:Clear Skin Blog

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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Business venting time….Sometimes I just want to quit sending any shipments to the UK. On the one hand, a lot of UK residents are great customers and trustworthy people, but on the other, we get more lost packages and chargebacks from the UK than from anywhere else, despite that we ship a whole lot more packages to the US. Why? The problems are two-fold. First, Royal Mail is just less reliable than the postal services in countries such as the US, Canada or Australia. We almost always ship orders within 1 business day, but Royal Mail seems to arbitrarily take anywhere from 1-3 weeks to deliver, and sometimes not at all.

The second problem is taxes (and it’s related to the first, since customs is a big part of what delays deliveries). In an effort to stifle free trade, the UK slams imported products with ridiculously high import taxes that often add 30-50% onto the final cost. These customs fees cannot be charged or collected by us in advance, they have to be paid by the customer when they pick up the package. This is the same with any international (or outside the EU trade zone) purchase that falls over a certain amount. Big corporations with local warehousing or distribution centers can get around it (like Amazon, etc), but for small operations like us, the customer needs to be aware of their local tax laws. Unfortunately, many in the UK don’t have a clue about their nation’s tax policies, and are actually surprised when they get charged VAT/customs fees, etc. This leads to packages getting sent back to us since the customers were oblivious to their country’s tax system. I wish we could change the UK tax system, but it’s quite out of my hands. If you’re buying anything internationally, you have to be an educated consumer.

My next headache comes from our new toll free number, which I’m currently regretting. I’ve never been a fan of phone sales, since your credit card information is a lot more secure if you simply purchase online. With online sales, human eyes never see your credit card info and everything is encrypted. Of course, there’s no such thing anywhere as 100% security, but basically, an online shopping cart is a lot safer than a phone purchase. We now offer the option of phone orders, but as far as I can tell it’s rarely being used (most smart customers stick with the cart), and worse, the call center keeps trying to overcharge us. I’m still getting false invoices from before we were even up and running, and calculating an 8-week billing cycle seems to be beyond the ability of their billing department. I don’t want to quit just yet, but if the 800 number disappears for while, don’t be surprised.

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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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Well, I figured I’d give the acai berry supplements a shot myself to see firsthand how well they work. I’m in fairly good shape, so I wasn’t expecting to shed a lot of pounds, but I must admit that my diet hasn’t been the greatest recently, and frankly I just wanted to see if I could notice similar results to B5. The first week was fine, then the trouble started.

It started out as a slight pain in my abdomen, but over the course of the next week, the pain got a lot worse. By week three I was barely able to sleep at night because of the intense stomach cramps that started wracking my body. There was a sharp, throbbing pain in my abdomen that radiated out to my lower back. One night it kept me up until 7:30 in the morning. Not fun.

At first, I was skeptical that the acai berry supplements had anything to do with my pain. I don’t have many allergic reactions to vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc. However, the time frame matched up, and now that I’ve laid off the supplements, the pain is leaving. A little googling led me to discover than apparently a number of other acai berry users have experienced the same thing.

This is not a well publicized side effect, and I expect it is fairly rare, but it’s a pretty brutal if you get it, so I’d just like to caution any acai users that if you start to feel stomach pain, stop taking the pills immediately.

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So Opera is at it again and the latest craze in health supplements is here: acai berries. If you’ve visited many websites recently, you’ve probably even seen a few banner ads for acai weight loss supplements. Acai berries are notable for a few reasons. Like so many other supplements, they are packed with antioxidants. Acai berries are said to possess even more antioxidant power than blueberries and blackberries. That’s well and good, but you know how I feel about antioxidants (when it comes to treating any real ailment, don’t expect much). More interesting are the other benefits of acai, namely its purported ability to both decrease your appetite and increase your metabolism. That certainly sounds like a powerful combination for weight loss. Some users have even noted that their skin tone improved, which caught my attention.

The claims of increasing your metabolism in a fashion that enhances your skin tone made acai sound quite similar to another supplement that I’m rather familiar with - vitamin B5. So I got to looking at how acai brings about these effects. Sources that actually explain *how* the acai berry works are pretty rare, but it turns out that the berry’s ability to improve your metabolism stems from the fact that it delivers a healthy dose of omega fatty acids (including omega 3’s, 6’s and 9’s).

While the acai berry contains these fatty acids, it does not provide them in a readily available form. It is much harder for your body to obtain these ingredients from acai, compared with sources such as fish oil, for example. This begs the question: If you want a more powerful metabolism boost, why not just take fish oil?

The unique thing about acai is that it also helps decrease your desire for food, thanks in part to its high fiber content. This is pretty unusual in a metabolism booster. Most products that have the same effect make you more hungry, not less. For instance, many vitamin B5 users notice an increased appetite as their metabolism ramps up from taking B5.

In any case, acai berries are certainly a powerful supplement with some great health benefits, but whether they’re the answer for you depends on what you’re looking for. If it’s mainly the metabolism benefits, you will probably get stronger effects from fish oil or vitamin B5, but considering the whole package, acai berries are still a nice option, just don’t expect dramatic changes overnight like some of the ads out there claim.

