Skin Types
I was thinking about this the other day, and honestly, my skin is ridiculously thick, ridiculously resilient, or something. I know due to other people’s experiences and other people’s product reviews that a lot of products like Proactiv and others based on alcohols and benzoyl peroxide damage your skin and cause irritation, redness, etc. I always had really oily skin as well. But a lot of the moisturizers that were too thick for others interestingly enough really didn’t negatively affect my skin either.
Some of my acne fighting habits have been some of the worst, and I’m referring to those of my teenage years. I was the pimple popper, the kid who used rubbing alcohol as a spot treatment, all of that good stuff, and yet I never had the same side effects as the people around me. That being said, I never had clear acne. So maybe that’s the downside. My skin does not react to acne treatments and alcohols….period. It doesn’t get irritated, but it doesn’t clear acne either.
On that note, if you happen to have a more normal skin type than I do, keep in mind that these are never good practices anyway. For people like me, we use rubbing alcohols and see no difference at all. However, for someone with normal to sensitive skin, you might use benzoyl peroxide or alcohols and see your acne temporarily disappear while accompanied by redness, itching, dryness, etc, and in most cases it seems that the acne always comes back. However, even with my obviously resistant skin, I’ve noticed that tea tree oil in particular has been highly helpful. You should keep in mind your own needs as you go. Obviously, there is no one size fits all solution. But for any skin type, I can virtually guarantee that there are solutions that are guaranteed not to work.