If you’ve found your way here, it's probably because you have acne, which includes whiteheads, blackheads, and pimples. It's also possible that you've visited several doctors, and tried multiple treatments, only to be disappointed. I can relate because I had acne for seven long years. I learned a lot along the way however, and was able to clear up my skin. In this post I'll share everything I learned that helped me so that you don't have to suffer like I did.
Since you're probably wondering what my skin looked like before and what it looks like now, I've attached images. The two on the left are from 2016 (it was worse than it looks in the pictures) and the one on the right is from 2019.
Here's what I'm going to cover in this post:
What Is Acne?
Acne, not to be confused with fungal acne (Fungal acne looks similar but is not the same thing. You can learn about it here) occurs when the hair follicles - also called pores - in your skin become clogged with oil and dead skin cells. It starts as micro-comedones - blockages that are too small to see. Blackheads - open comedones - and whiteheads - closed comedones - are the smallest visible type of acne.
As the size of a comedone increases, it ruptures the wall of the hair follicle resulting in redness and inflammation. These inflamed comedones, are commonly known as pimples. Pimples can take the form of papules - red bumps without pus - or pustules - bumps that contain pus.
If the clogged pores are deeper and more irritated, they can even turn into painful, deep nodules - solid lumps - and cysts - pus-filled lumps. Nodular and cystic acne are the worst kinds and tend to leave the deepest scars.
