Witch Hazel For Acne - Does It Really Work?

The battle against acne can take many forms. Some people go the medication route, some go to the route of laser therapy, and others prefer the natural route. If you’re the latter, one of the best treatments you should consider is using witch hazel.

A Gentle Acne Treatment

The problem with going the medication route for treating acne is that many of the treatments are harsh against your skin. While they may cause you to have small victories against acne, they can often worsen your skin and irritate them.

Witch hazel is exactly the opposite. As a treatment for skin conditions, witch hazel very rarely causes skin irritation, including those who have sensitive skin.

3 Properties Of Witch Hazel That Make It Effective

Disinfectant

Many acne breakouts can be attributed to high amounts of bacteria, especially if the acne has turned into pus filled bumps. By clearing the skin of bacteria using witch hazel, you are preventing future acne from forming due to bacteria build up.

Astringent

At some point in your fight against acne, you have probably used an alcohol based astringent. You have probably noticed how much it can hurt and dry out your skin even though it can cleanse your pores well. The good news about witch hazel is that it cleanses but it doesn’t dry out your skin.

An astringent works mainly by reducing the size of the pores. This will help prevent pimples from getting worse as oils won’t be able to penetrate the pores in the same way.

Irritant Fighter

Witch hazel is an overall effective treatment for skin as it can battle any irritants on the skin that could make your acne worse and it’s also effective at fighting infection, something that could dramatically worsen your acne.

Surprising Fact About Witch Hazel

One of the properties of witch hazel that helps your skin is that it is high in tannins. Tannins are the same chemicals in wine that causes your mouth to pucker. This can do wonders for your skin!

What’s The Best Way To Use Witch Hazel?

Really, you have two options here. The easiest option to start with would be using a natural witch hazel solution and applying it directly to the skin. If your acne is pretty strong right now, twice a day should be enough to really see some results. Going above 3 times a day isn’t suggested. You can also create your own solution by combining witch hazel with dried lavender or lavender essential oil.

Another popular way to use witch hazel is to make an all natural facial mask This is best used with other natural ingredients like raw honey, egg whites, oatmeal, and more. The right combination of ingredients can soothe your skin, fight off bacteria, and prevent inflammation from getting worse.

The main reason you should consider witch hazel for acne treatment is that it is completely natural. Your skin is the largest organ in your body and has complex needs. By using a witch hazel treatment that can clear out bacteria, prevent inflammation, and shrink oil clogged pores, you will be helping your skin heal naturally without harming your skin.

Detoxing For Acne - How To Eliminate Toxins To Solve Acne Problem

If you’re currently in the battle against acne and every solution you try isn’t working, it could be a result of a high presence of toxins in your body. With the combination of stress, unhealthy eating, and pollutants in the air and home, acne can thrive on your skin no matter what you try.

One way people are finding relief against fighting acne is by doing body detoxes. Surprisingly, these detoxes are not as complicated as you would think. In fact, much of the time a detox just means assessing your current lifestyle and being honest about your behaviors. The more honest you can be and dedicated to making changes, the easier it will be to ward off toxins and fight acne from the inside.

Here are some of your first steps in eliminating those dangerous toxins to find your clear skin once again:

1. Say Goodbye To Soda

If you want to make positive changes to your skin and body, stop drinking soda right now. There are no redeeming health qualities to it. The chemicals in soda are not even remotely good for our bodies. Also, the caffeine found in most sodas can cause your skin to dry out.

Start substituting your soda habit with water. If that is too much of a jump for you, try sparkling water with lemon or other fruit. Give your body a break in filtering out the harsh soda chemicals and treat it with exactly what it needs - healthy h2O.

2. Embrace Fruits and Vegetables

It may seem simple but fruits and vegetables can be fierce warriors in the fight against acne. You can win this battle if you make commitment to giving your body what it needs. Fast food, fried food, and stuff you can pop in the microwave can really wreck your body. If you could see what it was doing to your insides, you would stop right away.

