Hello all,

I'm new to this forum but not to acne. I'm suffering from cystic acne which travels around my forehead leaving scarring in its wake. I've tried every man made acne remedy there is to no avail.

Now it's time for a natural alternative. Today I went out and bought some eye goggles (not covering nose and forehead) and a snorkel. Why? I'll tell you. I am going to try the sea salt regimen. I will be filling a large roasting pan with boiling spring water, adding a liberal amount of sea salt then adding more room temperature spring water to quickly bring it to a tolerable temperature. Then I'll be off snorkeling in the exotic salty seas of my roasting pan off the coast of my living room floor.

I plan to keep my face submerged for 30 minutes each day. Today was day one.

The originator of this thread had great success with his body acne and scarring by remaining submerged for 30 minutes in a hot bath. He could not keep his face under though, hence the snorkel and goggles. The snorkel to breathe and the goggles to keep salt water out of the more sensitive and non acne prone skin around my eyes. I'll keep you all posted on my progress.

After two days of the sea salt regimen, I noticed that my face was getting irritated. My skin felt good during and immediately after the soaking, but got progressively more red and irritated as the time passed.

On the third day, I followed the same procedure. With one alteration. Up until now, I had simply been patting my face dry with a clean towel after the soak. My wife suggested that the irritation I was experiencing must have been caused by the salt that remained on my skin after the pat dry. The salt was overdrying my skin and irritating it. So the change I made was to rinse my face off with cool/cold water to remove any residual salt. After making this change on day three, my skin felt much smoother and "cooler" than after the soak on the previous two days. There was no irritation or redness following the rinse and my skin felt great.

Today is day four and I will be rinsing after the soak from now on. So far, my existing active acne has reduced in size about 20 - 30% with no new active sites. So far so good, and here's hoping it will help the red marks from previous active sites as well.

After two days of the sea salt regimen, I noticed that my face was getting irritated. My skin felt good during and immediately after the soaking, but got progressively more red and irritated as the time passed.

 

On the third day, I followed the same procedure. With one alteration. Up until now, I had simply been patting my face dry with a clean towel after the soak. My wife suggested that the irritation I was experiencing must have been caused by the salt that remained on my skin after the pat dry. The salt was overdrying my skin and irritating it. So the change I made was to rinse my face off with cool/cold water to remove any residual salt. After making this change on day three, my skin felt much smoother and "cooler" than after the soak on the previous two days. There was no irritation or redness following the rinse and my skin felt great.

 

Today is day four and I will be rinsing after the soak from now on. So far, my existing active acne has reduced in size about 20 - 30% with no new active sites. So far so good, and here's hoping it will help the red marks from previous active sites as well.

Best of luck spiderman.

My backround....34 yr old male......problem goes back to teens.....face, back, chest, arms all affected...and I was a picker (scars/marks/etc)....diagnosed as moderate to severe....I have never taken pictures, but at my worst I have looked as bad as any image on this website.

 

I have used every variation of every regimen on this website.....to include medicine, diet and behavior.....and did so for periods of up to four weeks....all of which has suppressed the breakouts in different ways.......but never stopped it.

 

Dermatologists could not help.......stopped going after they would eventually prescribe Accutane.

 

Long story short.......arrived at the following regimen that has really given me NORMAL skin, not perfect skin, but NORMAL skin....a single pimple every once in a while.....but no more BREAKOUTS.

 

1) SOAK once a day (twice a day if severe) in baths of SEA SALT purchased at local grocery store. Get water as hot as you can stand it, add approx 30 ounces of sea salt, and soak for 30 minutes. Do not get out until your skin begins to prune.

 

2) GENTLY exfoliate with synthetic brush while soaking in tub (thanks Jess).....again I said GENTLY.

 

I take very brief showers after the nightly soak, using Neutrogena Body Wash....but the soap I use doesn't seem to matter.

 

Results have been a process, not an event. Its been about eight weeks......about a 75% VISUAL improvement and about a 90% improvement in TEXTURE.......big ugly depressed scars/marks from wounds I was told would never heal are gone.

