Glowing skin is something we all want, and we all need it to some degree, because who wants dull, oily, and often acne prone skin, or for that matter who wants shiny skin!  Well, there are always ways to beat what seems inevitable.  There are celebrities out there who just give you really good makeup tips, and they tell you that’s the way to deal with all your imperfections.  But makeup is not the key!

Yes, if you want to get warm, glowing skin, you should not use makeup to get it.  Makeup can compliment it.  But ultimately speaking, you can have naturally beautiful skin.  It’s not like large pores which are genetic.  The glow of your skin is entirely determined by you!

In order to achieve glowing skin, the first thing to do is to take a multivitamin. Dull skin can show a lack of certain essential vitamins such as vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, iron, and zinc to name a few, and all of these vitamins can also help you to fight against acne, even if you are not actually deficient.  Second, you want to make sure you are getting more good fats.  Good fats leave your skin soft, moisturized, and glowing.  And finally, you want more water.  This is a given for any skin problem.

Finally, you want to make sure you are taking good external care of your skin.  The major thing to do is to exfoliate!  Exfoliating takes away dead skin cells that are not only clogging up the pores and causing greater acne, they are causing dull and ugly skin.

Mixing acne remedies is a common idea.  After all, if one works and the other works, wouldn’t they be twice as effective if used together.  Yes and no.  You have to choose your acne remedy combinations quite carefully.  Basically speaking, for example, if you mix tea tree oil and witch hazel, you will probably be fine, in fact your skin will be great.  But for example, there’s no real need to mix tea tree oil and benzoyl peroxide, because they do the same thing!

This being said, there are more important things to worry about when it comes to mixing acne remedies.  Mixing the wrong acne remedies together can be not only damaging, but dangerous to your skin!  I’m not exaggerating at all.  Actually, they say that you shouldn’t mix vitamin A or benzoyl peroxide with any other acne remedies, let alone with each other.  They should be the sole ingredient in that mix and the other ingredients should be moisturizers, preservatives, or something else that is not technically an acne remedy.  Why?

Both vitamin A and benzoyl peroxide are extremely damaging and harsh to the skin on their own, as is glycolic acid.  When you mix them together, you are asking for far more trouble without actually getting better results.  This is why it’s so ironic that one prescription that claims prescriptions are the only way is the only one stupid enough(outside of Acne Free Severe)to combine those particular ingredients.  The other problem with mixing acne remedies is that sometimes they negate the benefits of each other such as combining antibiotics and birth control.

Benzoyl peroxide is one of the best and ironically one of the worst acne treatments out there.  It gets rid of acne by making the skin a hostile place for bacteria and other things that may well contribute to acne.  But at the same point, it also makes the skin a hostile place for you.  You end up with red, dried out, irritated, peeling, and sun sensitive skin that frankly nobody really wants to deal with.  But many consider that the price of an effective acne treatment.

Lately however, many have decided that they are unwilling to settle for a mediocre, sub part approach to acne fighting.  After all, there have been times when benzoyl peroxide actually makes acne worse, and if you ever stop using it, unfortunately it leaves your skin highly susceptible to an instant and unavoidable acne breakout due to high levels of sudden bacteria buildup.

This being said, if you are looking for alternatives to benzoyl peroxide, you have a wider selection than you might think.  You can go with the traditional antibacterial approach, meaning something that works like benzoyl peroxide, but without causing side effects and without causing damage.  The best choice in this realm would be tea tree oil.  But you could also use ingredients that would instead cause the skin to accelerate its rate of healing as well as its ability to shed away dead skin cells.  Salicylic acid is the gentlest option here, and it can still get rid of a significant amount of your acne.  Finally, you can look into bentonite clays.  They have been recognized for their ability to actually pull bacteria, toxins, and other harmful substances out of the skin. 

All of these ingredients tend to not only avoid damaging your skin.  They actually refresh and strengthen it.  So they get rid of acne now, and they keep it away in the future because your skin is more prepared to cope with it.  So if you are searching for alternatives to benzoyl peroxide, you don’t have to wait any longer, and you don’t have to accept something below your usual standards.  You can make your own choices and get better results in general.

You have to wash your face, there is really no way around it in all truth.  In all truth, basically speaking you are washing away impurities and otherwise external things that are contributing to your acne.  Without doing that, you are really only setting yourself up for greater failure in general.  So if you want to achieve the best results, there are a few basic things to do. 

First of all, make sure you are actually getting cleansing ingredients as well as exfoliators.  These can still be gentle to your skin, in fact they should be extremely gentle to your skin.  But this being said, basically speaking you have to be able to kill off bacteria while also exfoliating away dead skin cells that may well be clogging your pores. 

Basically speaking, make sure whether acne prone or not that you have the right cleansing ingredients that are gentle and will not dry out your skin like benzoyl peroxide, alcohols, or propylene glycol for example.  You can also look for especially high amounts of active ingredients while also washing at least twice daily.  In fact, if you use the right light moisturizers and cleanser combined, really you should only have to do it twice daily.  Your skin should not get particularly oily and otherwise damaged in between.  So it’s a matter of making the right total choices.

I think the second most common acne treatment is vitamin A.  It comes in close second to benzoyl peroxide, and frankly it’s used in everything from the cheap products to the expensive products.  Most often, in the form of retinol, it causes redness, irritation, sun sensitivity, etc.  But in the form of Accutane of course, we all have heard about all the nasty side effects it comes with, not to be ignored in the least.  And interestingly enough, unlike benzoyl peroxide, they have actually manipulated it into hundreds of little sub forms that of course work in slightly different power gradients and ways in general. 

