4 Tips to Zap Your Zits!

Just about everyone on the planet gets acne at some point in their lives. For most of the population it’s a rather harmless affliction. In extreme cases, it can cause scarring and pitting of the face. If you've got THAT kind of acne, you need more than this article; you need a dermatologist.

We tend to see zits as a marker of poor hygiene or ugliness, whether or not it’s an accurate assessment. I don’t know if that’s because of peer pressure or because of all the advertising that’s marketed to teenagers. Teens are especially prone to acne due to the high levels of oil in their skin.


How Acne Gets Started
Just in case you missed the memo, this is how acne works. Your skin has little holes called pores, and different things are coming out of those pores all the time. Dead skin cells, sweat, and an important substance called sebum that keeps your skin moisturized and waterproof. Sebum travels most frequently along pores that have a hair in them, which is why your hair gets greasy after a few days if you don’t wash it. Sometimes, a bunch of dead skin cells will block a pore, trapping sebum in there. Sebum easily picks up bacteria that naturally occur on the skin. When they get trapped, they multiply and your body begins the process of making a zit.

During puberty, sebum production increases a lot, and all that oily stuff knocks more dead skin cells loose, leading to those flare ups. Unfortunately, there is no overall cure for acne yet. But there are quite a number of different treatment options available to prevent and eliminate zits once they’ve formed.

Before They Strike

Here are two things to try to prevent zits from forming:

1. Wash your face gently
Contrary to popular belief, extra dirt on the face doesn’t cause acne! Most blocked pores happen deep within the skin, not on the surface where dirt lies. Washing your face helps by removing excess sebum from your skin before it can carry dead skin into a pore. However, if you wash your face too roughly you can drive surface dirt and skin cells into your pores and cause a flare up. It’s also best to use a natural skin care product to avoid irritating the skin. You don’t want to make the skin make more sebum in response to your facial product!

2. If you sweat, then shower
Sweat does many good things for the body, but one bad thing it does for acne sufferers is increase sebum production afterward to re-moisturize the skin. If you notice you get breakouts soon after exercise, be sure to wash thoroughly after a workout.

And If They Here Already

1. Don’t pop them
As annoying as they can be, don’t pop your zits. Popping a zit is a good way to get a permanent scar on the spot where it was. It’s better just to keep it clean and wait for it to fade.

2. If necessary, see a dermatologist
There are quite a number of different ways that a dermatologist or esthetician can help with an outbreak. From antibiotics that kill the bacteria to lasers that shrink or destroy the sebaceous glands, there’s a plan of attack that’s suited just for your skin.

The combination of sebum and bacteria that naturally live on the skin causes acne. We don’t have a cure to stop acne from forming, but try these tips out and you can reduce the severity of any outbreak.