Make introducing fruits and vegetables into your diet fun. Find new ways to cook them. You’ll end up enjoying the food you eat more and your skin will clear itself up in the meantime.

3. Sweat Those Toxins Out

It’s time to put on those running shoes or turn on the Wii and get to exercising. While exercise can be hard to fit into a busy schedule, it’s one of the best things you can do for your body. When the sweat starts pouring out, so do the toxins. Again, the extra health benefits that come with adding exercise to your life will surprise you and help you find relief in many ways.

If you don’t know where to get started in exercise, yoga would be a good first step. As you feel more comfortable with it, you can even start doing hot yoga. In hot yoga, you are put in a heated room and sweating out the toxins will happen faster than you could imagine.

While these lifestyle changes may seem small, they can have a powerful effect on your overall health. You must remember that your skin is a complex organ that needs proper nutrients and hydration to rid itself of toxins. Fight these toxins in the long haul and your struggles with acne will disappear.

Easy Natural Acne Treatments For Hormonal Acne

In the midst of the struggle to get clear skin and rid yourself of acne, you probably keep on looking for the miracle product that will magically cause your pimples to go away. While there are plenty of prescription medications and natural remedies that can assist you in reducing hormonal acne, the best way to prevent acne period is to make some changes to your lifestyle.

These changes won’t ever produce overnight results when dealing with acne but the long term benefit of never having to worry about acne again is often a greater reward.

Here are some suggestions you should consider to prevent future acne breakouts and to deal with your current acne problems:

Add Some Healthy Fats To Your Diet

If you’re currently struggling with hormonal acne problems, you need to start from the inside for the best natural acne treatment. No topical ointments will be effective enough at battling the hormone problems inside.

Hormonal acne is actually the result of an overproduction of androgen hormones. These hormones need to be regulated if you want to control your acne. The best way to do this is by adding more natural healthy fats to your diet. This can be done by eating more fish or cooking with extra virgin olive oil. In addition, you can try taking fish oil or flaxseed supplements to increase your body’s intake of healthy fats.

Dairy May Be Causing Your Hormonal Acne

Unfortunately, much of the dairy we consume these days comes from cows that are pumped up with hormones so they can produce more. Either you can try drinking more organic milk or go the next step and become dairy free for a period of time. A dairy free lifestyle can help you truly pinpoint if the hormones in cows are what may be causing your hormonal acne.

There are so many good substitutes for dairy these days that this is much easier than it once was. You can try adding almond milk or coconut milk to your diet, both of which contains healthy fats to regulate hormone imbalances.

Make Stress Busting A Priority

If you’re on a busy schedule and can’t live without your to do list, you may have to learn to let go a little bit. The best way to do this is by figuring out why your to do list is so long. If it’s a result of you being unable to say no to people because you want to please others, you need to learn to be assertive and recognize that your health is a priority.

If you let others dictate your time and life choices, the stress can build up to a point where it’s constantly producing hormones like cortisol that can cause your acne to flare up and other problems like weight gain.

Instead, what you should do, is make time for exercise and other activities that are shown to relieve stress. Again, you have to make this a priority in your life if you want to overcome your hormonal acne problems.

Natural acne treatment doesn’t necessarily have to be rare herbs or other products. Instead, you can regulate your hormonal acne by looking at the choices you make every day and switching out the bad ones for positive, healthy ones.

Acne Scarring - How Can I Prevent It From Getting Worse?

The fight against acne doesn’t go away once your pimples have disappeared. This struggle can continue on in the form of acne scars that blemish your skin and hide the clear skin underneath. Fortunately, there are strategies you can put in place to make sure your acne scarring doesn’t get out of control.

When done effectively, you can claim victory over acne scarring and finally see the unblemished skin that you desire. Consider the following acne scarring remedies and preventative tips to get to that point:

1. Fight Acne First

Though it may seem obvious, you don’t want to let your skin go crazy with breakouts and you just stand on the sidelines without taking action. Fighting your acne first can prevent even the possibility of scarring.

