Preventing Acne Scars
Wow, busy today. Anyway, I just wanted to give you all a quick word on the number one cause of acne scars. What is this cause, you ask? Well, to put it simply, the main contributor to acne scars is impatience.
Yes, you should generally avoid “picking at your zits” as they say. However, popping a zit that is about to burst through the surface of your skin anyways is not really that serious of an offense against the laws of clear skin. What’s really a cause for alarm is when you can’t resist the urge to try and force that pustule that has not reached the surface of your skin to pop. I’m talking about those deeper cysts that show either no visible white spot or a very faint one that is clearly buried a ways down.
Do yourself a favor and do not try to force acne to the surface prematurely. Use a spot treatment such as benzoyl peroxide or tea tree oil and think about something else. Yes, there may be an uncomfortable bump on your skin for a few days, but if you furiously pinch at your skin trying to force it out, you’re just going to inflame the spot and make it more visible. Most likely, you will not get the pustule to the surface, or you may get part of it to the surface, only to have more bacteria form in the now inflamed area and have to deal with a recurring blemish that can stick with you for months. The force of the acne pustule breaking through your skin prematurely can leave a crater-like scar, and these can last years - with almost nothing you can do about it.
So have some patience and give your skin the time to expel this waste in a safe way. Most of the time, your body will begin breaking down these pustules below the surface, and they may just melt away after a few days (especially if you’re supplying your body with the right nutrients to do so). Otherwise your skin will eventually push these buried pustules closer to the surface of your skin, where, if you must, it’s usually safer to pop them out. Keep up a good diet with enough vitamins and minerals (Clear5 will help your body metabolize these underlying spots faster), use limited spot treatments to kill the bacteria (Neosporin may also help take the red out of an inflamed spot), and you should be able to avoid acne scars in almost every case. Most acne scars are not caused by the zits themselves, but by the people trying to get rid of them in the wrong way.
