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Salicylic acid is a more-or-less common treatment for acne. Despite its name, some dermatologists classify it as a natural acne treatment. It is made from willow bark, and was apparently known to the ancient Greeks as early as 5th century BC. Salicylic acid, or at least its original willow bark extract, was also known to other ancient civilizations like Sumeria and Assyria for its medicinal properties. Even the native Americans like the Cherokee used it for its pain-killing property and as a cure for fever and other ailments. Today, modern man uses it as one of the treatments for acne.

Of course, in our modern civilization, we no longer need to process the willow bark ourselves. We can just buy the refined part of it, salicylic acid, over-the-counter. So, how does salicylic acid work as an acne treatment? Basically, it acts as a peeling agent, sloughing off the outer layers of the skin. As such, it helps to open pores and unplug follicles. An important point to note is that usage is preventive. In other words, you apply it to skin which is at risk of acne in order to prevent pimples from forming. Applying salicylic acid to your pimple after it forms is like locking the barn after the animals have run away. Once the pimple forms, you should be using something else like benzoyl peroxide or tea tree oil to get rid of it. Remember: apply salicylic acid continuously to prevent acne.

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\\ tags: Acne Prevention

Budget is sometimes one of the hindrances in solving your acne problem. Others think that an effective acne remedy can only be obtained once they buy products offered over the counter or by going to the doctors for special acne treatment. This is not the case for all acne problems. There are acne remedies that are available without costing you a slash in your pocket.

Home acne remedies

Yes, home acne remedies are solutions to your tight budget. There are a lot of condiments from home that can be concocted as an acne cure. You do not have to burden yourself with the cost of expensive products that are available in the market. You just have to look within the four corners of your home and you will certainly find the right ingredients for your acne remedies.

• Baking soda. Combine baking soda with water and make a paste. This should be done before bedtime, applying it to surfaces affected with acne. Let the paste stand all night and rinse with water upon waking up. You will achieve best results just after one week of continuous usage.

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\\ tags: Acne Remedies

Can tea tree oil really get rid of acne? The answer seems to be “Yes” in both theory and practice. Tea tree oil is a natural antiseptic and antifungal agent which works well for many people. It is in the role of antiseptic that tea tree oil helps in acne prevention and treatment. When you apply this natural oil on your blackheads and whiteheads, it prevents the bacterial infection from setting in and creating pimples. Applied on your pimples, it helps to kill the bacteria and promotes healing.

The trick is that not all tea tree oil is the same. First, we have to talk about the concentration. It is natural to think that using undiluted tea tree oil is good, because you can kill more bacteria faster. Unfortunately, Italian doctors have found that 6% of these patients suffer from skin irritation. Compared to this, only 1 in 725 patients using the 1% solution had allergic reactions.

A study published in the Oxford Journals showed that tea tree oil below 4% concentration will not kill bacteria effectively, so this is something you need to think about. The authors noted that hospitals which use the 4% to 5% concentrations as general antiseptics found tea tree oil to be very effective.

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\\ tags: Acne Prevention, Acne Treatment

A little while ago, I heard that olive oil was an effective natural acne treatment. It sounded ridiculous. My acne is caused by oily skin, and you expect me to apply yet more oil to my skin? No, thank you. Not a chance. Definitely sounded like a snake oil sales pitch. And yet…

Being an inquisitive busybody, I decided to look into it. I looked on the internet. Read archived posts on forums and discussion boards. Poked around and stuck my nose where it wasn’t welcome. In the end, I found mainly positive results. One group reported that they washed their faces with extra virgin olive oil, then washed off the oil with soap. After one week, their acne became worse. Unfortunately, they did not give any more details than this. Personally, their report does not really make sense. If they washed off the olive oil, then at worst, there should be no effect, right?

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\\ tags: Acne Prevention

I first learned about aloe vera more than two decades ago, when my mother brought home some plants for her herb garden. At that time, it was making a resurgence as a miracle cure-all. Unfortunately, everyone in our neighborhood only used it for cuts and scrapes. For some weird reason, no one ever thought of using it for acne. Now, twenty years older and wiser, using aloe vera for acne treatment sounds so logical and natural.

