:Clear Skin Blog

It can be hard selling vitamin treatments, as a lot of people tend to write off any treatment with the word “natural” in it as a scam. Unfortunately, people form these stereotypes because a lot of the products out there are just that. So how can you spot a fraud from the real thing? Well, one telling sign that you should always look out for is the infamous “big list of ingredients”.

People that know about vitamin formulation understand that having the right vitamins in the proper proportion makes all the difference. 400 mg of vitamin C may help you. 400 mcg of vitamin C will do absolutely nothing for you. Sadly, the average vitamin customer doesn’t know much about the science behind supplements, and there are no shortage of scam artists looking to take advantage of those customers. Thus, you get a lot of products on the market that try and throw in every vitamin, mineral and herb that could possibly help a certain affliction. These are the type of products that will never work. You might as well just throw your money away.

It’s not enough simply to have beneficial ingredients. You have to have them in strong enough doses, with supporting ingredients that aid rather than diminish absorbency. Take an acne vitamin treatment that includes all the B-vitamins plus vitamin C. That might sound good on paper, but in order for this treatment to have enough of those ingredients to actually help you, each pill would have to be the size of your thumb. That’s not going to happen, so instead what you get is a worthless treatment that has trace quantities of a dozen different vitamins in concentrations too low to make any difference. There are a lot of ingredients that simply aren’t going to make any difference unless you take them in significant doses. And also, many vitamins actually compete for absorbance. Taking them together can lead to your body absorbing less of what you really need.

Vitamin frauds aren’t going away, because there’s always going to be some customer who looks at the label, notices “this product has X ingredient that the other product doesn’t”, and buys the product with the bigger ingredient list. But you don’t have to fall for this trap. When you see a supplement with an ingredient list a mile long, be smart. Be skeptical. Does it look like the product has a definitive active ingredient? If so, there may be hope. But if what you’ve got is basically just a cocktail of everything plus the kitchen sink that some website said helps with your affliction, then do yourself a favor and save your money. Look at proven products like Clear5 or 5-Hour Energy and you’ll notice that they keep the ingredient list to the essentials, providing strong doses of exactly the vitamins that make a difference.

I was once one of those gullible buyers, and several years back I even packed Clear5 with more ingredients than we have today (twice as many, and it cost the same price to produce, by the way). We found that the added ingredients actually made our product less effective, and we cut them. So remember, don’t be fooled by a product just because it has a long, seemingly impressive list of ingredients. If every vitamin under the sun is packed into a supplement that calls itself a treatment, it’s almost definitely a scam.

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As someone who’s had sensitive skin my whole life, I’m used to dealing with blemishes. Acne used to be the main problem. That is, until I discovered vitamin B5 acne treatment and my skin took a dramatic turn for the better. However, while acne is no longer a concern, the consequences of shaving linger on. To this day I have to be careful about how I shave, as otherwise I’ll be dealing with unsightly rashes and shaving bumps along my jaw and neck.

I met someone recently who gave me an unexpected tip that worked for him: use nothing. It sounds simple, and it is. Basically, you shave with the typical multi-blade razor of your choice, but don’t use shaving cream or gel beforehand. Also, peel off the strip at the front of the razor. That leaves just your skin, warm water and cold hard steel.

I’ve been trying this for a week or so, and surprisingly, it appears to work fairly well. You should still spend some time splashing/soaking your face with warm water to soften up those bristles, and it is important to use a fresh, sharp razor so as to avoid snagging. Note that you may not get as close a shave this way, but honestly, that’s part of the strategy. With modern shaving technology, you can sometimes get a shave that’s simply *too* close for people with sensitive skin. Hairs can get clipped beneath the skin level and the top layer of skin can get stripped away, leading to those hairs getting stuck when the skin regrows and blocks the budding hairs from poking through (hence razor bumps).

I expected to get a bunch of rashes from this, as shaving cream weakens the fibers of your hair and helps prevent pulling when you shave those hairs off, but so far so good. Ingrown hairs can often be feeding grounds for bacteria and actually turn into acne blemishes as oil builds up and pressurizes in those clogged pores, so avoiding them is always important. If you have a hard time shaving and have tried everything else, it may be worth it to try nothing at all.

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Turmeric is a herb harvested from the roots of the Curcuma Longa plant. It’s well known as a cooking spice, but recently has been gaining attention as, you guessed it, a health supplement. Turmeric has long been used in Chinese medicine, not that that counts for much if you’re like me (note: ground up dinosaur bones will not cure your acne), but modern science has given credence to many of the herb’s medicinal uses.

