Acne Message Boards

This fact sheet helps you to know what’s ‘normal’ and what you can expect to happen if you suffer from acne (spots). It also tells you when you should become concerned and seek advice from a health professional.

Acne tends to start at puberty and leads to greasy skin and ‘spots’. People may feel bad about themselves because of the way their skin looks, often at a time when they are already vulnerable.

You are not alone – acne affects 8 out of 10 teenagers to some degree, and more frequently boys. Around one in three teenagers have acne bad enough to need treatment. In women and girls, acne is more common around the time of their monthly periods.

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Acne is caused by inflamed skin glands on your face and upper trunk, often made worse by bacteria in the skin. In rare cases, acne may be caused by an underlying medical condition, such as polycystic ovary disease (PCO) or other hormonal disorders. It’s a myth that stress or certain foods (such as chocolate) cause acne – and acne is certainly not due to a lack of cleanliness!

Acne is a long-term condition that may need immediate treatment for treating severely affected skin, and maintenance therapy to keep spots from recurring. In seven out of ten people, acne stops within five years – but some people experience skin problems lasting into their 20s and, rarely, longer.

Wash your face only once or twice a day with lukewarm water. Avoid strong or abrasive soaps and excessive scrubbing. Be aware that hot water and rough flannels can make symptoms worse rather than better.

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Effective treatments are available to reduce and improve spots. They can also prevent or reduce scarring if started early. Ask a member of your pharmacy team for advice on available preparations.

When choosing make-up and sunscreens, choose “non-comedogenic’ (should not cause blackheads or whiteheads) or ‘non-acnegenic’ (should not cause acne) and always remove make up at the end of the day. Make-up experts, including pharmacists, can help advise.

Seek advice from a member of your pharmacy team or your surgery if initial treatment with over-the-counter preparations doesn’t work for you, if acne significantly impairs your quality of life, or if any of the following symptoms are present:

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You suspect that you may have an underlying medical condition that causes your acne – for example, if you have additional symptoms such as infrequent or absent periods, excessive hair growth, or hair loss.

We review our health information every two years and this information is due to be updated in October 2024.  Here are details about how we develop and review our self care aware fact sheets.

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The homepage of Acne.org looks like a zit cream advertisement thinly veiled as an online resource. Scrolling down, you see a list of recommended readings like “Alcohol and Acne, ” ads for the Acne.org regimen, a slew of product reviews, and a gallery of photos of blemish-ridden faces.

Then you see forums — very, very active forums: “Scarless Healing, ” formed just one minute ago; “I’m 50 and breaking out all over my forehead, ” formed 20 minutes ago; and “Seeking acne scar advice and reccos, ” formed 22 minutes ago. And in the footer of the site, you see the rather arresting numbers: Acne.org has 641, 596 members, 2, 089 of whom are online now, and more than 3.5 million posts. What initially appears to be a sterile, dictionary-like website actually hosts the largest online community dedicated exclusively to discussing acne.

Reading these forums made me feel like a preteen again, surfing anonymous message boards where people discuss seemingly fleeting problems that can be deeply traumatic. Although acne is common and temporary — like many things associated with teenage years — living with it can feel alienating, especially in adulthood. The creator of Acne.org, Daniel Kern, knew this feeling, which is why he started the site.

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From their genesis, a couple years after Kern created Acne.org to share his own skin care journey, the forums were always active, something that didn’t surprise him. “Everyone has had acne for a period of time at some point in their lives, ” he says. But what did surprise him was how active and populated the Emotional and Psychological Effects of Acne forum became. “I suppose I thought it would be a place where people would exchange scientific info with each other or exchange ideas of what worked and what didn’t work, ” he says.

But as anyone who grew up in the early aughts could attest, anonymous forums frequently become emotional oases. Here, conversation extends beyond how acne makes you look and into how it makes you feel. “Acne is devastating psychologically for a lot of people, so I guess I should have expected it, ” Kern says.

With more than 360, 000 members and hundreds of thousands of threads, this forum is the largest and can get really dark really quickly. (Kern made some topics off limits and pinned a post that includes an aggregation of mental health resources for those who are considering self-harm. Volunteer moderators also monitor the site to make sure all discussions are safe.) Discussions about accepting loneliness and giving up on love are interspersed with diary-like posts from those looking to vent about how acne has negatively impacted their lives.

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This forum is also where more of the bizarre “support” is born. In one particular thread, a member posts that he’s worried he’ll never be intimate with a woman because of his acne, to which another member responded telling him to go after “young dumb girls” or “fat ugly girls.” This advice was then challenged by a member who said, “DUDE stop suggesting people to PREY ON GIRLS WITH LOW SELF-ESTEEM. this is a forum for people with acne!!!!!!!!!!” As disturbing as this thread is, advice like this is rare on Acne.org, and unproductive or harmful threads are promptly shut down by moderators.

According to teen and young adult psychologist Dr. Jaclyn Ghamar, even more so than literal scarring, emotional scarring is one of the most lasting effects of acne. “Those who had acne are more likely to have low self-esteem, which could affect them in social situations and when interviewing for jobs, ” she