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For the longest time, topical acne treatments more or less ignored the real cause behind most acne, that being excess skin oil. You’d hear about how one acne cream or cleanser would give you clear skin thanks to how well it killed bacteria or removed surface dirt, factors which are mostly irrelevant when it comes to really stopping breakouts. Well, now it seems some products are actually getting it, talking specifically about how they eliminate excess skin oil from your pores….but there’s a still a problem with their methods.

I was recently watching a commercial for the Murad acne complex, which specifically noted how its deep-cleaning cleanser pulled the oil right out from your pores. Less oil is good, right? Well yes, but the key word here is “less”. The goal is to normalize your oil levels, not eliminate them altogether.

The problem with topical cleansers is that they strip away your skin’s natural level of defense. Acne is caused when your glands produce too much oil too fast. The oil becomes pressurized in your pores, hardening into acne pustules. Too much oil is a bad thing, but not enough oil can also be harmful. Too little oil leaves your skin dry and vulnerable, more easily irritated and more susceptible to sun damage. It can lead to premature aging and all kinds of effects you don’t want. And simply put, it’s not natural. Your body naturally tries to protect your skin with a safe level of oil. Constantly stripping it away is not a healthy way to treat your skin.

This topical approach does nothing to effect either oil production or oil metabolism. Once again, you’re treating the symptoms and not the problem. A topical treatment cannot take away “just enough” oil to leave your skin how it naturally should be. They don’t work like that. In the end, it takes an internal treatment to maintain your skin oil at healthy levels. If your body is pumping out too much sebum, that means you have to either decrease oil production with a prescription treatment such as Accutane, or increase oil metabolism with vitamin B5. In these cases, topical solutions aren’t a solution at all.

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What makes a good acne treatment commercial? I’ve been studying this lately, as I’m considering putting out a few commercials (or infomercials) myself for Clear5. In simple terms, a good commercial is any commercial that moves product, with brand building being a nice side benefit. However, setting aside that market reality, what makes a commercial that actually benefits you, the acne sufferer?

The right sales pitch can sell any product, as recent examples like the Snuggie (basically a backwards bath robe) and Vince Offer’s Shamwow and Slapchop (products you’ve all seen before) can attest. But for the acne sufferer who’s been let down by dozens of competing products already, it can take a little more to make a commercial trustworthy - or at least it should.

Proactiv is obviously the biggest success story in the market, with their approach of using celebrity testimony. Testimony is a powerful marketing tool. It’s hard to refute a product’s claims when dramatic before-and-after pictures are staring you in the face. However, the fact is that every acne product has testimony. Often, besides just using a treatment, testimony candidates are given advice on factors such as their diet, which can play a powerful role in helping their skin improve.

Given the short nature of commercials, perhaps the hardest thing for any product to communicate is *how* it works. And yet, this is often the most important factor when evaluating a treatment. I know that I would have a hell of a time trying to explain the connection between the factors that make Clear5 work, from vitamin B5 to Coenzyme-A to hormonal production and sebum metabolism - all in 60 seconds! Most listeners would probably be flat-out confused.

Despite the time-limit barrier, most commercials at least make a short attempt at explaining how they combat acne. The factor to listen for here is the language. Sayings like “our treatment gets deep under the skin” are generally just sales talk. A more trustworthy commercial will usually mention key active ingredients. If these are the same ingredients found in a million other treatments you’ve already tried (like benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid), you can probably skip this one. However, if a treatment actually combats acne from a new angle, it may be worth looking into.

Remember not to be swayed by the same old tactics. Testimony is everywhere. Celebrities can be paid to say most anything. Just because a treatment is “developed by a doctor” doesn’t mean squat (so are 1,000 other treatments that don’t work). If you’ve tried every off-the-shelf treatment without luck, don’t buy into treatments that use the same ingredients, just with a slick new sales pitch. Look for something that genuinely takes a different approach, and you may just find a solution that works for you.

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Castor oil is a popular ingredient in skin care and acne soap bars, noted for its moisturizing properties. However, when used by itself, it can often be more effective than the products that contain it, as these often include other synthetic ingredients that can cause more harm than good.

A natural vegetable oil, castor oil comes from the castor bean. Like many herbal oils, its medical use predates modern medicine. Traditionally, castor oil has been used to soothe and treat skin disorders, burns, sunburns, and minor cuts. Due to its molecular weight, this natural oil is able to penetrate deep into the skin, more so than most store-bought moisturizers.

For best results, it is recommended to apply 100% pure castor oil directly. The oil itself can feel a little thick (and even sticky). This is natural, but keep in mind that you don’t want clog your pores or seal in any unwanted bacteria, so be sure to begin by washing your face thoroughly beforehand and patting dry. Apply castor oil lightly over blemish spots (or dry skin areas), allow the oil to seep in for about 30 minutes, and if needed, gently rinse off any that remains. Unlike tea tree oil, castor oil has almost no scent, so you can use it at any time of the day without attracting attention.

By itself, castor oil is a powerful moisturizer, but not an all-in-1 acne cure. As with any moisturizer, applying it too thick can cause problems for your skin, so don’t overdo it. It also makes a great ingredient if you are into crafting homemade soaps. While castor oil will not prevent the root causes of acne formation, it can help existing blemishes heal faster with less risk of scarring, as well as keep your skin cells moisturized and supple, reducing the risk of acne that can be brought on by dry, irritated skin.

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