If you suffer from acne, you have probably heard of the same three or four remedies over and over again … don’t pick your pimples, wash your face twice a day, use Clearasil and try birth control pills. However, there are plenty of considerations to take before you even book an appointment with the doctor to get those pills, and the most important one of those is whether they will actually be an effective treatment for your skin! Today we check out the literature and advice on using birth control pills as an acne treatment.

How are birth control pills supposed to help with acne?

There are actually myriad causes of acne, with a substantial list of factors interacting in different ways to cause pimples and blackheads. One of these potential causes is a high concentration of androgens, male hormones that cause thickening of the skin and increased oil secretion. Androgens are the reason that men often have more severe acne than women, and it is thought that the oestrogen in birth control pills helps counterbalance this excess of male hormones.

Can guys use birth control pills for acne?

No doctor will prescribe birth control pills for males. Messing around with your hormonal balance at any stage of life (but especially at puberty) can cause widespread and sometimes unexpected and serious bodily changes. Birth control pills can only be considered as an acne treatment if you’re female. 

Will birth control pills help clear up my acne?

There are many causes and contributors to acne, including:
• A tendency to develop blocked pores
• Excessive sebum production
• Ineffective wicking of the sebum out of the pore (hair usually helps transport the sebum to the surface of the face)
• Ease of colonisation with p. acnes, the bacteria that causes pimples

If the cause of your acne is excessive sebum production and/or a tendency to develop blocked pores due to thick skin, AND these factors are caused by high androgen levels, AND you are female, birth control pills may help!

However, if your acne is caused by factors other than androgens or you are male, birth control pills will be little use to you.

Will any type of birth control pill help with acne?

Some types of birth control pills can raise androgen levels within the body. If you are prone to breakouts, let your doctor know when you get a prescription, so she or he can choose a brand with a net androgen suppressing effect.

Also, there is no evidence yet that the quarterly contraceptive injections (usually Depo-provera) or the slow-release hormonal contraceptives that are inserted subcutaneously are useful in treating acne.

Are there any side effects?

It is difficult to find an acne treatment with more side effects than birth control pills have! While they are a good solution for women who would have taken them for contraceptive purposes anyway, everybody needs to consider that:
• Your risk of blood clots (ie, strokes and thromboses) is slightly increased by taking contraceptive pills
• Cervical cancer is more common in smokers who take birth control pills
• The pill can cause weight and mood changes in some women

What are the alternatives to birth control pills for acne treatment?

Although acne can be a difficult condition to manage, there are currently plenty of safe and effective treatments, including:

Laser acne treatment: To help kill of colonies of p. acnes, fill in scars and slow sebum production.

Topical retinoids: To increase cellular turnover, prevent blockages in the pores and kill bacteria by exposing them to the air.

Benzoyl peroxide: Works in the same way as topical retinoids.

Oral antibiotics: To help prevent colonisation with p. acnes.

Nowadays, there really is no need to suffer with basically untreated acne. There are plenty of creams, gels, solutions, lasers and pills that can help with your skin … and many are more widely suitable and have fewer side effects than birth control pills!

Lasers have truly revolutionised the way that we perform cosmetic procedures, making them safer, faster and less risky. Who would have though, thirty years ago, that a laser could remove scars, get rid of freckles, stop you from getting acne … AND clear up the acne scars?! Acne scar treatment with laser therapy has been proven to be safe and effective … but it can be discouraging to complete when you go back home and start getting new lesions some time later that just create new scars. Today we check out the highly effective skincare regimen that can help you get the most lasting results from laser acne scar treatment, using ordinary chemist-bought products.

Daily Skincare Regimen Post-Acne Scar Treatment

In order to keep your skin as clear as possible and help prevent any new breakouts that impair the results of your laser acne scar treatment, follow the simply 3-step regimen in the morning and at night time.