 

In hind sight, I believe that about 50% of the severity of my skin problems were self inflicted......with the amount and rate of chemicals I have put on my body (and the picking), it is amazing I have any left.

 

I, like many others on this board, noticed the amazing results of time spent in the ocean during the summer....and feel stupid that it took me this long to figure out.

 

Hang in there everyone.....

k...let me get this right...30oz = 3.75 cups of sea salt...seems like a lot LOL

also i did a little test with a cup, i got the larger chunks of sea salt instead of the grainy kind which i assumed would dissolve the same but didnt really that well...so i took my grinder and grinded the 4kg that i bought straight down to tiny grains.

as for washing face with this stuff, is it cool if i take half tablespoon and mix with my cetephil, or should i use the larger grains mixed with cetaphil?

I'm going to try this. I went to the beach this summer(didn't go for years!) twice and spent only 20/30 minutes in the sea water and that was enough to clear my back acne almost 100% not to mention the skin texture, it felt different, much softer. The effect lasted about one and half weeks before new breakouts.

I hope the sea salt water has the same effect or close to real sea water.

I'm going to try this. I went to the beach this summer(didn't go for years!) twice and spent only 20/30 minutes in the sea water and that was enough to clear my back acne almost 100% not to mention the skin texture, it felt different, much softer. The effect lasted about one and half weeks before new breakouts.

I hope the sea salt water has the same effect or close to real sea water.

Yes the sea/ocean water is a cure for back, chest and facial acne. It healed me. However, the acne did come back. There is something in the seasalt that's a miracle with acne.

I have been taking sea salt baths every day for the past week and it has made a difference for me.

I do not have body acne, but I do have some on my face. The acne itself is not my problem, I have a few pimples at a time that cluster on my cheeks and come back in the same general area. My problem is the scars. By the time the scars start disapearing I have more pimples and so it goes. It has taken more then 2-3 monthes for some scars to fade (maybe more), they accumulate and my face looks much worse then it really is.

I use Tea Tree oil to get rid of the infection in the pimples (or whatever you want to call it), it is the only thing that will not dry my skin out like crazy. Monocycline didn't work, that Differin stuff made my face peel, and Salicylic acid makes my skin so dry too.

So far the salt is doing a great job of clearing up the scars. I'd say maybe 75% better in a week, and no more new pimples.

Does anyone have any tips for other things that may help the scars heal? Is it normal that the mark stick around for so long? I just don't understand, I heal so well for everything else.

I allways seem to clear up a lot when i go on a beach holiday and i think it must be the salt/sun combination, i might give this a try.

has anyone tried using salt in a mask? dont see why it wouldnt be any less effective and would be a lot cheaper than putting a whole tub of salt in the bath every day.

Ive seen home facial mask recipes made with oatmeal or yoghurt, could mix some salt into it and leave on for 10 minutes before you shower, as long as you dont mind looking like a yeti for a bit.

Any opinions?

Hey guys... few questions..

Does this dry your skin out at all??

Salt is naturally dehydrating.. and I live in the arizona desert.. would this work for me??

How would one use this method say, at the gym showers after a workout? No bathtub there!!

Epsom salt/Sea Salt/Dead Sea Salt.. what are the differences with the three???

I regularly use a tanning bed and the tanning lotions that are recommended to use with them, would this make this worse do you think, or not matter? They are kinda greasy but don't really make my acne worse.. BUT Would this affect the regimen at all?

Found this when I googled Bath Salts under the wikipedia article for "Effects of bath salts":

Epsom salt is the most-studied bath salt and has many effects on the muscles and nervous system.

Bath salts provide a variety of benefits to a bather. Salts change the osmotic balance of the water so that less water is absorbed by the skin via osmosis. This reduces the "pruning" or "wrinkling" effect of prolonged exposure of skin to fresh water. Magnesium sulfate has been shown to be absorbed through the skin (1) and also has an anti-inflammatory effect[citation needed].