So how can turmeric help? It turns out that the herb has many benefits. It has the properties of being an anti-oxidant (like almost every herb), anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmotic supplement that can even help relax your muscles. Sounds nice. As you can see, there are several properties here that go hand-in-hand with healthy skin.

Of course, your not going to get enough turmeric from simply seasoning your foods to make much of a difference. You’ll need to take it in supplement form, and as with most natural supplements, you’ll need to take a decent amount to get any real effect at all. I’d recommended taking two 400mg tablets per day. Most users report seeing their skin improve after a few weeks. Note that some multivitamins include turmeric, but again, this usually isn’t enough. You’re better off taking the pure supplement (or one with piperine, which aids turmeric’s absorption). Turmeric works differently from supplements such as B5, in that it doesn’t effect your body’s metabolism of skin oil, but it may be a good additional supplement to take on the side.

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Acne is related to stress, and it can be one of those self-perpetuating cycles. Stress can make you impatient, and when you’re stressed out and look in the mirror (and pimples meet your eye), you can get the urge to, well, do something about it. If that something includes taking B5 or using a gentle cleanser, then congratulations, you’ve got good instincts, but more often we want to see results right now.

I’ve said before that sometimes popping zits is not the taboo behavior that some people make it out to be. If the white of an acne pustule is clearly visible and right near the surface of the skin, there is usually little harm in forcing it out. You may even heal faster. But you have to pick your battles wisely. When you get stressed, the inclination is to attack any and all acne pustules that you find, and that never ends well. Acne that is too deep or too early in formation will usually survive your attack, and you’ll have managed to inflame the area around it, making your skin look ten times worse than it did before (and most of the time, it will stay like that ten times longer).

So when you’re feeling stressed out over your skin, try to keep this advice in mind:

1) Don’t storm over to the mirror and attack your face. Heck, stay away from the mirror altogether.

2) Don’t try to “preemptively” stop acne by squeezing pimples that are barely formed. Your efforts will have the opposite effect.

3) Don’t get fixated on an “immediate solution”. Even the best spot treatments seldom work overnight, and there is no miracle sure.

Keep your head on straight and only pop a pimple if it is mature and ready to break the surface of your skin anyway. Never try to force your skin to be clear by sheer acts of facial violence. Healthy skin takes a little time and effort. You didn’t get acne overnight, and you shouldn’t expect it to disappear overnight. If you are trying a new treatment, be patient and consistent, and don’t stress out like crazy if you don’t see a radical transformation in the first week.

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Have you ever noticed how acne can be effected by your haircut or how you comb your bangs? Some people with longer hair occasionally try to comb their hair down over their forehead in attempt to hide acne, but this can have unintended consequences, as that hair can leave your skin even more oily than it would normally be. Many guys who try this technique find that acne actually decreases on their forehead after getting their hair clipped shorter.

Likewise, many acne sufferers discover that the skin around their hairline is more prone to blemishes than elsewhere. It comes down to the excess oil that is secreted onto your hair. If you’re washing your face, but ignoring the task of keeping your hair clean, it’s going to come back to bite you. Gently washing - or at least rinsing - your hair each day can be just as important as washing your face in the morning.

Just as your body keeps a protective layer of oil on your skin, it naturally keeps your hair somewhat oily. Hair that is too dry becomes brittle and frizzy, forming loose ends and looking generally bad. You don’t have to get extreme in your hair washing, but neither should you go too long without giving your hair a good rinse, especially if that hair is frequently in contact with your face. Cleanse your hair regularly and try not to use it as a mask to hide forehead acne. Chances are, you’ll only be encouraging more acne to form in the same place.

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Sometimes you get a bump on your skin that’s not acne, but looks equally bad. It might be caused by an ingrown hair, or an irritated area of your skin that remains inflamed even after the acne pustule is gone. These spots can be a pain in the neck to get rid off, so what do you do?

First off, don’t pick at your scar tissue! I know everyone had heard the “don’t pick” line a few times too many, but it’s especially important here, sometimes even moreso than with genuine acne spots. Scraping away at a scar tissue bump can have exactly the opposite effect that you want, as the scar tissue will often grow back even bigger, thicker and more noticeable than before. So sit back and let your skin heal.