Step 1: Cleanse
• Apply a very generous amount of cleanser designed for acne-prone skin (not soap!!) to your hands
• Work up a good lather on your hands
• Apply the cleanser to all of your acne-prone areas, especially the areas that had laser acne treatment
• When you’re applying the cleanser, use an ultra-light touch. Irritating your acne has been scientifically proven to make it spread and become worse
• Pat your face dry very carefully, without rubbing or scrubbing

Step 2: Apply Benzoyl Peroxide
Benzoyl peroxide increases the cell turnover rate of your skin, meaning that populations of P. acnes bacteria don’t have a chance to get a foothold. If you had laser acne treatment, the light energy will have destroyed much of the bacteria colony within your skin – the benzoyl peroxide helps to maintain those results.
• Choose a 2.5% formulation of benzoyl peroxide. Some chemists sell up to 10% formulations, however these can be quite drying. If you’ve had laser acne treatment, your skin will be producing little sebum and with stronger solutions may become excessively dry.
• Wash and dry your hands before applying, so you don’t spread oil or bacteria over your face
• Apply small dabs of benzoyl peroxide all over your face
• Gently rub it over your face, not into your face
• Avoid the area around your eyes
• Leave the benzoyl peroxide on
• At the beginning, use smaller amounts of benzoyl peroxide to help stop your skin reacting badly.

Step 3: Moisturise
If you’ve had laser acne treatment, your skin won’t be producing as much sebum … that’s it’s mechanism of action! After ordinary laser acne treatment or acne scar treatment, your skin might be particularly dry. Using the right moisturiser is vital to helping prevent new pimples and helping it heal.
• Use a 20 cent piece-sized amount of moisturiser
• Avoid the eye area, so that you don’t spread benzoyl peroxide there
• If your moisturiser doesn’t seem strong enough to control flakiness, add 5-6 drops of jojoba oil and mix it through your bottle. Jojoba oil will not block your pores.

We love seeing the fabulous results that laser acne treatment and laser acne scar treatment create … if you follow the simple regimen, you’ll give yourself the best chance of keeping those fabulous results!

Laser acne treatment is often held up as one of the gold standards in taming zits and pimples. It has the potential to help fill in acne scars and substantially decrease oil production, as well as decimating the populations of bacteria that feed off the oil to create those horrible red and yellow monsters. However, most of us are taught that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is … and many suitable candidates for improved skin have ignored laser treatment for this ironic reason. Laser acne treatment is not a ‘miracle solution’ – but it is definitely one of the most effective weapons in the arsenal. Today we look at the skin types and conditions that laser acne treatment works best for, to help answer the question – “Will laser acne treatment work for you?”.

Types of Acne Most Suited to Laser Treatment

Laser acne treatment works best on several specific types of acne:
• Papules: By reducing the populations of p. acnes in your skin
• Pustules: By reducing the populations of p. acnes in your skin
• Whiteheads: By reducing your skin’s oil production
• Blackheads: By reducing your skin’s oil production

Laser acne treatment is less effective at treating nodular and cystic acne (where you have painful, large lesions deep within the skin). The wavelengths of light used in laser acne treatment are not able to reach that far into your skin.

Best Lasers for Acne Treatment

There is quite a large variety of different lasers, and not all of them are suited to laser acne treatment. The wavelength of the particular laser will determine what substance in your skin it is attracted to; some lasers are attracted to water in your skin, some to melanin, some to the haemoglobin in blood, and some target the sebaceous glands in your skin.

The Candela Smoothbeam is one of the most respected and widely used lasers for acne treatment. It operates at a wavelength of 1450nm, a setting which has very little attraction to either the melanin or haemoglobin in your skin, but it strongly attracted to water.

Laser acne treatment will work best for you if the laser used is specifically designed for acne treatment and acne scar treatment; if your clinic uses the same laser and wavelength setting for hair removal and acne treatment, you’ll get poor results.

Skin Types Best Suited to Laser Acne Treatment

Unfortunately, despite what Cosmo and Cleo would have you believe, there are far more different skin types than just ‘Oily’, ‘Dry’, ‘Combination’, ‘Tans easily’ and ‘Burns easily’! There are literally dozens of different skin types, with combinations of oiliness, proneness to blockages, natural melanin content, melanocyte’s sensitivity to UV light … etc. Laser acne treatment is effective for most skin types, however rarely a skin type that has a poor reaction to the laser may be encountered, and treatment cannot continue.

Duration of Effectiveness

Acne is caused by a range of genetic factors, possibly in combination with various lifestyle factors such as exercise levels, exposure to UV, diet and exposure to pollutants. Laser acne treatment cannot erase these genetic factors, but it can mitigate them over the medium term. Regular treatments, often in conjunction with other medical therapies, usually work best for acne. There are few people for whom laser acne treatment as a sole therapy, will ‘work’ in the long term.

