Effective Acne Products Control OutbreaksBy: Greg Mauro Even though the incidence of acne cases seems to be more intense during the teenage stage, and some studies confirm this reporting that 80 percent of all teens get acne, it is also true that some people have to deal with acne outbreaks throughout their lives. Fortunately for all affected, there are many acne products on the market that can help you effectively heal and control acne. The store shelves are packed with a huge array of choices of products to help recover from and prevent acne outbreaks. There are many brands and also different many methods or delivering the active ingredients such as, gels, creams soaps, cleansing liquids, cleansing bars, and lotions. Sometimes sifting through these various options can be daunting, not to mention expensive if you end up testing a number of different products. In order to choose the best acne product for you, it will be helpful to you to understand what causes acne. Hair follicles attach to sebaceous glands. These glands secrete oil that helps to keep skin soft and supple, and the oil moves up from the root, up the hair shaft to the surface of the skin. When the body excretes too much sebum, or oil from the sebaceous glands, and it combines with dead skin cells, it can form a soft plug that clogs the pore and keeps the oil from traveling freely, enlarging the plug. If the plug enlarges enough, it can cause the follicle wall to burst which allows more oil and dead skin to accumulate, then bacteria can enter the picture, cause inflammation and trigger an acne outbreak. One of the primary purposes of many over the counter acne products, is to kill Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes), which are a kind of bacteria that triggers the inflammation associated with acne. Other targeted aspects of some of these over the counter acne treatments are removal of excess oil from the skin, promoting faster growth of new, healthy skin cells, and getting rid of dead skins cells to keep them from accumulating. A number of these products are combination products, meaning they target more than just one aspect of the acne problem. It is the primary active ingredients in the acne product that determine how they work and what problem area they work with best. Some of the most common ingredients are: benzoyl peroxide, which is most common and kills the P. acnes bacteria, and helps remove oils and dead cells; salicylic acid, which retards shedding of cells in the follicles, preventing the pores from clogging, and it can break down whiteheads and blackheads; sulfur and resorcinol, which are normally used together and help remove dead skin cells and excess oil; alcohol and acetone, which are astringents used in many cleansers, and they help remove dirt and oils. Because the primary ingredients in all over the counter acne products are basically the same, it makes sense to start your experimentation with the lower cost product that has the same combination of ingredients. After you have found the right combination for your condition, then you might want to try other, more expensive, brands. |
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