One of the best ways to do this is to determine the source of your acne. For some people, it’s overly oily skin that gets infected easily. If this is the problem, you will want to use remedies that are antibacterial in nature. If your acne is due to a hormone imbalance, add some healthy essential oils and fats to your diet to control the production of acne causing hormones.

2. Reduce Sun Exposure

If you’re an outdoors person, you want to take extra care of your skin by applying a strong sunscreen. This also applies to the tanning bed. Any exposure to sunlight or ultraviolet radiation can cause your scarring to get worse.

3. Seek Acne Scar Treatment Immediately

You will have a much more difficult time with acne scarring if you wait months or years when you notice the scars starting to surface. As soon as you see this scarring, seek the help of a dermatologist or find some natural remedies that can be used to exfoliate your skin gently and get rid of those scars.

Acne Scar Treatments To Consider

If you haven’t been able to prevent acne scars from the start, you can try seeking some topical treatments in the form of creams and lotions that contain alpha-hydroxy acid and beta-hydroxy acid, both of which can heal the skin.

There is even a prescription medication called tretinoin that can help your acne heal quicker while at the same reducing the possibility that you will get acne scars in the first place.
If your scarring has become persistent and won’t go away with any of these techniques, you can try medical techniques like dermabrasion. While this can be an uncomfortable process, the doctor performing the procedure will basically be helping you get rid of the layers of skin that the scarring is at.

One thing to note about dermabrasion is that if your scars go really deep, you will actually make these more visible. Ask your doctor to evaluate your skin and be honest about the possibility of scarring going away.

While acne scarring can be an unsightly nuisance to put up with, there are relatively easy ways to help you prevent this scarring from worsening and preventing it from the start.

Acne Causes - Where In The World Did This Acne Breakout Come From?

In fighting your battle against acne, it’s important to know your enemy and where it comes from. By knowing the source of acne, you can make the lifestyle changes needed to prevent your acne from getting worse and potentially prevent it from flaring up at all.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is no one agreed upon cause of acne. Our bodies are complex and often act different from person to person. However, there are some generally accepted theories that can help explain why your body keeps on breaking out in acne that makes you want to avoid mirrors and contact with the world.

The Oil Theory

Many acne experts believe that oil is the source behind your acne breakouts. The glands in your skin can become overactive, producing much more oil than your skin needs. When this oil accumulates along with dead skin cells and bacteria, your pores can become inflamed which leads to breakouts of pimples.

The Hormones Theory

Our body contains a complex combination of hormones to regulate bodily processes. Due to fluctuations in age or circumstances, hormones can become out of balance, causing our body to react in strange ways. One of the strange ways is acne, of course.

Hormones often become imbalanced during puberty, pregnancy, and even in situations of extreme stress and anxiety. The hormone theory also goes with the oil theory as the increase of certain hormones can actually cause more oil to be produced.

The imbalance of hormones is actually why some women will take birth control pills to regulate their acne breakouts. Birth control pills can regulate androgens, the main hormone behind acne breakouts.

Correcting The Course of Acne Breakouts

Whether it’s an excess of oil or a hormone imbalance, there are choices you can make today to help regulate both problems.

Both causes of acne can be prevented by learning to cope with stress in healthy ways. Mostly, this is through exercise. There are so many fun ways to exercise now like CrossFit, Wii games, Zumba, and more that you will even forget that you’re exercising.

To fight the production of androgens to put your hormones back in balance, try adding more healthy fatty acids to your diet. One of the best ways to do this is to start eating more fish and using more healthy oils in your cooking. This would include extra virgin olive oil and grape seed oil. In addition, try snacking on avocadoes, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds to help you regulate your hormones. All of these oils or foods actually reduce the production of androgens.

Herbal Remedies To Fight Hormonal Acne

Another effective treatment for handling hormonal acne sources is to seek out herbal remedies that counteract androgens. Some of these are green tea extract, emu oil, and saw palmetto. Many times you can find these in your local health food store.

Knowing the source of acne is one of the first steps towards overcoming your problems. With a few lifestyle changes and additions to your diet, you can actually counteract the source of most acne problems and be on your way to clear skin.