Aloe vera first made inroads into the medical establishment in the mid-1930s, when it was used for burn treatments. It showed itself to be very effective in reducing inflammation and healing of wounds. As I understand it, the main reason its popularity waned was due to the widespread availability of cheap antibiotics (penicilin, discovered by Fleming in 1928, was only mass manufactured one decade later in the late 1930s), which doctors probably preferred as being more scientific.

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\\ tags: Acne Care, Acne Remedy, Acne Treatment

People who prefer to use natural remedies for ailments often turn to tea tree oil for adult acne. Tea tree oil comes from the leaf of the melaleuca alternafolia tree, which is indigenous to Australia. For centuries the Aborigines used this plant for its healing properties, and studies today have shown that they were right to do so. Tea tree oil has significant antibiotic, antiviral, and antifungal properties. For this reason, it can be beneficial as part of a treatment regimen for acne.

Tea Tree Oil Kills Bacteria

When you use tea tree oil for adult acne, it doesn’t work on your blemishes the way other common ingredients in acne medications work. Tea tree oil kills bacteria, and bacteria play a role in the formation of acne blemishes on your skin. Ingredients in over-the-counter medications for acne such as salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide can kill bacteria, but they also clean the pores of excessive oil. The reason that some people elect to use tea tree oil to treat their acne instead of the normal over-the-counter medications is that it is a pure substance rather than chemical-based.

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\\ tags: Acne Solution, Adult Acne

Who else wants to get rid of your acne as soon as possible? You, me and anyone who has ever suffered from acne. Here is a simple and cheap way: tea, especially green tea. How does it work, and why? Honestly, I cannot fully understand the scientific explanation, just that it partly has something to do with anti-oxidants and other beneficial chemicals which are naturally present in tea.

I do not much care why green tea works. What matters to me is how to use it to prevent acne and get rid of acne. The simplest and cheapest way I have learned is to buy those cheap green tea bags. The boxes come with 25, 50 or even 100 tea bags of made in China green tea. First, you brew the tea, which is a fancy way of saying drop the tea bag in a cup of boiling water and leave it for 5 to 10 minutes. Drink the tea as soon as possible, to prevent any loss of important nutrients to the air. Then slather the tea bag all over your face. Make sure to get the residue evenly over every inch of skin. If you can do this 2 or 3 times everyday, you will soon see an improvement in your skin complexion.

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Are you suffering from acne? Have you tried over-the-counter medications, but your acne keeps on coming back? If your intention is to prevent acne, and not just to get rid of the odd pimple or two, then you need to at more holistic acne care treatment. That means you need to go beyond just applying a topical cream like benzoyl peroxide or tea tree oil to get rid of your pimples. You also need to examine your lifestyle and diet.

Mother Nature made the human body to be pretty robust. You can survive in quite a wide range of unfriendly environments, living an intense lifestyle, without any immediate problems. However, you can’t run away from the side-effects forever. Sooner rather than later, the problems start showing up – acne, constipation, slowed reflexes, slower healing from wounds, etc.

People living in rural communities rarely get problems like acne. Most of them eat healthy food. They usually drink enough water and eat sufficient fruits and vegetables. They also don’t over-eat meat and greasy foods. Basically, if you eat following the classical food guide pyramid (created by the USDA in 1992), you are less likely to suffer from severe acne. To be honest, this guide is overly simplistic and flawed – it is not the most effective healthy eating guide. That honor goes to the Healthy Eating Pyramid created by Harvard Medical School. Studies have shown that men who follow the more sophisticated eating guide by Harvard reduce their risk of suffering a major chronic disease by 20%. Women gain an improvement of 11%.

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Living with acne can be challenging, and it is even more difficult to find the right acne treatment product that will help you in your struggle to be free of it. One thing that makes acne treatment so hard is the number and variety of acne treatment products currently on the market.

While it is easy to find acne treatments, locating the treatment product that is right for you can give you a headache. It can be irritating to go through all those different types of acne treatment products. And how do you know which product will work for your skin?

You can simplify this search and get the product that you need much quicker. However, the place to start your acne treatment search is not with the products.

The place to start is with your skin. In order to determine the best treatment for your acne, you need to know your skin type. There are three basic skin types, the most common of which is combination skin.

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