Common Causes for Acne & Blemishes

Do you touch your face a lot? This may come as a surprise, but subconsciously touching your face all day makes it quickly become the dirtiest part of your body.  While it’s important to wash your skin every night, it’s much better to try to prevent your hands from touching your face unnecessarily. This can add bacteria to the skin adding to acne bacteria and cause more problems.

Have you been under tremendous stress? Stress not only affects acne flare-up.  In general, it worsens the overall skin condition. It induces the adrenal glands into overproduction of cortisol, a steroid, which in turn makes sebaceous glands produce more oil and make skin extra oily. Thus the reason why in stressful periods, people experiencing an increase in acne get more inflamed, puss-filled papules than simple whiteheads or blackheads.

Do you not wash your skin at night? Oil on the skin makes for a breeding ground of bacteria, and bacteria will cause blemishes. Sleeping with not only your makeup on, but also the addition of oil, dirt and debris that has built up on the skin during the day, can absolutely trigger new blemishes.

Have you started using new skin care products? When your skin is introduced to new products, sometimes you might get some initial blemish purging, especially if the products are giving your skin more exfoliation than normal. If it continues on more than two weeks, then they may not be a good fit for your skin.

Are you about to start your menstrual cycle? Many women can experience a surge of blemishes at the start of their monthly cycle. This is completely normal, but can be very frustrating.

Have you flown on a plane recently in the last few days or week? Flying on an airplane can throw your skin off. The cabins of airplanes have extremely low humidity, which cause the skin to get extremely dehydrated (lack of water). The dry air looks for moisture where it can get it and that means robbing it right from your skin! The dehydrated cells cause a buildup, which can trap oil underneath the skin resulting in post-flight breakouts.

Have the weather temperatures been fluctuating from day to day? When the season is changing and the weather is warm one day and cold the next, it can wreak havoc on the skin, leaving it confused, unbalanced, and prone to blemishes.