Unfortunately, teenagers don’t have a lock on breakouts. In fact, half of all women with adult acne escaped blemishes in their teens.
Many women’s late-blooming acne begins after pregnancy or during menopause, when estrogen levels soar or dip. Emotional stress can also be to blame. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait to outgrow your blemishes all over again. Here’s how to zap zits quick.
Cleansing Rule: Try a Little Tenderness
The last thin problem skin needs is to be punished. Better to treat your troubled skin gently.
Use soaps that are easy on your skin. True soap can strip your skin and may also contain acne-triggering ingredients like sodium tallowate. So opt for a soap-free liquid soap or bar formulated for oily skin. You might use an antiseptic soap like Liquid Dial during breakouts. But stop using an antiseptic product immediately if it irritates your skin.
Wash twice a day – no more. Despite what you may have heard, repeated cleansing won’t prevent breakouts. Too much washing can dry and irritate your skin. Worse, compulsive cleansing can rile your oil glands and trigger a breakout.
Limit the astringent. Like overcleansing, using astringent more than once or twice a day can dry out – and rile up – your skin. You might try a product labeled for sensitive skin, which contains less alcohol than regular astringents.
Shun the scrubs. Because they dry up oil and temporarily tighten pores, grainy exfoliants may feel like they’re helping your skin. But overusing these products can make your skin parched and flaky and can even result in tiny broken capillaries. Trying to scrub acne away is just wrong. Let a benzoyl peroxide product do the scrubbing for you. Its chemical exfoliation is enough.
You might also try a product formulated with salicylic acid (a chemical exfoliant thought to encourage faster cell turnover and repair). Neutrogena’s Clear Pore Treatment, for example, is an overnight treatment that can help keep pores clear and prevent new pimples from forming.
Don’t squeeze! No matter how tempted you are, never squeeze a pimple. You may push the infection deeper into your skin. Don’t squeeze blackheads, either. They can be deceptively deep, and trying to extract them may break your skin, causing inflammation.
The no-squeeze rule is especially important if you’re African American: Your skin may retaliate by making more pigment and replacing the pimple with a permanent dark spot.
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