Unlike what many of us would love to believe, acne neither develops overnight nor does it magically disappear once and for all. Acne is a journey in itself, and is rarely, if ever, linear in nature. To make progress in a situation like this, it’s essential to develop a holistic plan that goes beyond just putting products on the face.
A good idea here would be to be an ally to your acne. Why? Because treating your acne like an enemy is neither beneficial for your skin nor your perception of self.
How about we rather focus on things that we can control - adopting fruitful practices like quality skincare, healthy lifestyle habits, and the conscious effort to maintain a more optimistic mindset throughout your acne journey?
Let’s delve a little deeper into all of these parts and understand how they help us to be an ally to our acne:
Building an effective and sustainable routine for your acne is essential if you want to help your skin in the long term. Your daily use products should be able to support your acne journey by performing functions like
- Removing excess sebum
- Keeping pores unclogged
- Calming inflammation
- Fading away blemishes
To ensure your products help you with these steps, you need to make certain they contain ingredients that provide exfoliating, anti-bacterial, and anti-inflammatory benefits. Some beneficial ingredients for acne are Benzoyl Peroxide, BHAs like Salicylic Acid, AHAs like Glycolic and Lactic Acid, and botanical extracts like Chrysanthemum, Centella, Mulberry, etc.
Your skincare should help you through the various phases of acne, which means it should help prevent pimples from forming, calm and heal active inflammation and also fade post-acne blemishes.
Here are some of our recommendations:
-
Lisén Perfect Balance, a calming anti-acne foaming cleanser
- Lisén Moving Forward, a blemish and acne spot corrector gel
- Lisén Absolute Harmony, a skin-balancing daily gel moisturizer for acne-prone skin
- Lisén Pure Genius, a multi-action peel stick for blackheads, whiteheads, and blemishes
- Lisén Soothing Shade, a lightweight, sweat-proof & non-greasy sunscreen with SPF 50+ PA+++ formulated with Anti Pore-Dex Complex.
- Lifestyle habits for acne
While acne is primarily caused by factors like excess sebum, dead skin cells, and bacteria, sometimes, the body’s internal state can also trigger your acne to develop or for present acne to worsen. Thus, lifestyle choices, daily habits, and mental well-being play quite an important role in determining your acne journey.
Here are some quick tips to help you build a lifestyle that is supportive of your acne’s progress:
- Exercise regularly in a way that you enjoy
- Choose well-balanced, antioxidant-rich meals
- Wash your towels, bed linens, and makeup tools regularly
- Choose non-comedogenic, lightweight makeup
- Keep a check on your stress levels
- Mindset towards your acne journey
The way you perceive your acne can significantly impact your acne journey because mindset directly affects your emotions, and emotions affect your acne.
Research suggests that negative emotions like anger and frustration towards one’s acne can lead to stress, triggering the adrenal glands to secrete hormones like testosterone and cortisone that further exacerbate acne by increasing oil production and inflammation.
Keeping the science of it aside, a negative outlook towards your acne can lead to you developing an unhealthy relationship with your skin, which is not something anyone would want.
Thus, it’s imperative that you try and maintain a more positive mindset towards your skin, shifting the focus to constructive emotions like kindness, compassion, and optimism. This helps you remain more patient and resilient with your acne journey.
In the end, we have to realize that acne is more than just skin deep and our acne journey is not about getting from point A to B. There are so many chapters on the way, so much to experience, and so much to learn from - be it the frustration with those stubborn pimples or the happiness of finally loving your skin for what it is.
It’s all there, just waiting for you to embrace it and heal from the inside out.
