To start with, it is a scientific fact that genetics play a key component in acne, some people will never have to wash/cleanse their oily face that somehow is blemish free - why? It's actually pretty simple, their skin does not have an inflammatory response. Inflammation meaning your skin triggers a defense mechanism in your body to address an otherwise uneventful situation- a clogged pore. Some peoples pores clog and their body has no such reaction. Unfortunately for us on these boards we do have that response in general.

But the 3 non-debatable causes of acne are oil, skin cells, and some form of inflammation resulting from a clogged pore. But clogged pores DO NOT necessarily cause acne. I have talked with numerous dermatologists who have stated that they've seen patients who may suffer from other skin conditions that may be in other areas as well, and they may indeed have clogged pores, but for those individuals a clogged pore does not lead to pimples/acne. If you only had clogged pores without any inflammation you have those tiny little bumps that you may see in the mirror that don't become a full blown pimple/acne, they actually sort of do nothing. Once the inflammation starts does it truly become a problem.

What's funny is that the solutions for these (blackheads, whiteheads) is actually fairly practical considering the two primary causes, oil and skin cells shedding.

Here's an interesting illustration to understand this. If you were to take some flour, and put it in a ziplock bag and cut a small hole at the corner of the ziplock bag, wouldn't the flour just sift out? Okay, so now add some water. Once you add water, it stop flowing out- why? Because the flour clumps up and clogs the hole and no more flour can get out. Now if you were to have a little flour pouring into this bag constantly then eventually if the bag were clogged the flour would overflow. Well the solution to this problem is to, one, not add water to that flour, and two, make sure the hole is not clogged.

Now the solution is not necessarily what you are thinking. BP can help reduce the inflammation and the acne temporarily- it attacks bacteria, great. But what you need to tackle is oil production and keeping the 'flour' (skin cells) flowing nicely out of the bag, while also keeping your skin moisturized. This is best achieved with a sebaceous gland suppressant, and that my friend is zinc. Zinc, whether its from H&S or in bar soap form or another medium has been shown to reduce the activity of the sebaceous gland. So reducing the sebaceous gland is one piece of the puzzle, it dries out the skin BUT unlike 'soaps' it does not cause the skin to go into overdrive because it controls the sebaceous gland once it has removed some oil build up. This gives individuals time to apply moisturizer, which is more readily absorbed since the skin/oil saturation has been heavily reduced, but ALSO it gives time to apply BP to tacke bacteria. This solution has been touted by NUMEROUS dermatologists outside of the 'proactiv' agenda and the same old circle of ideas (BP, doxycycines, etc..).

Now- this is two fold, if your skin responds incredibly favorably to this, than you may also have just discovered that your skin is allergic to its own shedded skin cells- in that case a quick shower with anti-dandruff shampoo will help too right before you go to bed by not getting that onto your pillow and back on your face. I know this practically stopped my acne overnight.

So between killing bacteria, keeping skin moisturized, and controlling the shedding of skin cells and activity of the sebaceous glands, the zinc solution has proven effective for thousands of acne suffers around. I encourage you to give it a try and tell me your results.

Make sure to keep your skin moisturized, dryness to the point of slight peeling isn't bad, but make sure it gets moisturized soon after!