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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Finding Over-the-counter Acne Treatments

By David Lam

Over-the-counter acne products are starting to become an increasingly popular alternative to prescription medication in the treatment of acne. These products are readily available while you don't need any prescription from your doctor to buy them. For people with mild to moderate acne cases, the best over-the-counter acne treatments will be just as useful as the more expensive prescribed ones.

Not only being cheap, these acne products always have little or no side effects in comparison to some of the highly publicized prescribed antibiotic drugs which used by doctors. Even though there are lots of over-the-counter acne products available, there are only two types of acne treatments which are medicated or natural. Both types utilize basically the same method by using a drying agent to exfoliate the skin and to combat the acne.

Usually in most case of a medicated product, this is either glycolic acid, salycic acid or benzoyl peroxide. Natural products tend to apply combinations of ingredients and plant extracts such as tea tree oil, green tea extract, vitamin E and aloe vera. There seems to be a growing number of different treatments however usually over-the-counter acne products come in the form of topical gels, creams, cleansers and patches which are applied onto the skin.

When using these kinds of preparations, it is important that you cover all of the area where you have acne so that you will also be curing the hidden blemishes which you can't yet see as well as the acne breakouts. Expect some trials and errors as you experiment with the different kind of acne treatments available, it may take you some time before you find the correct type or combination of products which work for you. No matter what you do, don't use more than one treatment at the same time particularly with medicated products.

If you are using a new acne product, give it enough time to start working before leaving it to try other else. Usually you may need to use it for 6 to 8 weeks before you notice any real progress but this depends upon the severity of your acne and your skin type, some people may see improvements after only a few weeks. After you have found the perfect acne products that suitable for you with providing good results, you may still need to carry on your acne treatments to keep your acne in check. This is because acne is a chronic skin disorder and it is possible to reoccur if you stop using your acne treatments.

To get the best out of any over-the-counter acne products, you need to use them correctly and consistently. This may be common sense however do read the labels and make sure you use them with the instructions given! If you don't follow the instruction, it may cause damage to your skin and doing more harm than good especially if you have sensitive skin.

The over-the-counter acne products which are available in medicated or natural do successfully treat most forms of acne. Unluckily there are always some exceptions to the rule and there are some types of acne that do not respond to these types of acne treatments. If this happens to you and nothing you can do to improve your condition, you should seek the help of your dermatologist or doctor.

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