With all the home remedies and wives tales, how are we to know what actually works when we do break out? With first-hand experience, I know how sore and inflamed breakouts can get, so when it occurs it is time to get serious – SOS! Here’s what you can do to fight the breakouts when they occur:
Skincare routine:
– During the day: a little bit of pure lavender oil applied to the affected area with a cotton bud can be useful to reduce the inflammation of any breakouts.
– At night: The most effective external treatment I have ever come across is to spot treat using a specially designed clay mask. SkinB5’s Skin Purifying Mask contains French Green Clay alongside herbs and essential oils that can help to draw out the impurities and kill any bacteria present. Put a generous dab of the mask onto the affected area and leave on overnight. This is perfect for sore inflamed pustules, especially due to its cooling nature.
– Use only gentle cleansers like SkinB5’s gentle foaming Cleansing Mousse with active ingredients of Vitamin B5 to help balance the skin’s sebum. Wash your face morning & night.
– Use a gentle moisturiser with no harmful chemicals. SkinB5’s Acne Control Moisturiser is gentle, non-oily, and contains nutrients to treat & heal the skin.
– Do not exfoliate over the affected area. This can tear the skin and make the blemishes worse.
– Do a full Skin Purifying Mask treatment over the whole face 1-2x per week.
Nutrition changes to encourage healing:
– Avoid all processed foods. Sugar in particular can increase your breakouts (Danby 2010).
– Avoid all dairy products, including whey protein. Consumption of dairy, especially skim milk, has been linked to increase face & body acne (Melnik 2009 & 2011; Adebamowo 2008).
– Drink lots of clean water. Minimum 2L per day.
– Consider avoiding all grains and focus your diet on a Paleolithic style way of eating. This includes no rice, no wheat, and also no white potatoes because this eliminates many inflammatory and high-GI foods that can increase the occurrence of breakouts (Veith 2011).
– Supplement with SkinB5’s Acne Control tablets to provide the nutrients your body needs to treat the cause. Vitamins and minerals are important for balanced hormones and sebum production, so a deficiency in key nutrients can often be the root cause of your acne. More on why a nutritional approach to treating acne is important can be found HERE.
Dealing with breakouts can be a very emotional and painful issue. Using the above tips, you can help to treat the breakouts quickly and reduce them occurring again. Remember that there is usually an internal cause for acne, such as a deficiency in a key vitamin or mineral that may be causing problems such as hormonal dysregulation – so ensure you treat internally as well as externally for a whole body approach.
References:
Adebamowo, C. Spiegelman, D. Berkey, C. Danby. F, Rockett, H. Colditz, G. Willett, W. Holmes, M. (2008). Milk consumption and acne in teenaged boys. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 58(5), 787-793.
Danby, F. (2010). Nutrition and Acne. Clinics in Dermatology, 28(6), 598-604.
Melnik, B. Schmitz, G. (2009). Role of insulin, insulin-like growth factor-1, hyperglycaemic food and milk consumption in the pathogenesis of acne vulgaris. Experimental Dermatology, 18(10), 833-841.
Melnik, B. (2011). Evidence for acne-promoting effects of milk and other insulinotropic dairy products. Milk and milk products in human nutrition, Nestle Nutr Inst Workshop Ser Pediatr Program, 67, 131-145.
Veith WB, Silverberg NB. (2011). The association of acne vulgaris with diet. Cutis, 88(2), 84–91
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