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Natural Acne Treatments

For many people, the thought of 'natural treatments' is synonymous with false promises and products that do next to nothing. Granted, that attitude can also be applied to most all acne products, since even many of the FDA approved treatments out there are often utterly useless.

The great thing about a smart natural acne treatment is that it can really get to the root cause and restore your skin to a healthy state, saving you the trouble of having to constantly use a dozen cleansers. But don't make the mistake of thinking all natural treatments are harmless. Natural or not, some of them can have serious side effects or irritate your skin just as badly as the leading drug-based creams.

Acne & Your Diet

When it comes to treating your body naturally, your diet is the first place you should start. One of the most common lies on acne websites is that what you eat has no impact on your skin. Connections between acne and chocolate or most any junk food are typically written off as "myths". This is straight-up disinformation. 

Of course your diet makes a difference. Pages and pages could be written on the subject of what foods are best or worst for your skin and why, but the smart thing to do is simply to pay attention to your own body. If you consistently break out after eating pizza, then that should tell you something. Different people's bodies cope differently with metabolizing fats, sugars and carbohydrates, but the general rule is too avoid junk food high in sugar or processed carbs. Here's why:

High blood sugar = High insulin = Increased production of skin oil by your sebaceous glands

Problem foods cause your blood sugar levels to rise, which results in your body to pumping out more skin oil faster. That oil can then pressurize in your pores, forming acne pustules. So what should you eat instead? You probably already know :). Ditch the fast food and start eating more leafy green vegetables, fresh fruits, non-fried chicken and fish. And drink plenty of water (8 x 8 oz. glasses per day should be your minimum).

Natural Supplements

It's practically impossible to eat a "perfectly balanced diet" that covers all your bases, and the fact is that if you have acne, getting just the bare-minimum RDA of all your vitamins and minerals may not be enough. As such, you may need a supplement. But which one?

Unfortunately, many clear skin supplements are either ineffective or only effective for people with very mild cases of acne. This is because of the approach they take. You wouldn't see a cream from one of the major manufacturers that was packed with every single chemical known to possibly combat acne. Why? Because not all of those chemicals interact well with eachother, and to cram them all in, the concentration-per-chemical would have to be so weak that you would only get a small, ineffectual amount of each one per squirt of the product.

That would make for a terrible acne cream, but that's exactly the approach that many supplements take. They try to treat everything. You can never treat everything. Acne has too many possible causes, and when you toss in too many vitamins, minerals and herbs in an attempt to cover them all, you end up with a treatment that is too weak to actually do anything, not to mention vitamins that compete with each other for absorbance, etc. Much of the product just ends up getting flushed out in your urine.

Similar to creams or cleansers, when shopping for a natural supplement, you should take the common sense approach of determining what the active ingredient is. Is the product based on vitamin B5, or maybe vitamin A or the mineral zinc? If it has a consistent, specific approach to treating acne, and if that approach coincides with your acne type, then you may have a real solution on your hands. In my case, that solution was Clear5.

Topical Treatments

Nowadays, even most of the drug-based creams and cleansers include natural ingredients to buff their formulas, and it's not hard to see why. Besides looking good on the label, ingredients like aloe vera make for powerful additives that can enhance the moisturizing and antioxidant properties of topically applied products.

Some of my favorite topicals are actually all-natural, such as tea tree oil (TTO). These solutions are typically less harsh on your skin than alternatives such as benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid, but that's not to say that they can't be drying. Many acne sufferers have seen success with treatments such as TTO, apple cider vinegar or manuka honey. Just be reasonably cautious when stating out. These natural remedies can work really well, killing the underlying bacteria just as effectively as most spot treatments, but some people may be hyper sensitive or allergic to them, and it won't do you any good if the natural treatments are just as irritating as the drugs.

There is a broad variety of topically applied natural remedies, from moisturizers like aloe or olive oil, to spot treatments like TTO and manuka honey, and even organic cleansing milks that can make a great, gentle alternative to typical soaps and cleansers. Especially if you have sensitive skin that doesn't agree well with the drugs every other acne treatment uses, you should consider giving them a try.