If spot treatment isn’t working, treat your whole body as a spot.
Have you tried spot treating acne?
You take a specially made cream and apply it to breakouts, then wait for the now damp pimples to heal.
Spot treatment is generally made of four parts:
Exfoliants that aggressively clear away dead skin, antibacterial agents and steroids to treat inflammation, and retinoids that get new skin cells growing faster. There’s a chance you’ll be allergic to one of these ingredients, such as the antibacterial benzoyl peroxide.
There’s also a risk of dry skin afterward because spot treatments deliberately dry the skin. The idea is to get rid of excess oil by drying out and peeling the skin with things like sulfur or benzyol peroxide.
I tried it a lot as a teenager, which is a scary and brave time to add a bright white cream to your acne. You’re never quite sure whether it’s healing or it’s just blinged out. The comedian Mitch Hedberg once said about spot treating blemishes:
“I don’t know if it does help, but it will make them more shiny and noticeable. It’s like cold-sore-highlighter. Maybe they could come up with an arrow that heals cold sores.”
Hedberg was sympathising with everyone else who takes care of themselves and isn’t sure they’re doing the right thing. These days, treating your skin from within is getting popular. Spot treating can get a bad rap because it’s a band-aid for conditions that can be fixed with more permanent, less expensive techniques. But if you’re trying something, you’ve already won half the battle. You’re going out, putting energy into your acne treatment and taking steps to make your skin healthier. Taking action and being patient can only end with good health.
And now you’ve landed on the skinB5 blog, getting smarter about skincare every second. Don’t worry, you’ve been on the right track all along.
So what’s the real cure to acne?
Prevention, of course. Things that make you fit make you look good on the outside.
I first heard that Mitch Hedberg bit as a teenager, trying everything that worked. Then I tried losing weight, sleeping more and exercising. After a few weeks the change came fast and hard. People started mentioning I’d changed in a good way, and new people treated me with more optimism. I actually looked more friendly. After all, I was being nice to the one person who’s always with me.
You may be wondering how food, water and moving at the right time can do the same thing as all the powerful chemicals in spot treatment. It’s simple. Your body already uses nutrients to repair itself, especially vitamin B5. Here are some things that will awaken your inner stylist:
Exfoliant foods: Foods that help your body replace old skin with healthy skin. Instead of scrubbing harshly at your face, keeping these in your diet will help new and beautiful cells come out. Of course, it still helps to clear away old skin with a cleanser like skinB5’s Acne Control Australian Botanicals Cleansing Mousse.
You’ll find many of these in our posts on how to get glowing skin.
- Water
- Almonds
- Salt
- Oats
- Rice
- Turmeric
- Leafy greens
Anti-inflammatories. Coincidentally, these are all in the Mediterranean diet.
- Tomatoes
- Olive oil
- Fruit
- Nuts
- Fatty fish (such as tuna or salmon)
- Leafy greens
Retinoids. If you want your skin to get better fast, you want the Vitamin A food group.
- Liver (especially pork)
- Eggs
- Fish
- Prawns
- Orange fruits and vegetables
- Leafy greens
See a pattern here? Spinach is your friend. You can also get these powerhouses in supplement form, such as skinB5’s Extra Strength Acne Control vitamins. It also turns out that all these foods are rich in vitamin B5, which is nature’s nurse and moisturiser.
Nature isn’t quite as keen on steroids as chemists are, but if you’re after chemicals to make you grow, meat will increase your testosterone.
You probably get it now. Looking good is a symptom of feeling good.
Good looking people are tall poppies in our society. We think of them as lucky creatures that were born symmetrical. But that’s not quite right. It takes self-care to look good, and you can have a jaw chiselled by marbled gods but still look unhealthy, unwashed and unhappy.
The things we find attractive come from good health and comfort. So when you’re standing straight like you’ve slept and exercised enough, your voice sails out like you drink enough water, or you have the enormous energy of someone who digests enough vitamins and minerals, in your own way you’re a looker. And yes, when the conditions in your body are just right, your skin does great.
In the skinB5 lifestyle we don’t just want to whack our acne back down after it pops up, we want to do something more substantial: Make our clear skin even clearer, make it glow and stop new acne from showing its face. We do that by nourishing the one thing that decides whether we break out or look good.
Sources:
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/09/you-cant-spot-treat-acne/
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1290617
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1856042
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/foods-that-fight-inflammation
https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/foods-retinoids-1772.html
https://healinglifestyles.com/inside-out-skin-diet-12-foods/
https://helloglow.co/10-best-natural-skin-exfoliators/
https://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/boosting-food
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/328530
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