I recommend everyone with acne should give this a try. I have been taking 5-7grams a day (10-14 pills) of the GNC Pantothenic Acid. I've only been taking it for about a week and already I am seeing smaller pores, less brake outs and significantly less oil skin. As a woman with oily skin, make-up products have always been tough! Esp eyeshadows, with the B5 I can actually wear eye make up with out it smearing all over the place after an hour! Yay! I take 2 pills (1 gram) every two hours (8,10,12,2,4,6,8) sometimes the times vary or i'll stay up late so i'll take another dose. But it's been working! Amazing results having only done it for a week! Oh, and my brake outs during "that time of the month" hardly as bad as they were. My back is even clearing up nicely. Miracle. Defintally going to keep taking like this until i'm clear then maybe just go to one pill every two hours and reduce like that slowly until I can hopefully just take a maintence dose of 1-2 pills a day!

I had very severe acne, I then stumbled upon an article years ago and decided to try it out. It worked wonders. I no longer wake up running to the mirror to see how much worse it has gotten like I use to do. I wake up pretty (as some of my friends say). I highly recommend this for OILY acne sufferers.

To help explain my cons comment, the capsule doesn't release slowly into your system like a caplet would. I highly recommend a caplet form because they are digested slower than the gelatin capsule.

Also you don't want to over drink your vitamin when you take it. This is going to flush the B5 out of your system because its water soluble. You should drink water through out the day.

If you are taking certain medications like antibiotics I noticed that these interact with the B5 poorly. I am not sure why but when I took Doxycycline for a few months (for malaria prevention) it made my skin worse. I am not a doctor, however I know it has some weird interactions for some reason. Just consider this when taking prescriptions.

I kept the dosage at 2 grams daily for about a month. The initial breakout lasted about 2 weeks , after that my oil production decreased significantly. However, a very severe tinge of red started to show across my face. At about the end of the month I stopped taking it since the amount of acne that was reduced wasn't significant enough to justify the redness/flakiness that my face was experiencing. Also the hair loss wierded me out and i started to suspect there may be long term effects of dosing this high.

Bottom Line: Try it out since it does do what it claims - reduce oil production. I would say keep the dosage at 2 grams since I saw significant decreases at that amount, any dosage over that is just overkill.

I would still recommend this because everyone else had amazing experiences with it so I wouldn't deny you the chance to have clear skin.

However, I tried it out for about 2 months at 6 grams a day and I saw no improvement in my acne. But my eyelashes were so much longer and they still are even though I stopping B5 a long time ago! Of course I would rather have traded the long eyelashes for clear skin: I had very high hopes for the B5 and truly thought I could have clear skin like everyone else did with this vitamin ):

But try it out though, just because it didn't work for me doesn't mean it won't for you!

It took me a while before I even considered vitamin supplements as acne treatment. It just never crossed my mind until I saw these reviews about six months ago.

Zinc seemed to be the most popular, so I initially tried that. It seemed to work alright, but I was still getting minor breakouts and it sometimes left me feeling sick. It also made my eyes really dry which is annoying with contacts.

I stopped Zinc, then tried B-5, and within a couple weeks, my acne was completely gone. My face hasn't been entirely clear since I was 12, and I'm 21 now. I truly can't believe how well this works, and I was such a doubter of vitamin supplements in the beginning. As long as I also wash my face with a simple cleanser every morning and night, I never see a single zit. No more skin toners or Benzoyl Peroxide. Also, I went on Accutane when I was 15, and this stuff does the exact same thing with absolutely no side effects. Amazing.

The only unfortunate part is that, because of the amount you need to take, it can be expensive. I end up spending $70-80 a month on two orders of 300 capsules. I take eight in the morning and eight at night, so 8 grams daily. This is probably overkill though, and I'm going to experiment with lower dosages.

I want to say that 1gram per day may not be enough, you have to increase the dose. I think that or body weight its related to the amount of grams needed to get better results

I have literally tried everything for my acne including: accutane, antibiotics, yasmin, diane, differin, spironolactone, zinc supplements, blue light therapy, but vit b5 has worked the best. I started taking 3000 mg a day two weeks ago, and i noticed my skin starting to improve after day 3. It has a similar effect to Accutane without the awful side effects. I find 3000 mg works for me but might try downing the dosage to see what happens. I really can't believe how affective this is. I used to have mild cystic acne on my back and i no longer have any cystic acne. I am so grateful that I found this on this site. I am going to ask my naturopath to see if there are any bad side effects to doing this long term. I use the GNC brand.

Tried it for a few month (1g a day), it didn't do anything for me, or nothing that I was aware of.

I only recommend this for people who have genetically oily skin types. If your skin is already dry, adding this vitamin cannot be a good idea for your skin or your hair. It doesn't always kick in within a few days as some reports state. It took a few weeks to see a substantial oil reduction by about 50-60% and I suspect it will continue to decrease from here. There is a breakout which disturbed me since I don't actually breakout just insanely oily. The only thing that got me through was knowing the breakout was because of the vitamin shutting oil production down and thus freaking out the bacteria in my face. I started with GNC first but only saw a change after using Puritan's pride which happily costs less per bottle anyway.

I am an 18 year old college freshman and I have mild/ moderate acne and it's enough to make me obsess. I wanted to cure my acne SO badly so i started taking B5, I only got up to about 6 grams and only could stay on it for about 10 days because i've noticed my hair falling out A LOT! I am not trying to be a downer, i've heard this stuff works wonders and that losing hair is rare, but it does happen. I am stopping taking the vitamin today and hopefully my hair will thicken back up.

I also saw positive results for my oily skin and this is probably because I haven't been on it long enough! But i'm not going to lose my hair due to this vitamin.