The truth is that if you want to finally get rid of your moderate acne, it’s time to get serious about eliminating any lifestyle and dietary triggers and also clearly reading your product labels.

What Characterizes Moderate Acne?

Moderate acne is defined as blackheads, whiteheads, pustules, and papules that appear on anywhere from ¼ to ¾ of the face or other regions of the body. [1] Most sufferers of moderate acne seek out treatment from a dermatologist, who may prescribe a number of prescription medications to be applied topically or taken orally. But have you ever thought about how these drugs will affect the quality of your skin in the long run?

Topical Treatments of Moderate Acne

When you apply any substance topically to your skin, it is immediately absorbed into your bloodstream to potentially affect your circulatory system for the worse. This means that if you have been using over-the-counter acne products for several years to treat your moderate acne, it is likely that you are filling your body full of outside toxins and chemicals that are damaging your skin as we speak.

What I like to tell my aesthetic clients as a rule of thumb is that if any ingredients on a product label are too long or difficult to pronounce, then you shouldn’t put them on your skin!

In the same manner, if you visit a dermatologist for the treatment of your moderate acne, only to be prescribed a harsh topical product or cream, this is a substance that will only damage your skin in the long run. In addition, many moderate acne sufferers also find that the quality of their skin becomes worse after using topical prescription acne treatments, according to testimonials from the acne.org forum:

4 months after accutane I now have these problems. There are many more, but these are just a few.

• Severe Osteopenia high fracture risk/Loss of height 1/12 inches. I was 5'6 1/2 before accutane and after 5'5. (verfied by med records that I did shrink while on the med.)
• Swelling behind the knee/Mri showed trauma to patella/red marrow/small joint effuison/tendosis of the quadricep (which is diff from tendonitis)/ I had no trauma to my knee/ Dr's are baffled.
• Severe Joint, bone, muscle and nerve pain. The string is still in my foot and one is now in my hand, I have severe tendon swelling throughout my body, which is believed by some doctors to have traped some of my nerves/ or caused soft tissue calcifications. Thier still baffled.

IMHO retinoids are a scam, yes they work for some people but from what i've seen from the board and from friends and family it doesn't work all it does it make your skin cracked, dry, and red. its all about money for doctors so they prescribe you something knowing it probably won't do shit so you come back and keep coming back to them.

Acne is a symptom that something is wrong with your body INTERNALLY, treating it from the outside only relieves it temporarily not for the long run..If you really want to defeat acne treat it from the inside, now from here its all about finding out what works for you.

With all of this information in mind, you may be asking yourself exactly what you can do to get rid of your moderate acne. The simple answer I would love to share with you is in examining what you eat each day since your daily diet could be full of harmful triggers that are making the quality of your skin much worse. To give you an example, high carbohydrate foods, often found in many of the fast foods and processed foods that we eat each day, are full of the simple sugar called glucose, which is metabolized and stored as glycogen in the body. However, what you may not realize is that your body only needs a certain amount of glucose to function, so it is often overloaded with more carbohydrates than it knows what to do with, imminently resulting in an outbreak of acne.

As you begin to regulate your diet by cutting back on unhealthy carbohydrates, you will see immediate results in the clarity and quality of your skin. The health of your skin reflects the health of your body, so isn’t it time to finally do your body good and improve your skin from the inside out?

Sources:

1. "Treating Moderate to Moderately Severe Acne." SkinCarePhysicians.com. Web. 06 Jan. 2011. <http://www.skincarephysicians.com/acnenet/treatingmoderatesevereacne.html>.

About the Author: Bethany Ramos is an aesthetician and makeup artist with a special interest in using nutrition to heal and alleviate a number of conditions in the skin. You can find out more skin care and makeup tips by visiting her blog at FacebyBethany.

Dear Acne Sufferer,

Would you say diseases like acne, rosacea, boils, bumps, and scars are very interesting to anyone? How about that rash on the back of some guys scalp that Gold-bond wont help? Fuck no. It's downright depressing. Reading the obituaries everyday has more pleasantries.