Some bath salts such as phosphates have a detergent action which softens calloused skin and aids in exfoliation.

Some bath salts act as water softeners and change the way soap behaves and rinses.

High concentrations of salts increase the specific gravity of the water and increase buoyancy which makes the body feel lighter in the bath. Very high concentrations of salts in water are used in floatation therapy.

Dead Sea salt is used in bath salts to help treat common skin ailments, including psoriasis and atopic dermatitis.[1]

Interesting!

Now if anyone knows how a water softener works, you put SALT in the darn things...

and I've read sooo many people here in the org how hard water made their acne worse... CONNECTION?!?!?

I want to try this as soon as possible. But i was wondering, do i use the soaking-in-sea-salt method before or after i take a regular shower? Also.. i have been using clean and clear advantage cleanser before i heard of this, should i keep using it? and if so, do i use that before or after the sea salt?

I'm pretty confused about it to be honest, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

WoW nobody has been on this topic in a long time!

The ocean has always made my skin 100% clear when i go on vacation for a week - even without much sun. I've wanted to try a sea salt like soak daily at home b/c i don't live near an ocean

Unfortuantely, 10-30 minutes a day for a soak is too much time for me to spend...

Has anyone found a good sea salt facial wash that they can leave on for a few minutes in shower

Has anyone found a good sea salt based moisturizer they can leave on after shower

Maybe we should try to make our own sea salt light moisturizer we could apply a few times a day - like at work - that could give us the benefit of having our skin cleansed and mineralized by the sea salt yet without the time.

Second day for me using the sea salt baths. Just got out of my second soak. To early to tell the results, but will update in a couple of days.

I can't use Neutrogena because they abuse animals. Does anyone know of any cruelty-free alternatives?

I have to say I'm brand new to this board. I've had facial acne so long that I can't remember a time when my face was clear. My acne may have started before I was even out of middle school. So I've suffered with it for around a decade or so probably.

I was on a website last night looking up reviews on different face washes & acne medications (as I have done on other sites, time and time again). I've tried the aspirin masks and that will really smooth out your face and it feels great but it's not something you should do every day, imo. I've used aspirin masks a handful of times but I don't notice it helping my acne any and I've wondered if it almost makes it worse. I happened to see some reviews last night on using sea salt but didn't really read much of it. I did, however, decide to try it last night before bed. I took a shower and then figured I'd just sit in bathwater while I soak my face in sea salt. Fortunately, I don't suffer so much from body acne except for an occasional spot here and there. My face, on the other hand, looks like a war zone. I simply took a bowl and poured an unmeasured amount of sea salt into it and then added a little hot water and just stirred it with my fingers. And when I say a little water, I mean a little. You want a paste like substance so that you've got more salt than water on your face. I smoothed the mixture onto my face and sat in the tub for probably 10-15 minutes. I could definitely tell straight off that the salt seemed to work better than the aspirin. In other words...I could "feel" it working. After reading so many of the reviews on this site, I might want to try letting it sit for longer. I've read a lot of people let it sit for 30 minutes. I don't really know how I'm going to have time to do that but heck if it works for me then I'd do it for an hour! I don't know about a lot of people either, but I wash my face at night with an oil free acne wash before bed and usually when I get up in the morning my face is slightly oily. More so than you think you should have. But...this morning when I got up, I noticed my face wasn't as oily as it normally is. It wasn't dry by any means, but it wasn't really oily. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this. This has turned out to be a novella. Feel free to stop and grab a drink or maybe a shot gun at any time. Anywho...moving on.

