You don’t have to be a teen to get acne!

For years, acne mainly plagued teens and those in their 20’s. We are now seeing it in people who are in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s. Where does this dreaded plague come from? Acne may develop from a variety of things including hormones, stress, and unfortunately, your inherited genes.

Food choices are a huge factor contributing to this dreaded skin problem. What you eat directly and indirectly affects your acne. This is one factor that we can easily control by being mindful of what goes into our bodies. So, here are a couple of things to remember:

1. Take your vitamins. Whole foods multi-vitamins taken daily are a good choice to fight acne. Acidophilus B and garlic are also great acne fighters.
2. An apple a day. Eat red or golden delicious apples daily.
3. Drink water, water, water.
4. Clear is better. Soda drinkers, change to clear sodas. The ingredients that make sodas dark can make acne worse.
5. Go natural with your sweets. Too much refined sugar can aggravate acne. This means stay away from candy, sodas, cakes and pies! Try to use natural sweeteners, like honey or stevia!

Not only do we need to be cautious in making food choices, but we need to take care of our skin with good products! Here are a couple of ways to do that:

1. Don’t wash TOO much! Over washing your skin can stimulate the sebaceous glands, causing breakouts. Twice daily is enough!
2. Go BLUE! LED Blue light therapy greatly reduces acne-causing bacteria.
3. Clean sleep. When you are experiencing breakouts, change your pillow case daily.
4. Treat with tea tree. Tea Tree Oil is a great natural anti-bacterial apply to acne lesions, use as directed on bottle.
5. Be careful with the POP! When done incorrectly picking, mashing, squeezing your acne can cause more flair up.Using fingernails to “POP” pimples will cause scarring.
6. Opposite effect. Using antibiotics can actually increase the number of acne breakouts over time.
7. Don’t rely on THE PILL. Using birth control pills will only clear breakouts for a short period of time if at all, and may even cause breakouts.

There is not just a simple cure for acne. I wish there were. However, I am dedicated in helping you customize YOUR fight with acne! Call us at Seasons, 255-1155, for more information or to schedule an appointment.

We Want You To Look Your Best

At Seasons, we love helping people look their best. We want every patient to be beautiful.

Our aestheticians are trained in microdermabrasion, chemical peels, electrolysis, permanent makeup, and Intense Photo Light therapy or IPL. (IPL is a way to use very strong flashes of light in place of lasers—for hair removal, acne, skin rejuvenation, hyper pigmentation, and very small spider veins.)

I have to stop there for a moment.

Most of this stuff wasn’t around when I was a kid suffering from acne. My brother and I just dealt with our zits. I think we had some medicated wipes for our faces or something. Even though we weren’t “greasers,” we were terrified by commercials like this one…

…but we had to wait until after acne before we found our miracle girls. (And we’ve both been married to our original sweethearts now for many years.) But back to medicine and skin care.

Over-the-counter skin care isn’t enough for many people. Seasons uses treatment like microdermabrasion, chemical peels, facials, electrolysis, and IPL to address all aspects of a patient’s skin care.

Take acne. Forget the commercial. At Seasons, we might first do a chemical peel to get down to that healthiest layer of skin. There are three layers to your skin—the epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. A chemical peel takes off the top layer of skin—the old dead layer. This leaves you with a more youthful layer of skin, so you look more youthful. (Obagi Blue Peel is one of the brands that we use.)

Then we look for a skin product line that best fits the patient’s skin type—like deep cleansing facial products that gets into those pores and clean things out. IPL will actually kill the bacteria in those pores with acne.

We’re just looking at a multi-prong approach to acne—or any skin disorder.

There’s so many different skin types, you have to be careful what kind of product you use on your face. This is why I am cautious about over-the-counter cleansers for acne. You may be getting something that dries your skin out. If that’s not what your skin type needs, you could be making your acne even worse. The professionals at Seasons are able to evaluate each patient’s skin type and work through our protocol of skin care and product lines and treatment options.

Skin treatments are hardly the only thing we do, though. I am a doctor after all! If my patients need medicine, I can prescribe what they need.

On the other hand, if people just need an old fashioned pore extraction, we give them that, too.