So why would anyone want to become a dermatologist and deal with it day in and day out?

I'm sure many soon to be dermatologists had the thought "I'm interested in skin, and I want to help people."

For 99% of them, this thought came second to the money they could acquire, the status they could achieve, and the opportunities they would have the rest of their life. Generally speaking, humans are selfish.

Ask yourself, why are you here in the first place? It's not because your brother has some pimples on his forehead and you want to help him get laid – it's because you are dealing with this shitty disease everyday and you want to help yourself. Everyone does.

The Road to Dermatology

Let's depict the story of a hypothetical dermatologist.

He went through high school, probably got pretty good grades. He got into a good college – and he worked his ass off. Somewhere along the way he realized he wanted to get into the medical field - or maybe his parents forced him into it. He heard about dermatology, he knew peoples vanity is important to them. He then saw opportunity in this profession. . .

So, now this soon to be dermatologist makes it into a school of dermatology. He's fed bullshit studies and textbook information that was written in the 80s. He's convinced that this information is all true – because it's backed by studies and proofs – because it's written by knowledgeable professors and dermatologists alike.

Compare that to you, the acne-sufferer. You deal with this shit everyday. You hate it. All you can think about is how you can get rid of it. Sound about right?

You have a deep desire and passion to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it. You've studied more about acne then dermatologists. Dermatologists study about every skin disease – we specialize in one. We are one step ahead of the dermatologist.

How Do Dermatologists Make Money?

Maybe you don't care much about money. If you've grown up in Capitalist America, chances are that it has atleast some importance in your life.

Dermatologists are no different.

Remember, this was the main reason the well studied college kid decided to become a dermatologist in the first place - money, status, opprotunity. This is how they achieve it

1. When patients come in for checkups, treatments, and prescriptions.
2. Every time the patient fills his prescription

Maybe #2 didn't cross your mind?

Do you know what the largest business industry in the world is? It's not one that deals with Microsoft or Google - it's the pharmaceutical industry! I could go on for hours about how the pharmaceutical industry tries to fuck us over, but that isn't within the scope of our topic.

Pharmaceutical companies make money by selling drugs. They are more devious, more notorious, more greedy then the heroin dealer on the street corner of the ghetto.

Pharmaceutical companies offer incentives to doctors and dermatologists to prescribe their drugs over other rival companies. These incentives come in the form of money - and no, this isn't illegal!

Lets use antibiotics as our main example. There are literally several dozen types of antibiotics on the market. Not all of them come from the same company. The dermatologist has many poisons in his arsenal to mess you up with, but how does he choose? It's that green cotton paper, of course.

Now, you may be thinking i'm devils advocate. That i'm making out dermatologists to be evil gremlins with horns and the pharmaceutical companies are the devils themselves.

Remember that the dermatologist is convinced that the studies hes taught in college are true. The studies told him that clarithromycin worked on 67 out of the 93 patients studied. How would he know, he's never taken it himself.

In his mind, not only is he prescribing 'proven to work' drugs, but he's making good money at the same time. A win-win situation!

The Cycle of Futility is Good for the Dermatologists Trust Fund

After years and years of work, dermatologists must have figured out that all these drugs only treat the symptoms, that they don't provide a permanent cure - and in many cases, cause more harm then good.

Dermatologists accept the concept of 'There is no cure, there are only ways to manage it,' and they greet this concept with open arms.

Dermatologists would be out of business if there was a widespread known cure to acne. Whether it be in their subconscious, or conscious, dermatologists want more and more people to get acne so they have more patients to 'help.'

Do any of these dermatologists realize that many, many people are curing heir acne through healthy dietary choices?

Find me a dermatologist that will accept the diet and acne connection openly, and you've got yourself a free lifetime membership!

In the meantime, stay away from dermatologists. Your money and your time can be better spent elsewhere.

George McCumiskey, former acne-sufferer