Laser acne treatment will work, usually to a significant extent, for most people. The best way to know and experience the results for yourself is to come in for a personalised consultation and a trial session!

There are literally dozens of things that can cause acne. For many of us, the ’cause’ of acne in our particular case is a combination of two or more of these dozens of elements, and this is why there is simply no ‘one size fits all’ acne treatment. Even widely applicable methods, like laser acne treatment, are not considered a cure. There are also different levels at which we can understand the causes of acne, though. For example, we know that blockages in the skin, overproduction of sebum and colonies of P. acnes bacteria in the skin are the ingredients in the recipe for a pimple. But what is actually causing that sebum overproduction, or creating that bacteria-friendly environment in your particular case? Today we check out three partially controllable root causes of acne; hormones, diet and stress.

Hormones

How do hormones cause acne?
One of the typically ‘male’ hormones, androgen, can sometimes exacerbate acne. Androgen is a sex hormone, and an almost total lack of androgens is the reason that you don’t see kids with pimples.

How can I control my hormones my hormones as an acne treatment?
If acne in females is caused by androgen activity, using the birth control pill might be an effective treatment. It’s also possible, although certainly not proven, that eating foods containing phytoestrogens such as soy and green tea may also help with androgen control – and both guys and girls can use those products. 

Diet

How can diet affect my acne?
The link between diet and acne is the subject of constant discussion. While it has been quite conclusively disproven that chocolate and fried foods actually cause acne, there is another possible food-based link with your acne. Our diet has a very direct affect on insulin levels within our body, an endocrine hormone that also influences other hormonal activity … including that of androgens. So eating foods with a high glycaemic index that cause rapid rises and then drops in blood sugar levels, could well be a cause of acne.

Additionally, generalised inflammation within the body can also be a contributing factor in your acne, and there are some foods and supplements which may be able to work as anti-inflammatories.

How can I control diet as an acne treatment?
Try to eat a low glycaemic index diet … and for the sake of your general health, as well as your acne, make that low GI-diet a healthy one! Chocolate doesn’t have a particularly high GI, because of its fat content – and even if it doesn’t harm your skin, it won’t do your waistline or general health any good.

Stress

How does stress cause acne?
The link between stress and acne is again hormonal – stress increase adrenal gland activity, and androgens are one of the hormones produced by the adrenal glands. Additionally, if your body is ‘under stress’, even if your androgen levels are normal, it won’t be able to deal with overgrowth of bacteria in the skin as effectively, or heal the lesions that acne creates.

How can I control stress as an acne treatment?
It depends on what sort of stress you are experiencing – you don’t need to be experiencing a relationship breakdown or going through final exams for your body to be ‘stressed’. You’ll need to control physical stresses on your body to ensure that your skin is in the best possible shape to keep itself healthy and glowing; getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise and cutting out drugs (including alcohol, caffeine and nicotine) can all help improve your acne.

These lifestyle-based changes can help you feel better in general, and can also support more direct methods for getting rid of acne such as laser acne treatment, medications and topical creams.

Step 1: Oral antibiotics

If there aren’t any contra-indications to oral antibiotics, they are a very suitable first step for many acne treatment seekers. They help tone down breakouts to a level where chemical peels, microdermabrasion, laser acne treatment etc can be undertaken with minimal discomfort.

Optional Step: Oral contraceptives

Obviously they’ll cause more problems than they solve in boys; however oral contraceptives may help acne in some girls, with relatively few side effects. One interaction of note, though – when these are also used as the sole method of contraception there will be a 14-day window in which they are ineffective when starting a course of antibiotics.

Step 2: Laser acne treatment

Laser acne treatment offers a widely effective, very safe way to get rid of all the lesions associated with acne. It works by subtly altering the sebaceous glands in your skin so they produce less oil, as well as killing off the populations of P. acnes in your skin (which take time to build up).

Step 3: Microdermabrasion, dermabrasion and chemical peels

All of the above procedures can help smooth out acne-roughened skin. We recommend they are undertaken after the oral antibiotics are established and laser acne treatment has been completed because they’ll have a better chance to act curatively on your skin. If you end up having the more severe dermabrasion, also, you should do it at a time when you are getting relatively few new lesions, as new pimples can cause scars.

