If you look at acne treatments, a growing number of treatments are using B vitamins, leading many to ask themselves, do B vitamins fight acne?  B vitamins have been known to reduce acne in some cases, and they find that basically speaking, any vitamin deficiency can contribute to acne.  So therefore, if you are deficient, any vitamin can technically treat and reduce acne. 

The question is, do B vitamins actually treat acne any more than any other given vitamin?  There are three basic vitamins that are known to be good for the skin, even if you don’t suffer any given deficiency.  They are vitamins A, C, & E.  All other vitamins can only help in so much as you are deficient, and B vitamins are no exception.

But still, many use B vitamins to treat acne, because to be honest, these vitamins tend to be good for hair, skin, and nails in general.  For example, riboflavin or vitamin B2 has often been used for just that purpose.  It has also been known to prevent the formation of acne in some cases.  Likewise, niacin prevents the spread of acne while also interrupting the metabolism of carbs, fats, and proteins.

Pantothenic acid or vitamin B5 however is one of the major ones used.  Why?  Because vitamin B5 controls stress and the function of the adrenal glands.  Acne has so often been connected to stress, because with higher stress levels comes higher oil production.  This is however the only B vitamin that has that direct and powerful in some ways an application.  However, one should not rely entirely on any B vitamin to fight acne.

Aloe vera has long been recognized as the ultimate way to take care of your skin, to prevent skin cancer, i.e. to stop sun damage dead in its tracks.  I’ve never really been one to drink aloe vera for skin, but plenty have, and plenty think it tastes alright.  So how does aloe vera actually help the skin, and moreover how does it actually help you to heal and reduce your acne?

Aloe vera is a healing agent.  It helps with sunburns, because it naturally enhances the skin’s ability to heal itself, which is again why some would say that it helps them to prevent things like sun related skin cancer.  As far as drinking it goes, it gets throughout your whole body also acting as a powerful antioxidant, meaning it is dually killing off free radicals often causing more unseen damage within the body and skin.

If you drink aloe vera for skin, you are doing yourself a huge favor.  Yes, you can apply it topically, and it does help when you are burned.  But if you think that your skin is the only thing in need of greater healing, you would be mistaken.  Every part of your body can benefit from using aloe vera.  You can heal every element and help to achieve every result. 

Aloe vera is extremely helpful for your acne.  Whether applied topically or internally, aloe vera goes strait to the sweet spot and basically heals the skin, reduces bacteria and free radicals, and otherwise helps you to achieve the greater results you are looking for.

Zinc as an acne fighter has been recognized and used for quite a few years now.  It is of course an essential vitamin in your diet, and the needs for zinc differ between individuals.  Generally speaking, people aren’t actually deficient in zinc.  Zinc is easy to come by.  The thing that happens is that it is one of the few vitamins that when taken in excess helps your skin even more. 

Zinc is necessary and essential in the growth of healthy human skin cells.  This means that if you have more zinc running through your veins, you will be more able to fight off infections, increase your hair, skin, and nail growth, and otherwise improve liver function, insulin activity, maintain sexual function, and metabolize carbs, proteins, and lipids.

For that reason, it has been quite popularly used in fighting acne, even to the point of having entire products based around it.  It has likewise been used for ulcers, which obviously take more work to heal, pointing to the general efficacy of it as a treatment for a milder condition such as acne, and it has been used for high cholesterol, herpes, HIV interestingly enough, ADHD, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Zinc has many uses and benefits to it.  You just have to find out what those are for yourself.  However, with acne, its benefits are nailed down, and they are there. I wouldn’t suggest using it as the sole ingredient in any formula.  But it could definitely aid other ingredients and reduce some acne on its own.

Accutane is an extremely popular alternative to your average acne solution. Essentially speaking, it’s prescribed only for those who have tried everything else and have acne that is so severe that every other treatment so far has failed. By this, I mean they have tried benzoyl peroxide, different types of retinol, and possibly salicylic acid or antibiotics. At this point, thousands have turned to Accutane as the final solution.

But there is a reason why Accutane is referred to as the last resort acne treatment. It comes with an extreme amount of side effects. You would expect to suffer dry skin, because frankly speaking Accutane works by drying out the oils in the cells, which is apparently responsible for acne. But you might not expect the severe birth defects even with just one dose during pregnancy, aching joints, headaches, depression, pink eye, sensitivity to light, nosebleeds, back pain, and even suicide in some cases.

This being said, Accutane is not always the ultimate solution. There are a number of different risk groups that are not accepted into the Accutane program for health reasons in general terms. For example, obviously if you have depression, you should never take Accutane. The biggest problem is that your skin and body need oils and moisturizers. Even if it’s water, water naturally moisturizes the skin. But Accutane eliminates all of it, both good and bad.

If Accutane were to eliminate excess oils or otherwise, then it would probably do a great job. Unfortunately speaking, just like many prescription and other options, Accutane goes too far. And while eventually your skin will recover even from some other harsher external treatments, many find that they never actually recover from the side effects associated with Accutane.

I don’t like serious medical procedures for one.  I mean honestly speaking, I have even issues with the fact that my dermatologist likes to use this little metal tool to pop zits or my mom sticking needles in them to release the puss.  It’s just gross, not pretty, and well I hate needles and things of that nature of all kinds.  It’s just a tendency I have at this point in time. This being said, when my dermatologist recommended chemical peels to get rid of my rosacea, it was not an option.  I mean I realize that it kills off bacteria, and they’d probably use one of the milder ones for my skin type, but not an option. 

