Acne part 2 – What can I do against it?

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Four important tips for dealing with your acne

Acne – everyone should know this – seems to be a big market. It is claimed that acne is the most common skin disease. Approximately 75-90% of all adolescents have milder or more severe manifestations of acne by the age of 20. There are also some who continue to have it until the age of 30, but not very many.

If there is a large market, there are also many companies that want to serve that large market. For example, there are acne medications that focus primarily on fighting the bacteria that cause the inflammation. This seems obvious at first glance, but how do you fight the bacteria? We developed antibiotics for this purpose. Meanwhile, almost everyone warns against using antibiotics for every inflammation. This promotes global resistance (the bacteria develop defenses against the antibiotics) and antibiotics destroy not only aggressive attackers among the bacteria, but also many very useful ones, as you surely know. So our microbiome (that is the totality of all bacteria found in the body, especially in the intestines) is affected. In addition to the use of antibiotics, cortisone creams are also used. Benzoyl peroxide (BPO, not cortisone) was prescribed the most, according to one study.

Are patients actually satisfied with the results? If you look in the guidelines for acne treatment of dermatologists, it probably does not look like it. Here is a quote (page 12):

“It is known from patient surveys that less than a quarter of patients (!!!) report a high level of satisfaction with their treatment success, whereas almost a third are not very or not at all satisfied with their treatment to date [2].

In addition, there is a high rate of nonadherence (= patients do not take the medication as prescribed) with regard to the use of the medication of 35 to 45%. Reasons for this include poor tolerability, lack of practicability, high time consumption, fear of adverse drug reactions, and lack of information to the patient about adverse drug reactions, poor efficacy, and, in some cases, initial worsening of symptoms after initiation of therapy [8].” (emphasis added by us)

So what to do?

Tip 1: Change of lifestyle – the fight against the causes

Lifestyle changes include dietary habits and exercise.

Here are some tips for dealing with lifestyle changes

We had already talked about combating causes in part 1. Here would be one possibility. But this is anything but simple. If you have to cut something off when you eat – that is definitely not recommended, then rather continue eating with pimples, which is fun. So how can you proceed and what should you change? First of all, you can observe your habits or routines. Many routines run unconsciously, i.e. you do it because you have always done it that way or because it is common practice in your family. Of course, you can ask yourself if you want to change something?

It is good if you first note down for a month what you eat during the day. After that month, you can ask yourself what you really want to keep eating and what you can do without. And of course, what you would rather eat instead. This is one way to approach your own eating habits. But you can also go the other way around: You make a note of everything you don’t eat, e.g. no fruit, hardly any vegetables or whatever. By the way: Not only the food counts, also what you drink. After this initial analysis of your habits, ask yourself the question: What would I like to eat or drink that I don’t do yet? Maybe you like to eat apples, why not? Maybe you always eat yogurt and drink a lot of milk, does that really have to be or can something else replace it?

We already mentioned in part 1 that food can also be medicine. This has many facets. There is not one thing that you change and poof, everything is good. Basically, you acquire or avoid many diseases over your entire lifetime through food, depending on what you do. If you eat curry sausage with French fries or McDonald’s every day, you shouldn’t be surprised that after 20, 30 or 40 years your health won’t look so good. A few pimples on your face are a good reason to take a closer look at what you eat every day, aren’t they?

When it comes to food, there are so many aspects you can change. Everything is optional, nothing is a must. It’s definitely about having fun with the change. Is it the Mediterranean diet? What fats does one eat? What and how much fiber is being consumed? Raw foods? What types of bread are eaten? How much sugar? An important tip on this: Variety definitely does the trick!!!

If you occupy yourself a little with this cause research, you will in any case do something to fight your acne, but not only acne. Because what is the skin in the youth, are the chronic diseases with increasing age, and those are not to be joked with any more.

To squeeze or not to squeeze?

Of course, the common dermatologist immediately says: Hands off, do not squeeze. That is difficult or even impossible. But you could observe what happens after squeezing? Are there inflammations in the squeezed areas or small scars, enlargement of the pores? If everything is normal – why not squeeze? Or you could also ask a medical beautician to squeeze the blackheads.

Tip 2: What cream to apply – the symptom control

You have read above that only about every fourth person is satisfied with the prescribed medication. That’s no wonder, because there are also some side effects. If you are fine with your medication and it helps you – great. Please do not read any further. The next lines are more of a secret tip for those who are not satisfied: This is the prescription of Prof. Dr. Dr. Petersen. Prof. Petersen was first a chemist and then studied medicine (dermatology). He has developed his own formula for his patients, which does not use antibiotics and cortisone.

Here is his recipe:

The formula must be prescribed by your doctor, it will be billed normally through your health insurance. Not every pharmacy can produce this cream. We recommend the production at the Mohren Apotheke zu St. Lorenz in Nuremberg. Your doctor can write a prescription in your name and mail it to the pharmacy (lipolyse@mohren-apotheke.org). Try the recipe of Prof. Petersen once, we are curious about your assessments. The cream is applied in the morning and evening.

Tip 3: Skincare

Before applying the cream the skin should be cleansed. It is best to buy a normal product in the drugstore, not some expensive Chi-Chi.

Does your skin dry out? It should. That’s why greasy creams are not recommended. But maybe you can find a moisturizing cream that is not so expensive. That is good in this case.

Tip 4: What else?

So those were our thoughts on the subject of acne. Finally, we would like to share something with you on the topic of acne scars. If you have already developed scars, they can definitely be softened. For this purpose there is the so-called needling. Here, microfine needles are pressed 1-2 mm under the skin. These needles then cause a percutaneous collagen induction. This is what it is called when you induce a lot of mini-injuries in the skin. In any case, new collagen is formed as a result and new blood vessels are also formed. This then causes the acne scars to recede. A combination of needling and autologous blood therapy with platelet rich plasma (PRP) has proven to be even better. An anesthetic cream is applied during needling, so it is virtually painless.

The therapy can only be performed by a doctor. You can find a good doctor in the doctor search of the Network Globalhealth.