Step 4: Benzoyl peroxide

Benzoyl peroxide increases the turnover rate of the skin and helps kill acne bacteria.It is a fairly common acne treatment, but we haven’t placed it earlier in the program because it does have side effects, sometimes causing cystic acne and flaking, and also making your skin build up a tolerance to it, so constant use is required.  It shouldn’t be used before laser therapy, as it increases sun sensitivity.

Step 5: Oral isotretinoin

Oral isotretinoin is also known as Accutane, or Roaccutane, and is one of the last resort treatments for acne. Usually people that complete a course of oral isotretinoin find that they have permanently improved skin. The fact that it increases turnover rate of the skin means that fine lines and wrinkles are improved as well. It has quite a range of serious side effects though, including flaking and peeling of the skin, exacerbation of sun sensitivity and sometimes mood changes and depression; this is why it is included as the last step.

Remember:

Acne treatments for teens are often a joint decision between the patient and their parents. When they disagree about what sort of treatment will be best, it’s wise to have these ‘discussions’ (or perhaps occasionally, arguments!) in the presence of a doctor. They’ll at least be able to give a professional evaluation of risks and benefits in a particular case.

Microdermabrasion (Effectiveness: * )
Microdermabrasion is best used in conjunction with other therapies. It can be useful for acne, but is not particularly effective as an acne scar treatment.

At-home chemical peels (Effectiveness: ** )
Chemical peels, like microdermabrasion, are more effective against acne in its active stages than for remedying scarring. It is low cost but will need to be repeated often.

Medical-grade chemical peels (Effectiveness: *** )
Medical grade chemical peels can be very effective for low grade scarring. They may only need to be repeated once or twice, but they do carry some risk of scarring and the recovery time is far longer than at-home peels.

Dermal fillers (Effectiveness: *** )
Dermal fillers are a mid-range cost, very low risk treatment for deep acne scars. They will also substantially improve the look of an acne scar. However, they are temporary only – you’ll need to keep up the treatments every 6-9 months for the rest of your life.

Subcision (Effectiveness: *** )
Subcision is a great option for single deep scars, but cannot be performed across the whole face. You may need several treatments, but it has a low cost, mid-range recovery time and fairly low risk. 

Diode laser (Effectiveness: **** )
There is minimal downtime from this acne scar treatment, but multiple sessions will be needed to help fill in deep scars. The procedure carries very little risk, especially if you are treated in a professional clinic, as the scarred areas are targeted and surrounding skin is spared. Compared to other single-time procedures, diode lasers have a good chance to fill in acne scars with very little associated risk.

Fractional carbon dioxide lasers (Effectiveness: **** )
Fractional carbon dioxide lasers both ablate the surface of the skin (removing the top layers), as well as causing a mild heat injury to the tissue, which stimulates the formation of new collagen which fills in scras.

Skin needling (Effectiveness: *****)
This very effective acne scar treatment has a fairly substantial recovery time, but will show effective improvements for quite some time. The overall risk is quite low compared to the effectiveness of results. 

Fully ablative laser resurfacing (Effectiveness: ***** )
This is quite an effective treatment, but don’t let those 5 stars blind you to the major risks that are associated with fully abrading the top layers of your skin. It can also result in permanent scarring or loss of pigmentation in the skin that may look worse than the original scars. Only one acne scar treatment is needed, but it is expensive and you’ll need a fair bit of time off work to recover.

Grading levels of acne scarring

The first four ways of classifying your acne scars relate to their severity, generalizing about the individual differences between scars. You might have Grade 1, 2, 3 or 4 acne scarring, with different laser acne treatment or pigmentation treatment options for each level.

Grade 1 scarring: Is mostly pigment-based. Ordinary scars from cuts to your skin appear white – in grade 1 acne scarring the lesions are also white or hypo-pigmented.

Grade 2 scarring:  Grade 2 scarring is defined as being visible at distances of less than 50cm, and able to be covered by makeup. Of course, not everyone is happy with needing lifelong cosmetics to ‘look normal’, and for many people cosmetic use causes breakouts – so laser acne treatment is a real possibility at this stage.

Grade 3 scarring: Grade 3 scarring is not easily covered by cosmetics, and is visible from more than 50cm away. When we talk about rolling scars, shallow boxcar scars and hypertrophic scars later on, remember that those scars will often fit into grade 3.

