Acne Guru

One of the most frustrating things about having acne and treating it is that what might work for one person may not work for another. Treating acne is a lot like treating the common cold. There are so many variants of the common cold that while chicken soup and bed rest might work for your friend, it might not help you at all. Acne can be equally as frustrating. So that’s why the single smartest move you can make to treat your acne is to start an acne diary that gives an accurate chronicle of everything you do, everything you eat and everything you come into contact with (within reason, of course) when you have breakouts. Let’s see how one of these diaries works.

Once you have your severe acne diagnosed by a doctor, he or she will probably ask you to start keeping a journal. The point of the journal is to accurately chart when your outbreaks start and when they stop so that your own personal triggers can be identified and dealt with. Finding your triggers is the single most difficult part of having acne. Some people have pet dander and chocolate as triggers, while others have bright sunlight and greasy foods. Once you’ve been diagnosed, start to write down what you eat and any unusual environments you happen to find yourself in. Once a breakout starts to surface, think back to the previous day or two for anything that happened out of the ordinary and write it all down. After you’ve had four or five of these incidents, you can likely go back through your diary and start to pick out patterns. You can then start to eliminate particular behaviors and see if it impacts your breakouts. Keeping an acne diary is an important part of battling your acne the natural way.