Let’s talk about… Acne

Acne. It’s one of the things we most associate with our teenage years, but for many people it isn’t something that stops after puberty.  It is particularly tough if you go on suffering with it as an adult… and then for mid-life women, it seems really unfair when your hormones start rioting in the run-up to menopause and breakouts start making a comeback.

TRANSCRIPT

The thing about acne is you’ve got to know it is hormones that’s driving it. It’s not what you’re eating, although sugar doesn’t really help, and it’s not how you’re living your life, although stress doesn’t help it either. It’s hormones and it’s really unfair if it comes back to bite you in mid-life when you think you’re past acne and that it was just a teenage thing.

So, there is a good deal you can do with skincare. If you can possibly get yourself monitored by a dermatologist, that’s fab. If you’re starting at home, the ingredients to look for are things like salicylic acid, which will get right into the pores to clean them out, to stop them blocking up in the first place. You can use retinol, which is good for bringing down oiliness in the skin.

In terms of tweakments, there’s not actually that many tweakments that you would want to do on active acne. One thing that can help a lot is clinical-strength blue light treatment. That’s where you lie under a canopy of blue lights twice a week for 20 minutes. And what that is doing is denaturing the bacteria which are driving the inflammation and infection. So, it’s not solving the problem at hormonal level, but it is certainly bringing down what you’re seeing on the surface.

This is such a huge topic. There’s a lot more about it on the website, there’s a downloadable PDF that you can go through and that will give you some more ideas about what might suit your particular take on acne. So I hope that helps.