I've seen some posts here and there about scarring and some other posts about why the salt works. Not only do I have awful acne, I have even more horrible discoloration from them. The discoloration is actually more referred to as hyperpigmentation. "In dermatology, hyperpigmentation is the darkening of an area of skin or nails caused by increased melanin" (Wikipedia.com). Because acne damages the layers of the skin, collagen will grow back (hopefully) but the layers usually grow back differently and faster. So of course, the skin has to exfoliate and exfoliate to remove all the damaged skin before you see the "normal" skin. That's why we see the different types of scarring. People who have darker skin tones and undertones tend to have greater hyperpigmentation than lighter skin. *points at self*

And we all have heard of rinsing out our mouths with salt water when we were little or gargling it in the back of our throats when we were sick. We've also heard of the saline nose sprays. And of course, we all know that we did this because it helps to heal whatever it touches. So one would think that applying it to the face would help heal whatever wounds you have. Not only does it help heal faster, it also exfoliates, especially if used like a scrub. So you get something helping you heal better and faster and helping to remove the damaged layers of skin to reveal the better skin underneath. I've never understood why sea salt is said to be better...maybe it's because it's more natural or there's a higher mixture of salt. I'd like to find the answer to that question, if there is one. Hah! I'm going to try to make myself use this every night if not every other night and will plan on updating after a while. Next post should not be anywhere near as long as this one.

Thanks to all those who have posted, as the advice has helped and made me hopeful that this may work!!

Anyone have some definite results on long term treatments with saltwater?

I made a topic about this recently too and I got no replies. How come this thread got replies and my didnt, what the bloody hell

I have now tried this method for quite some time. It gave me some results, but far from 100% clearing. Not worth it in the long run.

That sounds like an excellent regimen, and I never thought of that either. I'll have to try it, but for the past two days my new regimen has worked.

So here it is:

1) head and shoulders with zinc

2) wash your back and shoulders with head and shoulders and leave a thin layer of bubbles on.

3) don't dry your back, just let it air dry.

4) If you want to, I apply a little bit of benzoyl peroxide to my back, but I honestly don't know if the benzoyl helps because it never really has for me.

Even though I now have a working regimen ill go get this sea salt. It shouldn't hurt the process at all.

Thanks

Hey guys... few questions..

Does this dry your skin out at all??

Salt is naturally dehydrating.. and I live in the arizona desert.. would this work for me??

 

How would one use this method say, at the gym showers after a workout? No bathtub there!!

 

Epsom salt/Sea Salt/Dead Sea Salt.. what are the differences with the three???

 

I regularly use a tanning bed and the tanning lotions that are recommended to use with them, would this make this worse do you think, or not matter? They are kinda greasy but don't really make my acne worse.. BUT Would this affect the regimen at all?

 

Found this when I googled Bath Salts under the wikipedia article for "Effects of bath salts":

Epsom salt is the most-studied bath salt and has many effects on the muscles and nervous system.

 

Bath salts provide a variety of benefits to a bather. Salts change the osmotic balance of the water so that less water is absorbed by the skin via osmosis. This reduces the "pruning" or "wrinkling" effect of prolonged exposure of skin to fresh water. Magnesium sulfate has been shown to be absorbed through the skin (1) and also has an anti-inflammatory effect[citation needed].

 

Some bath salts such as phosphates have a detergent action which softens calloused skin and aids in exfoliation.

 

Some bath salts act as water softeners and change the way soap behaves and rinses.

 

High concentrations of salts increase the specific gravity of the water and increase buoyancy which makes the body feel lighter in the bath. Very high concentrations of salts in water are used in floatation therapy.

 

Dead Sea salt is used in bath salts to help treat common skin ailments, including psoriasis and atopic dermatitis.[1]

 

Interesting!

 

Now if anyone knows how a water softener works, you put SALT in the darn things...

and I've read sooo many people here in the org how hard water made their acne worse... CONNECTION?!?!?

All I know is Epsom Salt and Sea Salt are commonly used for body acne. I prefer Epsom Salt because they're much easier to find and come in bigger packs. Like a 5lb carton of Epsom Salt is only a few bucks from my local grocery store/drug store normally in the beauty supplies or next to first-aid kits. And with a few drops of lavender essential oil is a bonus.

hey there ..

i was just wondering when using sea salt do u submerge your face under water too??

or do u use another method??

dumb question but im curious

thanks so much

You can do that or have a soft cloth soaked in a seperate bowl with a tablespoon of Sea Salt every 2 cups of warm water and lay the cloth on your face.

does any one know if the salt that u put in a water softner will work is it sea salt or would that even dissolve also could non iodized salt be used?an how many have seen effects with epsom salt?