I mean I use metrogel, and it’s already bad enough for my skin, it already creates symptoms often like the rosacea itself.  Why in the world would I want to go even harsher and kill off all my skin cells in general!  This is partly because rosacea is hereditary.  So I’ve already seen my mom go through it.  Likewise, I’ve already seen her go to all sorts of extremes.  I assume the way your skin reacts to certain things is also hereditary, and when she tried the chemical peel route, you can never go back.  Yes, it temporarily got rid of her rosacea.  But all the fall out, personally speaking I don’t really think it was worth it.

Frankly speaking, sometimes the easiest ways to deal with your acne are the ways that will give you at home options.  By this I don’t mean just buying something like a scrub that you can use in the comfort of your own home.  I actually mean rather actually making things out of things you will find in your own kitchen.  One of the most basic combinations you could possibly find is strawberries and lemons.  They are both rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and frankly speaking lemon alone could actually clear up quite a bit of your acne and leave your skin refreshed.  It is quite acidic, so be really careful around your eyes.  But frankly, it soaks in and does its job really well. 

If you in addition actually add oatmeal to this mix, you will find that it actually nourishes the skin, reduces inflammation and redness, and otherwise helps you to achieve even better results than you would have otherwise expected.  Otherwise, one of the best mixes is just baking soda and water.  Yes, you probably have baking soda anyway just for the simple reason that it goes into most baking and otherwise.  But if you use it for your mask, well it does an even better job.  The stuff in your fridge may be a little bit stinkier.  But it’s just as capable actually of providing the results that you want.

Jessica Simpson and Proactiv are actually one of the biggest scams in the acne industry.  She claimed on TV that Proactiv cured her acne, cleared it up, gave her the beautiful face she wanted.  But during that time, she also talked about the breakouts being caused by a bad diet, stress because of a breakup with Nick, etc.  So who’s to really say that clearing up those problems didn’t also clear up her acne. 

This being said, right before she came out for Proactiv, she publically came out and said she had used Accutane and that was what had cleared up her acne.  So now you see why I call it the biggest scam out there.  She wasn’t exactly honest about a paid advertisement.  But then again, who really is when they’re getting paid big bucks to promote a product, no matter how common or useless.  And why would she go strait to a product that hadn’t even really been introduced to the market in general when she started using it? 

I mean she could’ve easily found any benzoyl peroxide treatment already available, and it would have produced the same results.  In fact, most doctors don’t prescribe Accutane until they have exhausted all other possibilities.  So somehow I would doubt the idea that she didn’t use a benzoyl peroxide product before, and therefore Proactiv wouldn’t work.  But we always for some reason rely more on celebrity endorsements than we do on common sense among other things.

Basically speaking, when you see an acne cyst, you can expect to experience a hard bump on the skin that basically consists of some kind of pus.  They happen to people of all ages, all races, sexes, you get the idea.  There is no general rule as to only these people actually get acne cysts.  The problem with acne cysts is mostly that they do not respond to conventional treatments. 

You do need to keep the area clean, use antibacterials such as tea tree oil for example, and otherwise take care of it like you would any other zit.  But for the most part, you have to deal with an antibiotic.  The antibiotic can take as long as 6 months to actually work.  But in some cases, it can work within 2 months.  So as you can obviously tell, dealing with a cyst is a long and arduous process, one that is not to be taken lightly.  But at the same point in time, there are of course courses of action you can take against it.  You just have to consult your dermatologist in order to get the real picture with things and really see the generalized results than you want.

I know, acne treatments that are really fast often seem too good to be true.  They seem too good to be true to me sometimes.  It’s a simple fact of life.  But when that zit pops up on a big day or something, you have to do something about it!  You can’t just keep trying to hide this bump that then looks like a huge bump that’s not as red.  Makeup is limited in its true abilities. 

 But this being said, there are some that say you can’t get rid of a zit in a couple days even.  They would be wrong.  Toothpaste won’t really get rid of your zit, it will just reduce the inflammation, making it easier to cover up, but damaging the skin in the process.  We had this talk in my family the other day, because apparently toothpaste really burns when applied to the skin, which we discussed as opposed to paint in order to create the milk moustaches you see in the commercials.  We were talking about how much either one would hurt your skin and how hard it would be to take off. 

But there is a product that is basically the 12 hour miracle acne treatment I think it’s called.  I gave a bottle that I happened to get for free to my cousin a while ago, because I don’t really believe in spot treatments or didn’t before that.  I couldn’t get her to leave me alone about where I got it, because apparently it was that amazing.  This being said, I’ve since actually used mine, and you can get rid of zits in only those few hours.

Alpha Beta Peels are often used to achieve the chemical peel effects that many are looking for.  It basically has salicylic acid and then it is followed up by glycolic acid, both of which cause the dead skin cells to shed off.  They claim that this will give you a new, refreshed, and youthful appearance among other things.  Essentially speaking, they claim that you can also get rid of lines, wrinkles, spots, scars, etc. 

You can do this at home in some cases, and they use a small enough concentration of glycolic acid that you don’t actually have to neutralize.  The major problem is that even though they are actually able to be used at home, they don’t really cost less than a professional chemical peel.  It’s easier to mess up when you are doing it for yourself, and quite frankly it’s not really something you want to do in general.  You will pay hundreds, and with smaller amounts, you are also not actually guaranteed the same results as you would find with a professional chemical peel.  This being said, I would recommend against bothering with it.  I mean what’s really the point with this in mind.