That said, there are some things you can do to speed the process along. Natural exfoliation is a good thing, and by natural I don’t mean shaving over your bump with a razor blade. Allow yourself a bit of sun, rinse regularly and use a gentle exfoliation scrub when you’re in the shower. Keeping a healthy circulation will also help, so drink plenty of water and take some vitamin C along with B5. A bit of Neosporin can help if your skin if inflamed around the region, but use it sparingly and remember that the best way to prevent inflammation is simply to keep your hands away.

Occasionally, if a bump is caused by an ingrown hair, the hair may need to be removed before the area will heal completely. Do not try to dig it out prematurely. Wait until the spot is no longer swollen and the hair is clearly visible. If you wait a very long time, your body will actually break down the hair, but this can sometimes take months. As long as the hair is clearly visible and near the surface, a sanitized needle can be used to free it, after which it should be removed with a pair of tweezers.

Scare tissue bumps can be a pain, as there’s no simple treatment and the fact is that they take time to heal. Patience is your best weapon. And of course, it’s a good idea to be gentle with your skin so as to prevent these blemishes from occurring in the first place.

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Trouble with body acne is one of those subjects I still get a lot of emails about. Clear5 of course helps put a stop to back and body acne, but if your lifestyle is working against you, you may be causing new breakouts without even knowing it. Since body acne is more likely to have surface causes than facial acne (which is more likely directly caused by excess oil), it’s important to keep certain factors in mind. So here’s a quick list of some things you can do to put a stop to stubborn acne on your back and body.

Shower regularly with a gentle body wash and a good bath sponge or loofah. Yes, showering may seem like common sense, but a lot of people either shower less frequently than they should, or simply take quick showers without bothering to give those hard-to-reach areas a good scrub. I know I’ve done the later on plenty of occasions. If you’ve got body acne, it’s not enough to just slather on a bit of soap and rinse it off. You need to use a bath sponge with some texture and gently scrub well enough to actually exfoliate that top layer of skin.

Wash your bed sheets regularly. For guys like me that hate doing the laundry, this one can slip under the radar. Don’t let it. You sweat during your sleep, and dirty sheets are a prime place for bacteria to build up. If you’re not washing those bed sheets regularly, you’re inviting bacteria to invade your pores every time you hit the sack.

Don’t lie around in tight, sweaty clothes. Working out is good, but make sure to change out of your exercise clothes afterward. Like sweaty sheets, bacteria thrive in sweat-soaked clothing, and the threat of acne can be even worse if tight clothing is pressed right against (potentially clogging) your pores.

Speaking of clogging your pores, is your back glued to the back of a chair all day? Yep, that can cause back acne as well. I know this can be a hard problem to deal with, especially if you have a desk job or spend all day sitting in class, but when you can, try to let the pores on your back breathe. Don’t come home and punish your skin even more by sinking into your favorite chair for hours.

Lastly, get a little sun. That’s right, forget the SPF-15 and soak up some good old UV rays. Now be careful, I’m not saying you should try and “tan away” your acne. That’s never a good idea. However, 15-20 minutes of sun exposure a day is actually healthy for you. It enhances your skin’s exfoliation (helping rid your body of acne faster), your circulation (speeding the healing of blemishes), and can even help prevent cancer. So go ahead and get some sun, it’s safer than the sunscreen sellers would have you believe.

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I was putting together the script for a Clear5 commercial and running it past some friends. In one part of the add, I use the line: “Best of all, Clear5 is all natural! No more smearing harsh chemicals on your skin!” While this might sound like a positive thing, it struck one of my friends as a weakness, the reason being that in his mind, any treatment labeled as a “natural treatment” most likely didn’t work. Sadly, this is a sentiment shared by quite a lot of people, and not without good reason.

Natural products have been hot sellers for a while now, with brands such as Vitamin Water becoming household names. Unfortunately, with so many products out there, and many of them “me too” cash-ins, it’s inevitable that a lot of people are going to be exposed to low-quality natural products that are more or less useless. After you’ve tried a few “natural cures” which gave you no results, it’s easy to write the entire industry off.

Of course, if you did give up on all natural products, you might never find the solution you were looking for. But who can blame you when so many products are crap? The real blame lies with the companies pumping out products based not on results, but on psychological reinforcement.

