over. But its a medical condition, and it requires medical treatment. It is not a simple disease, and it does not yield to simple solutions.
• It’s time to make an appointment once acne starts taking a toll on self-esteem, becomes painful, causes scarring, or if over-the-counter (OTC) medications aren’t clearing it up.
• It’s also possible a person could have rosacea, which usually requires different treatment than acne. Rosacea is a long-term disease that causes redness and pimples.

Mistake No. 7: Over-Using or Under-Using a Prescribed Acne Medication

• We forced patients to use the products as instructed.
• Not sticking to a regimen delays any potential improvements.
• Half of the battle is consistency. Many people under-use because they lose motivation after the first 2 weeks. Many can’t expect results overnight.
• Under-using the medication by spot-treating fails to prevent breakouts.
• You need to apply medication to the entire affected area that tends to break out, instead of spot treating. With spot treating, you haven’t addressed the area next to it, where another pimple could be brewing.

Mistake No. 8: Stopping the Use of Acne Medication Once It Clears Up

• It’s best to taper medication usage by using it less and less. For example, if you’ve been using it twice a day, use it once a day for a while, then once every other day, then twice a week, and then stop. It often takes acne 4 to 6 weeks to return, just like it took it the same amount of time for it to get better.
• To keep skin blemish-free, most people need to continue usage with at least one acne product.

Mistake No. 9:  Insufficient or confusing instructions 

• Very often patients don’t employ medicines in the most effective ways because they haven’t a clue as to how they are to be used. In many cases, that’s because their doctors have been spectacularly unsuccessful in conveying important information about how different medicines work, how long they take, and how much persistence is required.