They all come with about the same side effects, it’s just the severity and the likelihood of suffering it that vary.  But honestly, it surprises me sometimes, because in most realms, the FDA just doesn’t regulate vitamins and minerals among other things.  But with the Accutane form of vitamin A, we understand why they have to.  And frankly, with some of the different prescription forms of vitamin A, there’s good reason why they do.  I guess it just goes to show that just because something’s natural doesn’t make it necessarily safe.

I’ll admit, I have some of the worst habits in terms of getting rid of the blackheads on my nose.  They always seem to stick out, and despite the use of various acne treatments through my teen years, there are times when they’ve always seemed to stick out more than others.  So I squeeze them out and leave those tiny little holes, which fill up again quite quickly we can be assured, especially if you try to put make up over it.  But it’s one of those do as I say, not as I do.  That seems to apply to a lot of health professionals in general, but their advice is generally good and sound.  But anyway, there are two ways that I’ve found that are not actually as bad as the others I’ve used in the past.  Frankly, you shouldn’t do what I’ve done.  But these are two things that can do a more efficient and safer job. 

First of all, steam your face.  This will get to various areas of the face and it will allow them to get out.  For an easier way to do it, you can actually put a hot washcloth over your nose or other areas of your face that you would like to release blackheads in general. 

But also, those pore strips are not bad.  Don’t use them too often as they can rip off little skin cells as well, which is not good.  However, should you use them properly, they are not particularly bad.

I love Philosophy products.  I use their bath scrubs, lotions, all that good stuff.  They aren’t too thick, and they smell good, and that’s about the extent of what I need.  So I thought I’d try their face wash.  It’s called Philosophy’s Purity Made Simple face cleanser.  They claim that it will wash away impurities, make up, zits, the works.  I also tried their multi tasker.  So I was expecting great things I guess.  I gotta tell you, they did a much better job of making lotions and all that than washes and acne fighters.  I guess it’s a more complicated world. 

I mean how hard is it to find moisturizers and find something that smells good right?  Apparently, it’s a lot harder to actually find things that reduce acne, supplement the skin without clogging pores, etc.  I used this stuff, and my skin was always dry, I had greater acne breakouts, it was actually worse than using bar soap, which is realistically pretty bad.  But what do you do right?  You just have to move on and not waste your time again.  Luckily, I didn’t waste too much money doing it.  It’s just a matter of looking for the right kind of experience.

There are sensitive skin types out there.  I’ve seen them before, and it’s sad.  Some people think it’s funny, I’m more inclined to see it fast, especially after seeing someone I know with a face that was blown up to twice its normal size because of a baby wipe.  That being said, there are various allergies, and it may not be so much that your skin is sensitive if you are suffering from a baby wipe, but rather because of severe allergies of some type.  So that’s definitely something to get tested. 

But if you do have really sensitive skin as I’ve seen with a number of people, you should check out Epuri products.  This is something I’ve realized recently.  I started out with their water based moisturizer, I know, not an acne treatment.  But the idea of it turning to water on my skin appealed to me, and the amazing thing was my skin still felt moisturized.  From there, I moved onto their wash, which is great. 

You can use the scrub too, both are great, it just depends on you.  Personally, I prefer the wash.  But I’ve seen even the most sensitive skinned people use these, and it has to do with various things.  Obviously, you avoid things like benzoyl peroxide if you have that problem.  But it’s more than just avoiding a few select things.

Rosacea can easily be mistaken for different things.  It may even be mistaken for simple acne or moreover the results of exertion in the body.  But rosacea is something more severe and something that cannot be cured.  It results in redness, irritation, dryness, small bumps, and easy flushing as well as a general ruddiness, visibly swollen pustules and blood vessels, and otherwise.  It is generally seen between ages 30 and 50 in women, and it is believed that darker skinned women suffer from it, it is just harder to tell. 

It is a chronic inflammatory disease, and it tends to produce far more serious problems than your normal.  Users who complain of it generally have to take unconventional measures as far as comparing it to acne treatments, and most treatments kill bacteria in most ways by burning it out of the skin.  A classic example of this is the fact that many use chemical peels to get rid of their rosacea or at least treat it temporarily.  Many of the treatments could cause many of the same symptoms and worse.  But people do it anyway, because they believe that is the only way to go about it, to kill that specific type of bacteria, etc.

The truth is that while antibiotics are meant to kill bacteria that will harm your system, cause infections, cause illness, etc, it is only about 1% of bacteria that is actually harmful to the body and skin.  The rest is either good and necessary to life or it is neutral.  When you take an antibiotic, even for acne, you are actually killing off good bacteria while leaving a little bit of the bad bacteria which eventually turns into super bacteria.  And for this reason, you could cause serious health problems or otherwise by killing off bacteria when you don’t actually need to.  And this is also why yogurt could be considered one of the ultimate acne foods. 

Yogurt, no matter the flavor or kind has good bacteria such as lactobacillus acidophilus, which actually balances out the digestive system to help you better process and even absorb nutrients among other things.  It can fight against bad bacteria in some ways in and of itself, and of course if you watch Grey’s Anatomy, you find that not taking unnecessary antibiotics and having the good bacteria will prevent you from having to undergo a fecal transplant.  But as far as all the elements, I found that unless you have an allergy to milk, it will help with some cases of acne to reduce the inflammation and pain among other things.