For the past three months, I've used BP and AHA lotion on my back, chest, and upper arms daily for moderate acne. I noticed a little difference, but I think it was more that I was washing and moisturizing so much, because while I healed quicker I still got the same amount of new acne. Yasmin birth control hasn't made much of a different either, and I gave up on antibiotics because they didn't seem effective, reduced effectiveness of the birth control, and I didn't want to be putting all this crap in/on my body if the result would be so minimal for my skin.

 

 

 

 

This is my current back regimen:

 

Two weeks ago I started taking salt baths, and I've taken five as of now. I also tried the spray bottle method... after a hot shower, towel off gently then spray hot salt water over the affected area. I wait until it dries before getting dressed, then wash it off a few hours later... this is if I don't have time to sit in the bath.

 

I also use a boar bristle brush to exfoliate in the shower. As soon as I get in the shower I apply Neutrogena's salicylic acid body wash and scrub with the brush-- this way my skin hasn't had time to soften in the hot water yet, and I'm not brushing off necessary healing tissue and scabs. I do this every one or two days.

 

I still use the BP and AHA lotion, but not every day. When I don't, I apply a vitamin E moisturizing lotion (huge economy bottle for a few bucks) or I just apply the AHA. Moisturizing is a must!

 

 

 

 

The result:

 

I am now 99% acne free, and am slowly getting rid of some of thise old scars and healing spots. I would definitely recommend sea salt baths to anyone with back acne.

 

I found a great deal on ebay for dead sea salt , though there are many other ebay vendors who also sell it. I only spent $17 for a 20 pound bag, and shipping was free.

Hey, thanks for all the info! your results are leaving me really hopeful for my own acne situation. I just have one question-- since you seem to have tried both the bath soaking and spray on salt techniques, which one do you think works better/ is there a very big difference in effectiveness?

Thanks so much for the info!

My backround....34 yr old male......problem goes back to teens.....face, back, chest, arms all affected...and I was a picker (scars/marks/etc)....diagnosed as moderate to severe....I have never taken pictures, but at my worst I have looked as bad as any image on this website.

 

I have used every variation of every regimen on this website.....to include medicine, diet and behavior.....and did so for periods of up to four weeks....all of which has suppressed the breakouts in different ways.......but never stopped it.

 

Dermatologists could not help.......stopped going after they would eventually prescribe Accutane.

 

Long story short.......arrived at the following regimen that has really given me NORMAL skin, not perfect skin, but NORMAL skin....a single pimple every once in a while.....but no more BREAKOUTS.

 

1) SOAK once a day (twice a day if severe) in baths of SEA SALT purchased at local grocery store. Get water as hot as you can stand it, add approx 30 ounces of sea salt, and soak for 30 minutes. Do not get out until your skin begins to prune.

 

2) GENTLY exfoliate with synthetic brush while soaking in tub (thanks Jess).....again I said GENTLY.

 

I take very brief showers after the nightly soak, using Neutrogena Body Wash....but the soap I use doesn't seem to matter.

 

Results have been a process, not an event. Its been about eight weeks......about a 75% VISUAL improvement and about a 90% improvement in TEXTURE.......big ugly depressed scars/marks from wounds I was told would never heal are gone.

 

In hind sight, I believe that about 50% of the severity of my skin problems were self inflicted......with the amount and rate of chemicals I have put on my body (and the picking), it is amazing I have any left.

 

I, like many others on this board, noticed the amazing results of time spent in the ocean during the summer....and feel stupid that it took me this long to figure out.

 

Hang in there everyone.....

hi... i've had acne only on my face for over ten years now.. i've used all the 'wonder drugs' bt the acne comes back! anyway.. i really wanna try the sea salt bit bt hw long do i need to soak my face in or may b take a steam from a pot like sum1 here suggested.. Has this helped u cure the problem for good??