Grade 4 scarring: Is also difficult to cover and seen at distances greater than 50cm away, but cannot be flattened by stretching the skin. Icepick scars, deep divots, keloid scarring and sever boxcar scars fit into this category – more on those names in a second. These may need a combination of laser acne scar treatment and dermal fillers to improve their appearance.

Specific types of acne scarring

When you are looking at a particular acne scar, or a confined area or type of acne scarring, there are also other ways to classify them. These include:

Macular scarring: This type of scarring is the only one counted in grade 1 acne scarring. Laser acne scar treatment isn’t effective for macular scarring, and it usually isn’t feasible to remove the rest of the pigmentation in the face to match the lightened area. The most usual treatment is with lightening creams to help even out skin tone.

Boxcar scars: These acne scars look as if they have been punched out with a hole punch. If you cross sectioned them, they would have sharp vertical edges. They might be treated by either dermal filler or laser acne scar treatment, depending on their severity.

Rolling scars: Where acne scars have been deep and the overlying skin tethered to structures beneath, these are known as rolling scars. Large uneven patches can be treated with lasers or skin needling.

Deep divots and ice-pick scars: Deep scars that have involved the loss of subcutaneous tissue are either deep divots (larger surface area) or ice pick scars (small holes). Chemical peels, microdermabrasion, laser acne scar treatment and skin needling can do a lot to improve the look of these scars.

Hypertrophic scarring: These are often pigmented scars. The pigment can be removed by laser, and the surrounding area treated with either fillers or laser to stimulate collagen production.

Keloid scarring: These scars are big, red-purple and nasty – skin needling and skin resurfacing by laser is the treatment of choice, but doesn’t completely eradicate the scars.

Overblown acne treatment #1: ProActiv Solution

If you’ve seen any of the Proactiv Solution advertorials on television, you have probably seriously considered ordering it for only five easy payments of $39.95. Unfortunately, the main active ingredient in Proactiv Solution is benzoyl peroxide – an acne treatment well known to have its ups and downs, and to work for some people and not for others. If you investigate Proactiv Solution reviews, you’ll find that:
• Around a third of people say that it messed with their skin, cost way too much and they would never use it again
• Around a third say that it helped their skin a little, but they just switched to a cheaper or prescription benzoyl peroxide product
• Around a third say that it cleared their skin almost totally.
Not bad … but a far cry from what the celebrity spokespeople would have you think!

Overblown acne treatment #2: The ‘Acne Diet’

Yes, there are several different versions of ‘the acne diet’, and we’ve lumped all of them in together. There’s the ‘no red meat’ diet, the organic diet, any of a hundred different ‘detox’ diets, and the raw food diet. Unfortunately, biochemistry is just too complex a subject for any of these diets to have a widespread impact, especially if they are the only acne treatment you try.

Overblown acne treatment #3: Clearasil

Another case of the marketing for an acne treatment far outrunning the actual worth of the product. Clearasil contains salicylic acid, triclosan and benzoyl peroxide – all low concentration ingredients that will work for some people, but are certainly not worthwhile for people with widespread or recurring acne. Some Clearasil products are simply not concentrated enough to work effectively, some will also make your skin dry.

Overblown acne treatment #4: Natural face masks

They have the best of intentions, and might make your non acne-affected skin feel a little better temporarily, but face masks in general are a very short term solution for acne. Acne isn’t caused by external factors, so acne treatments that target external factors are necessarily not the most effective. Additionally, aspirin masks are sometimes recommended for acne – and these can actually cause internal bleeding. Of course, one notable exception is benzoyl peroxide, which targets an internal factor (rate of cell renewal) using an external method.

Overblown acne treatment #5: Vitamin A

You’ll often find vitamin A spruiked as a ‘natural’ acne treatment … as long as you take around 10 times the daily recommended dose. Unfortunately several studies have shown that vitamin A is not effective in reducing the severity of acne, and is most definitely associated with overdose-like symptoms.

The message is that you need to do quite a lot of research before you decide on an acne treatment … even those that come from the chemist may make your skin worse rather than better! Look for those that the scientific literature supports and is mostly in agreement on – like laser acne therapy.

How much does a treatment cost?

The treatment schedule varies according to the size of the area you want to have treated – larger areas simply mean longer treatment times and slightly higher prices. You’ll notice looking at the schedule that the pre-paid price is significantly lower – since at least four laser acne therapy sessions are always recommended, the pre-pay is almost invariably your best option.

