The ongoing battle against acne — both your own and in the medical world’s — is frustrating because of the lack of an identifiable cause of the condition. This leaves you scrambling to find ways to get rid of unsightly blemishes that pop up all over your body.
While a cure has yet to be found, there have been some significant advances in treating acne outbreaks with advanced laser technology that not only prevents acne from taking hold but also gets rid of previous acne scarring. At Skinzone Laser & Cosmetic Surgery, we’ve helped many of our patients in Alhambra and Santa Ana, California, not only get rid of facial acne but body acne, as well.
To explore how body acne forms, and what you can do about it in terms of hygiene and treatment, read on.
The Acne Mystery
Acne, long assumed to be the sole domain of teenagers, affects upward of 50 million people, both young and old, in the United States. What we do know is that acne is caused when your sebaceous follicles, which produce valuable oils that hydrate and nourish your skin, become clogged with bacteria.
This blockage can create inflammations and bumps most everywhere on your body, but typically attacks your face, back, and chest. The only place acne can’t strike is on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet, because there are no sebaceous glands in these areas.
What’s frustrating is figuring out why some people are more prone to acne while others sail through life with barely a blemish. Unfortunately, there are no good answers to this question, but researchers believe heredity and hormones play key roles.
More importantly, for this discussion anyway, is that many long-held beliefs about the role nutrition and hygiene play are patently false. For starters, your diet has little to no effect on acne.
When it comes to hygiene, however, it’s a bit of a gray area.
The Hygiene Factor
It would make sense that good hygiene that cleans out the sebaceous follicles in your skin would go a long way toward preventing acne from developing, but that turns out not to be the case. Hygiene does, however, play a role in exacerbating existing acne.
If you have body acne, you should be mindful of the clothes you wear, keeping sweaty and dirty clothing from irritating your acne further. Things like backpacks and purses slung over your shoulder also have a way of aggravating acne, making your blemishes more pronounced.
If you have considerable acne on your back and chest, it does help to keep the area clean and dry, which helps keep your outbreaks to a minimum. But, if you’re prone to acne, it will develop despite your best hygiene efforts.
Introducing the Laser
Since acne can’t be cured or prevented from the inside out, we’ve had great success at our practice tackling it from the outside in with laser technology.
The light energy from the laser penetrates your follicles and destroys the bacteria within. The energy also spurs a mild healing response in your skin, which boosts collagen production. This added collagen is very useful in closing up large pores which are susceptible to becoming clogged with bacteria and debris. It’s for this reason that laser technology is particularly helpful in getting rid of old acne scars.
For large outbreaks, you may need several treatments to tackle all of your body acne, and you need to allow time for your body to respond and heal. But, with a little time and patience on your part, we can make a very big dent in your body acne.
If you’d like to explore laser technology for body acne, please give us a call or use the online scheduling form on this website to book an appointment.