Is adult acne truly different from teen acne?
For most people, acne occurs as a result of excess skin oil produced by your sebaceous glands, which in turn is a result of hormonal shifts. The most dramatic of these shifts occur during puberty, which is why acne is typically seen first and foremost as a teenage problem. So why do as many as 25% of adult men and 50% of adult women still get acne? And will the same treatments still work?
On the surface, adult acne is caused by the same basic problem - overproduction of sebum by your oil glands. However, the reasons behind this problem can change with age. For one thing, your sebaceous glands become more sensitive, meaning that it takes less of a hormonal shift to stimulate them. Your body becomes less efficient at breaking down fats and sugars, and thus, the same way that it’s easier to gain weight, it becomes easier for a poor diet to lead to excess sebum production. Compounding the problem, you also grow less efficient at absorbing the good stuff - essential vitamins and nutrients from food, including the nutrients that your body uses to metabolize that skin oil.
So there are some differences in the root causes between acne that afflicts teenagers and adults, but does that mean that popular products based on benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid won’t work?
The fact is, most topical acne treatments will work just as well for adults as they do for teenagers, although that may not be saying much. These products combat the problem at the surface-level only, killing bacteria and exfoliating your skin cells, but doing nothing to prevent the underlying causes described above. The danger for adults is that your skin becomes more susceptible to damage (including sun damage and premature signs of aging) with age, and slower to repair itself. Teenagers have more resilient skin, better able to bounce back after a bad blemish in less time than it would take an adult to do so. As such, gentler products that include moisturizing agents are more important for adults seeking topical treatments, even if those products may lack the strength of harsher alternatives.
Of course, once one understands adult acne, it becomes clear that the same old skin-deep solutions aren’t the real answer. Factors such as improving your diet become more vital than ever. Taking a supplement like Clear5 can have a faster, more dramatic effect for many adults, as the introduction of that metabolic fuel gets right to source of what your body was missing. We see it in the large percent of our return customers who are adults.
So yes, most of the same chemicals used to treat teen acne will give similar results for adults, but finding the right treatment will make a bigger difference than ever before.