Pick any disease or unpleasant condition, and now go check out what vitamins and herbs are said to help with it. Chances are, you’ll find a list a mile long. Now, if you were making a natural treatment, you might want to give the impression that your treatment works the best by including every one of those ingredients in your pills. You’ll end up with a nice long checklist down the side of your bottle that is sure to impress. Will your pills do anything to help anyone? Nope. But hey, someone looking at the side of the bottle will probably pick your treatment over the one beside it that is missing X ingredient.

This, unfortunately, is how a lot of natural treatments are born, and uneducated customers make sure it continues. Anyone who really knows about vitamins will tell you that proportions make all the difference. You might have a dozen “great” ingredients, but if they don’t compliment each other and are not present in large enough amounts, you’re still stuck with a useless product. You might not know this, but Clear5 actually used to have an ingredient list that was twice as long. Did we remove ingredients to save a buck? Nope (manufacturing actually still costs us exactly the same). We removed some side ingredients because we found out from our tests that the product gave better results without them! Sure, we might lose a few of those customers who buy supplements based on some side-of-the-bottle checklist, but the repeat sales from customers who are actually happy with their results more than makes up for it.

So don’t get discouraged. There are natural treatments out there that work, but you won’t find them by looking for the pill that has everything under the sun packed into it. Become an educated consumer, read reviews and do your research on why certain ingredients help and how much of them it takes to make a difference. The rewards are worth it.

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If you’ve visited many sites on acne, chances are you’ve seen more than one diagram on how acne forms. The problem is, there are multiple ways this can occur, and if your acne is serious enough that you’re visiting websites about it, those diagrams are most likely not accurate for you.

Most acne diagrams on the net depict acne bacteria clogging up the main shaft of your pore. This is accurate for very mild acne, such as white heads or black heads. In these cases oil, bacteria and dead cells form a “plug” that blocks up your pore, appearing as a small white or black spot on your face. But this is quite different from the traditional “red bump with a white pustule” that many acne sufferers are familiar with.

When you experience redness, irritation or swelling, it’s usually because the acne pustule has formed not in the main shaft of the pore, but in the oil gland that sits off to the side of the pore. I’ve used my awesome photoshop skills to give you an example below:

When your glands pump too much oil too fast, that oil causes the gland cavity to swell, and then becomes pressurized and hardens into an acne pustule. These pustules are often too large to easily fit out into the main pore, which thus results in irritation. Acne of this sort is not a “plug” as described by most diagrams, and cannot simply be dislodged by a surface cleanser.

So while the typical acne graphic is fine for those tiny clogged pores you get on your nose, if you suffer from more serious acne, those images aren’t the real deal, and neither should you place your hopes in treatments intended to treat that kind of mild, surface acne. You need to treat acne not at the level of your pores, but at the level of your oil glands, if you want to get real results. That’s why Accutane works, and it’s why vitamin B5 also works for so many.

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Sometimes the most often overlooked solutions are the simplest, like drinking more water each day. One of those simple solutions is getting enough sleep. You may not realize it, but your body gets a lot done while you are asleep, and keeping your skin healthy is a big part of that. Of course, while dozing off sounds pretty easy, sleep is often one of the first things we sacrifice when a busy lifestyle leaves you feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

Some will tell you that you only need 6 hours of sleep. While it’s true that you can get by with 6, your body will be in better shape (adult or not) if you stick with a more generous 8 hours. While you sleep your body rejuvenates itself, and it’s during those hours that the body is most effective at tissue repair. That means acne blemishes will disappear faster if you are getting better sleep, and your skin’s defenses will be better able to handle whatever challenges the next day has in store.

Not all sleep is equal. The quality of your sleep can have an effect on your stress level and your skin’s ability to combat acne. If you frequently wake up in the night or have trouble falling asleep in the first place, consider a sleeping aid or consult a doctor if over-the-counter medications don’t solve the problem for you. Also, keep in mind that your body likes to keep things predictable. You’ll get better sleep if you keep to a regular schedule, going to bed and waking up at about the same time each day. An erratic sleep pattern leaves your body burnt out and takes a toll on your healing processes.

So while you’re working out a skin-healthy lifestyle, don’t overlook sleep. Acne blemishes will last longer and can crop up more easily if your body isn’t getting enough rest. And by the way, don’t forget to wash those bedsheets regularly! You sweat while you’re asleep, and your bedding is prime real estate for pore-clogging bacteria. Keep your sheets clean and your body well rested, and your skin will thank you for it.

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