The Inspiration
As someone who suffered from acne myself, when I started AccuFix Cosmetics, I initially set out with just acne in mind. I wanted to create products for myself, and for other acne sufferers, that would finally treat our acne, without causing any of the nasty side-effects that come about with the use of antibiotics and oral isotretioin, also known as accutane.
I was aware of other skin conditions that resemble acne but didn’t initially pay much attention to them, primarily because I didn’t think they were common. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. As I spoke to hundreds of people who suffered from acne or what they thought was acne, I realised that a large percentage of them were actually not victims of acne at all, but of fungal acne, or to be more technically correct, malassezia folliculitis.
How it’s different
While our current acne products offered a great deal of benefit to acne sufferers, they hadn’t been designed keeping some specific qualities of fungal acne in mind. Namely, the ability of fungi to feed on a number of, otherwise fantastic, cosmetic ingredients, including oils and glycerin, and proliferate. So I wanted to make something that catered specifically to the needs of fungal acne sufferers. In a lot of cases, I also noticed that bacterial and fungal acne occurred together. The ideal product then would be able to cater to both types of acne.
I do not have enough words to express the amount of love I have for salicylic acid as an ingredient, and I’ve written about it at length in a previous blog post. Salicylic acid is a well-known ingredient in acne circles. And I was well aware that in addition to having exfoliating and comedolytic (where comedolytic describes an ingredient that prevents pores from becoming clogged with oil and skin cells) properties, salicylic acid also functions exceptionally well as an anti-fungal and effectively exfoliates skin without increasing skin photosensitivity. There was no question in my mind then, that salicylic acid would be the key active ingredient in the formula.