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Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz
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and welcome to DermTV.
There are a lot of misconceptions about acne
out there, and today I’m going
to set the record straight. I’m going to
debunk the most common myths about
acne.
Myth #1: You just have to live with it, you
can’t cure acne. That,
fortunately, is not true. Today, more than
ever, we have more and more
effective treatments for acne. For mild acne,
we have topical treatments,
topical antibiotics, benzyl peroxides, exfoliants
like salicylic acid,
glycolic acid, and even the traditional topical
treatments like sulfur and
Resorcinol. For more advanced acne, we have
oral medication that works very
well, oral antibiotics, birth control pills
and ultimately, Accutance, if
the other treatments haven’t worked. Accutance
will work 100% of the time
because Accutane stops oil and if you don’t
have oil, you don’t have acne.
Myth #2: Acne is a disease of teenagers, you’ll
outgrow it. Not true but,
fortunately, since we have treatments to cure
acne, it almost doesn’t
matter. But the reality is we’ve seen a
shift in the age spectrum of acne,
particularly amongst women. We see more acne
now in women in their later
twenties, thirties, forties and even fifties.
Some women even have acne
right into menopause. We think that the reason
for this change in the age
spectrum has to do with: 1) more women in
the workforce where they
experience untraditional stresses; 2) air
pollution; 3) make-up. And
speaking about make-up . . .
Myth #3: I can’t cover my acne with make-up.
Sure you can, as long as the
make-up is appropriate. As long as it’s
marked either water-based or oil-
free or non-comedogenic which simply means
it won’t clog your skin. You can
certainly cover acne blemishes with that make-up.
Myth #4: Picking pimples causes scars. You’d
have to pick really deep to
cause a scar. A scar is a depression in the
skin, underneath the surface,
or a bump above the surface of the skin, but
what picking pimples does do,
it causes flat stains, discolorations, dark
spots on the pimple, around the
pimple, and these are even more difficult
to treat than the actual pimples
themselves. So the reason not to pick pimples
is so that you don’t get
these dark stains which are so annoying and
so hard to get rid of.
Myth #5: Cortisone creams are good for my
acne. Well, cortisone creams may
actually improve your pimples temporarily
but when you use it repeatedly,
it’s going to cause more pimples, it’s
going to thin the skin, and
ultimately break your blood vessels, so don’t
use cortisone creams on
pimples.
Myth #6: Food causes acne. We’ve all heard
about the traditional forbidden
foods like chocolate, nuts, caffeine, colas,
fried foods, pizza. The
reality? When you do well-controlled, statistically-valid
studies, those
foods don’t cause acne but there are always
exceptions to these studies so
some people come in and tell me when I eat
chocolate, I break out, and I
tell that patient, of course, you obviously
can’t eat chocolate. But at
this point in your life, if you haven’t
noticed a relationship between
eating those foods and breaking out with pimples
the next day, then there
probably is no relationship. The only exception
is iodine and iodine is
contained in shellfish, lobster, shrimp, crabmeat,
certain green vegetables
that come out of the ocean like seaweed, spinach,
kelp and certain
medications like thyroid medications. Iodine
will cause pimples, will cause
acne, but not the day after you eat it. It’s
the accumulation by eating
these foods day after day that suddenly causes
acne. So the bottom line is,
if you’re prone to acne, try to avoid iodine-containing
foods. There are
two other myths that can easily be debunked.
Myth #7: Antibiotics weaken my system so I
shouldn’t take them for acne.
The reality, the antibiotics prescribed for
acne will not weaken your
system, they’re not used for more important
infections, and they’re
perfectly safe if used as prescribed.
Myth #8: And last, the most important time
of the day to wash my face is
after I’ve done sports or perspired. The
reality is the most important time
is right before you do sports because when
you perspire, you tend to wipe
your skin, you wipe in and rub in the grime,
the dirt, the oils that were
there, and that aggravates acne. Wash them
off before you do your sports.
After you’ve perspired, you’ve only made
water and salt, and water and salt
is harmless on the skin and won’t aggravate
your acne. I hope that gives
you some insights as to the reality of what
acne is about and debunked
those myths.