Acne to go.

My mum is a full on Christian and she always used to say cleanliness is next to Godliness. You want your acne to be gone so believe my mum. The very essence of making acne gone is cleanliness.

In my earlier article, "acne gone" I explained that as a youth I had the kind of skin that just sprays oil all over your face as soon as you stress. Anyone who hates their acne knows that stress is a daily enemy we learn to live with. I often wonder if folk like me who suffered stress from acne are more prone to heart attacks than others who don't have acne. Load of rubbish probably but these things do drift through my mind. I mean maybe this article should be called, "Reduce heart disease by curing your zits", Sorry I will get back on course here.

Whenever I set out to read about acne I find some good articles that are easy to read and many that I can't understand so I want to add one more to those that are easy to read. I want to tell you what worked for me in very simple language.

Acne and skin.

To start with let's take a look at skin. We can all see those little tiny holes in our skin. Some people have bigger holes than others. What are they? Well they are mostly a method for our sweat glands to vent off. Pretty easy really we have them under our arms as well. Question? If we have these same sweat glands under our arms how come I don't have acne under my arms. Answer. Oil blockages don't normally occur where there is little oil. I don't have oily armpits so no problems there at all. But back then my face had oily pores. I read a pretty scientific description of pores this morning and it's a beauty. check this, I am quoting from here

"Basically, invisible pores represent the openings of the sweat gland apparatus. By contrast, the visible pores represent enlarged empty funnel-shaped or cylindrical horny impacted openings of pilosebaceous follicles." ( I really like the bit about funnels)

Now this person doesn't actually come out in agreement with me and that's O.K. because I agree with him. But his well trained knowledge tends to support my life experience. He has trained many years to know that phrase and he has put into scientific terms that I could never hope to find the zit teaching I thought was my mum's home grown instinct. Simply put we have holes in our skin and our sweat uses those holes to vent. Just outside those hols we have little funnels. Still I have to say it is very nice to know that these days there is a well researched explanation to what we can see in our own bodies.

What does this have to do with acne? Everything, this is ground zero, 101 acne stuff. Those funnels and holes are what we have to focus on first and foremost. There are many other things we need to talk about and I will keep talking because I made this my mission. But the funnels and holes are what we must focus on first.

Think like this. Keep the holes open. Keep the holes calm. Keep the holes clean. Keep the funnels empty.

Starve your acne. Acne loves oily food so don't give it any.

When I was learning to keep those holes and funnels open, empty, clean and calm I really got into it. I learnt to know exactly which foods would block my holes. Oily food became my number one enemy. I had to control myself. Eventually I became so tuned into my body that my skin would get itchy if I looked at a fried potatoe chip. I even had to divert my eyes every time someone close by was eating oily food. This is what you have to do as well if you want the acne gone. This is not the medical explanation this is just my minds eye image but when it comes to oily food think like this. Imagine some celery going through your system or a piece of boiled carrot. Now imagine some lard. What is going on? Let's try an experiment to find out what is really going on.

Acne 101 experiment. Go and get a piece of boiled spinach or a piece of celery and stick it in mum's blender. When you are done grab the shredded vegetables and wipe them on your face. Now get some cold water and splash your face. Presto it's clean and even feels fresh. O.K. now go get some cold potatoe fries a piece of hamburger meat, some of the left over oil from dad's sausage fry and stick in the same blender. Wipe the blended result on your face and try and wash it off with cold water, presto now you know what is going on inside your tummy. Now think about this even though it was hard to wash that oily gook off your face you did get it off. But not all of it. Some made it to it's target. Guess where it is now? Stuck in a funnel. O.K. so there it is stuck in a funnel and you wedged it in from the outside. Now start to walk around for a while till you feel warm. So now your sweat machine is starting to work and is looking for holes to vent through. Unfortunately those holes are blocked with the blender gook but it's your lucky today as that gook is still soft and with effort can be cleansed away. O.K., now let's be frank, don't ever, ever do this experiment anywhere else but within your own imagination. Never do this at home alone. Never do this. I am just trying to paint a word picture.

Where was I? Oh that's right so now you know how great that gook left over from the oily blend mix feels ( least you can imagine) and how easy it is to get off your face with cold water, NOT. That's how you blood feels. We can go further, eat some of that gook. Gross? You bet, but try it. Now sit down and don't move. The gook is in your eating tubes and is being attacked by your body in an attempt to getsome nutrition. The gook makes it way into your blood and gets carried around in little pods of oily gook. (remember this is a word picture that worked for me. It is work of fiction and the actual medical explanation has more to do with a substance called sebum but let's coniune my dreams) Blood tries so hard to break the stuff down but can't get it right. Finally a glob gets too close to a sweat venting hole and the body tries to get rid of it out of the hole. That tiny little bit of oil gets tossed out into a funnel and sits there and cools and gets hard. The hole doesn't like this at all and gets red and angry. Pretty soon you have a mess that needs protecting and so we get a fight going on that tries to calm things down but just ends up making a pussy zit in the funnel. If not treated that fight can go on and on and eventually the funnel will start to collapse and deepen. Acne scars will form.

Stopping the holes blocking, simple cleanliness. Ever see a movie about an operation? Doctor scrubs up right. That is how I want you to think about your zits. You are going to operate on them twice a day. So scrub up your hands very well. Cleanse your hands thoroughly before you start to cleanse your face. Dry your face by dabbing and not rubbing. Don't even touch your face ever without cleansing your hands first. I don't mean a quick wash I mean cleaning with a cleanser. There are many products to cleanse with and I have my favorite I know works. If you have one you want to tell people about feel free to add a comment.

That's it. So think about how to keep the funnels empty by eating non oily foods and your holes should be clean on the inside as well. Stay clean on the outside by using a gentle cleansing wash twice a day. Do both these for a while and it will become a religious routine. You will find you beging to enjoy the routine and having cleane skin. You will enjoy knowing you are doing something by yoursefl that is a positive action aimed at killing your zits. Forget having trouble eating fatty foods you will not even be able to go near them. You will not be able to walk into a fry shop ever again as you will feel the same as me and just know there is fat floating in the air that can sit in your funnels and block your holes.

Keep the holes open. Keep the holes calm. Keep the holes clean. Keep the funnels empty. Keep your hands clean.