Coping With Breakouts: Tips and Products

 

Coping with breakouts can be stressful and upsetting. We've come up with easy tips and product advice to help you through.

At some point, everyone has to cope with breakouts. Usual triggers are hormone changes, stress or a busy routine. The trick is not to stress out; here's how to deal with an unexpected skin flareup.

Don't be tempted to scrub it off! When your skin flares up, it's tempting to reach for the exfoliator and go at it like crazy. Although exfoliation will help, you need to be gentle. Skin that's already inflamed and angry will only get worse if you try to scrub or peel it off, so your first action is to calm the inflammation. Switch your daily cleanser to one that's for problem skin and 'spot' cleanse that area. Salcura Antiac is a great choice - it's PH neutral and contains cooling and soothing agents.

Reach for the mask(s) A clay mask is fantastic for drawing out inflammation and impurities. Look out for Kaolin Clay as an ingredient, it sucks impurities out through the skin and can quickly reduce redness and swelling. This Manuka Doctor ApiClear mask is great for dabbing on spots - it contains Kaolin Clay to draw out inflammation, as well as Witch Hazel and Bee Venom to fight bacteria. Alternatively, Rhassoul Clay is chock-full of precious minerals that clarify and heal the skin. Masks are great for angry, red, bumpy breakouts, so definitely factor them in.

Gentle cleansing Once redness has gone down, you can gently exfoliate or use a peeling mask to open up the pores and remove any blockages. But please exfoliate only once a week! Any more will irritate the skin and could encourage oil production (uh-oh!). Use the flat part of your fingers to exfoliate and move them up and down in a rolling motion. Exfoliate for around 5 - 7 minutes and leave the skin pink and warm but never angry and sore. Never exfoliate or peel over broken skin.

Vitamin D It's probably less well known, but vitamin D can play a role in skin breakouts. Blogger @_EMTHATSME recently published a great post, talking about the role of Vitamin D in combatting her breakouts.  Here's what Em said:

Since January I have been supplementing the ‘sunshine vitamin’ in the form of a tablet, taking one everyday, and my skin has never been so good. Over the summer months of June and July, I have reduced my vitamin D intake as naturally the sun is out more so there is less need to supplement it. Them big fat red spots I used to get on my cheek bones have practically vanished! Vitamin D really does help with minimising acne breakouts as it is involved with growth, repair and cell metabolism.

You can read Em's full post here.

Healing It's very common to be left with a reminder or two of your breakouts. As soon as the skin has healed, it's safe to begin the healing process. Rosehip Oil is fantastic when it comes to healing scar tissue and can be applied directly or mixed with your nightly face cream. A little goes a really long way and you should see results within 30 days (the time it takes for skin to renew itself). A great alternative we personally recommend is HealGel Intensive - from scars to eczema, this gel contains arnica and both soothes and repairs.

You can shop all products for problem skin online at allbeauty.