Remember that the pre-paid price is for four or more sessions – you can prepay any number larger than 4 sessions at the beginning of your treatment to save money. For example, you might want to prepay 5 initial sessions, and 2 touchup sessions to save a bit of cash.

Microdermabrasion

Combined acne treatment with microdermabrasion has excellent results. Microdermabrasion removes the top layers of your skin, helping cut down on the population of bacteria as well as creating a generally smoother appearance. Microdermabrasion costs around:
• $49 per treatment
• $40 per pre-paid treatment (4 or more sessions paid)

For example:

• If you had moderate acne across your cheeks only, you could expect to pay for 4 sessions of laser acne therapy on your cheeks only. Total cost: $276
• If you had relatively severe acne localized to your cheeks, you could expect to pay for 6 sessions of laser acne therapy on your cheeks only. Total cost: $414
• If you have moderate acne across your whole face, you could expect to pay for 4 sessions of laser acne therapy across your whole face. Total cost: $516
• If you have moderate acne on your neck (4 sessions) and severe acne on your entire face (6 sessions), and you also wanted two sessions of microdermabrasion …  Total cost: $1388

Touch up sessions

Laser acne therapy offers around a 70-90% improvement in acne appearance over 4 to 6 weeks. However, intertwined with the fact that the therapy is so safe, is the fact that it isn’t a “cure” for acne. You may need a single touch up session every six months, every year, or every two years depending on your particular biochemistry. You probably wouldn’t pre-pay these sessions, so the cost would be the single-session charge for your particular area.

Spreading the cost

Your treatments are usually spaced three to four weeks apart – so if it makes it easier on your budget, you may want to pay for a single session at a time rather than trying to save for the entire treatment schedule at the beginning.

Saving money with laser acne therapy!

Remember that while laser acne therapy does have an upfront cost, there are plenty of ways in which it saves you money! You won’t have to spend as much on:
• Specialist acne creams and lotions
• Acne treatment gadgets and gizmos
• Prescription acne medicines
• Cosmetics

But in the long term, the most value you’ll get out of your laser acne treatment is in the confidence it restores, the time it gives back, and the feeling of  belonging in your own skin!

1. Acne Cause in Your Genes: Excess oil production

A tendency towards oily skin is an inherited condition. Not all people with oily skin get acne, but if you do produce more sebum than is necessary to keep your skin from drying out, there is a greater chance of a buildup being trapped beneath dead skin cells, creating blackheads and an environment in which bacteria thrive.

Treatment for oil-induced acne
These acne treatments include:
• Creating a regimen of washing and exfoliating your face regularly
• Laser therapy for acne, which decreases the activity of oil glands
• Roaccutane
• Hormonal treatments, where the oil production is caused by excess androgens

2. Acne Cause in Your Genes: An environment Where P.Acnes Thrives

There may be a particular chemical balance in your body that P. acnes loves, or a particular cellular construction that makes a good home for the little critters. Whatever the reason, more bacteria means more acne.

Treatment for bacteria-induced acne:
There are several acne treatments that directly target the bacteria part of the cycle:
• Oral antibiotics prescribed by a doctor
• Laser therapy – the light kills off the population of bacteria
•

3. Acne Cause in Your Genes: Tendency to blocked pores

If your skin cell has a higher than usual turnover rate 9determined by your genes), you’ll end up with dead cells sitting on the surface of your skin. These dead cells block the free passage of your skin oil to the outside, and make an anaerobic environment for P. acnes to thrive in.

Treatment for blockage-induced acne:
Some of the most common treatments for acne target the blockages created by dead cells. These include:
• Benzoyl peroxide preparations
• Microdermabrasion and chemical peels (which also help reduce the appearance of scars)
• Cleansers with AHAs
• Roaccutane

4. Acne Cause in Your Genes: More Androgens

Androgens are a class of male hormones including testosterone, and they promote oil production through the sebaceous glands. Your DNA may tell your body to produce more androgens than usual, and if the blocked pores and bacteria are also present, you’ll need acne treatments.

Treatment for androgen-induced acne:
In females, the oral contraceptive pill is the usual treatment for acne caused by hormones. In males, though, the other treatments discussed in the oil section would be used preferentially so that other body functions aren’t disturbed.

No matter what the genetic cause of your acne, an effective acne treatment that targets any stage of the acne cycle is usually effective in greatly improving your skin!