lystn

If you are like me, you’ve had your fair share of acne pain during your teen years. Some of us have suffered much more than others and there are those people who continue to suffer the results of acne even in their adult years. To this day, acne remains one of the most common skin conditions to affect people despite all of our efforts to find a, quote unquote, cure.In our pursuit to achieve this goal we’ve come up with some…..interesting ...to say the least, ways to deal with acne. And now with the power of the internet, those “solutions” are getting the attention they DON’T deserve.To give you an example, I recently came across an article online that advocated urine therapy for acne. No, you heard right…. These people are actually suggesting the facial application of urine as a home remedy for acne.Now, let’s say you are not the biggest fan of using your own pee as a cosmetic product. What else is there? Benzyl Peroxyde is a very popular one. Still. It works by killing acne bacterial.But with it come side effects. Skin irritation, dryness, gastrointestinal problems, menstrual irregularities … just to name a few. It is effective though. You have antibiotics. But these come with side effects. But that's not the only problem with the use of antibiotics for acne. They are becoming less effective, presumably because of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains. So an alternative was found - tea tree oil. But does it work?Well there have been a number of studies done to determine the efficacy of tea tree oil for acne.One of them was done in the School of Pharmacy in Taiwan. There they exposed the acne strain to tea tree oil in a petri dish and found it to be quite effective. The problem is that these kinds of studies were performed with free-floating bacteria, whereas in pimples the bacteria forms what's called a biofilm, which makes them generally more difficult to eradicate. The bacteria forms like a glue that plugs up the follicle, so petri dish studies can only tell you so much. Even if tea tree oil couldn't kill off the bacteria, though, it has been shown to suppress skin inflammation. Like if you inflame people's skin with an allergen and then try to calm it down, tea tree oil did a decent job compared to an over-the-counter ointment or a moderate potency prescription steroid cream. So potentially, tea tree oil could help with acne via an antibacterial mechanism or from an anti-inflammatory standpoint, but you don't know until you put it to the real test.So they did! The Department of Dermatology at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in Iran conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of a 5% topical tea tree oil gel in mild-to-moderate acne. After six weeks in the tea tree oil group, a 40% drop in whiteheads and blackheads, a 40% drop in red and tender acne bumps, and a 47% drop in pus-filled pimples,compared to comparatively little change in the control group. Overall, they found that the tea tree oil gel was 3.5 times more effective than essentially doing nothing. Pretty good results.But how does tea tree oil compare to - benzoyl peroxide? Even with all of it’s nasty side effects - redness, dryness, peeling, stinging, burning etc. benzoyl peroxide is by far the most popular over-the-counter acne therapy.So the people over at the Department of Dermatology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Australia decided to do a comparative study of benzoyl peroxide and tea tree oil. The results of that study showed that both 5% tea tree oil and 5% benzoyl peroxide had a significant effect in reducing the patients' acne. The difference was that tea tree oil was slower but it produced much fewer side effects.And there you have it. Tea tree oil could help a lot with your acne troubles. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Skincare Secrets. Hope you enjoyed and found the information helpful. Please subscribe if you haven’t so you get notifications for future episodes and I will see you in the next one.