When Your Acne Remedy Causes a Skin Rash

My Sensitive Skincare Show Podcast #4

Mary's acne remedy actually made her rash much worse! Listen to her question and my response, tips to prevent future breakouts, and how to quickly calm down a bad skin eruption.

Resources Mentioned

In this podcast I shared some basic information on how to test products to see if your skin will react to them.  You can learn more details about how to do a skin test.

Prefer to Read?  Here's the Transcript

Hello everyone and thank you once again for joining me at the My Sensitive Skin Care Show.  Today's question is fromMary and I think it’s one that you might be able to relate to yourself, so I’ll let her ask the question and then I’ll reply.

QUESTION:

Hi, I have been using a product from a Clinic and it’s spelled M-U-R-A-D. I have really sensitive skin. It’s a cleanser and I’ve been using that now for nearly almost four weeks. I’ve just broken out with more acne, it’s bleeding and it’s worse. Before I started, I was only getting one to two acnes a week, but it would just take longer to clear out, but it was leaving scars. Apparently, my skin was really oily, so they started me off on those cleanser toner and if anything, it’s just so depressing, it has really…my skin is just terrible and worst. It cost a lot of money and I really don’t know what to do.

ANSWER:

Mary, thank you so much for sharing your story about the terrible reaction that you had from using the acne cleanser. First of all, skin cleansers often can cause really bad reactions, even products that are suppose to help your acne and again, I am so sorry for the really bad reaction that you had.

First, it’s important that you know that you’re not alone and that’s a part of why I created this website is there are just so many people that struggle with this very same problem that you have. So the very first thing that you want to do is stop using the product that’s causing your skin to breakout.

Even if your doctor of health professional is telling you that you need to use it, if your skin is telling you something else you really need to listen to your body, so just take a break and stop using the product.

Try to drink a lot of water and just put maybe some cool water on your face and kind of let your skin calm down again. And if you are working with a health professional, call them and tell them what’s happening and ask for their advice about why you might be breaking out. So that’s the step one is to stop using the product that’s causing you to breakout.

Once your skin has healed from the breakout, and I understand that what you’re saying is you’re having a chronic acne problem, so you might not feel like your skin is better … but mostly likely when you stop using something that’s causing irritation, your skin will go back to where it was.

I do want to add one thing about this because there are some products that have…a lot of people with sensitive skin have a reaction to products even ones that are intended to bring healing to your skin. It’s one of the principles of natural healing actually is sometimes things get worse before they get better. But the problem when you have sensitive skin is you don’t want it to get any worse so that’s really the challenge of this whole situation.

So once you’ve stopped and hopefully given your skin a little chance to calm down, the next step is whatever you decide to do next which is between you and your doctor or however you decide to address the problem. My recommendation would be to do a skin test before you actually put anything else on your face.

A skin test is a very simple procedure. What you do is with any kind of new product or cream that you’re using, is just take a little bit out of the tube or the jar and put a little bit on the inside of your wrist or the inside of your elbow, and just let it be there for a while.

Some people wait a whole 24 hours to make sure that there’s no reaction. What will happen is you’ll start to feel rash if it’s a product that isn’t going to be good for your skin. Generally, after one day or sometimes two days, (some people are very cautious so they leave the product on for two full days) but you could even do one day. I usually do a half a day, but it depends on you!

If there’s no rash and no reaction from testing it on the inside of your arm or the inside of your elbow, then most likely it’s going to be all right for your face. It’s not a 100% guaranteed, but if you’re still a little nervous, you could just apply it say to the outside of your face near your jaw and try that for a day too. So that’s a way that you can prevent breaking out the next time that you try a new skincare product.

So I hope that’s helpful Mary. I’m so sorry for what you went through and I hope that the information on my website can give you some support and help in finding a solution for the chronic acne that you’re experiencing. So, good luck. Thank you so much and blessings and also for all of my listeners out there, I really appreciate your listening and your participation in this podcast. I wish you health and blessings and I’ll see you again on the next show.