Shea Butter Acne Moisturizer: One Step in the Right Direction- Acne No More

While a Shea butter acne moisturizer may soften and smooth your skin, it is only one step in the right direction when it comes to a long-term acne treatment. The truth is that getting rid of your acne for good requires you to target acne at the root by first of all correcting your diet before you treat your skin…

Shea Butter Acne Moisturizer Benefits

While it is vitally important to take care in the products that you put on your skin, that is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to remedying your acne.

Shea butter is a moisturizing product made from the nuts of the Karite Nut trees found in Central Africa. In its pure form, Shea butter is a solid fatty oil, derived from extracting the butter from the nuts of the trees. Since Shea butter is highly moisturizing and non-toxic, it is often advertised as an acne treatment product to naturally heal and smooth the skin. [1]

A Shea butter acne moisturizer has natural healing properties since it contains beneficial vegetable fats. These natural fats promote healthy cell regeneration and stimulate circulation, which is exactly what you need to renew and refresh a complexion that has been ravaged by acne. On top of that, Shea butter also has natural sun protection benefits to strengthen the complexion and prevent free radical damage caused by sun exposure.

But those benefits alone don’t guarantee a long-term acne treatment…

It All Starts with Your Diet

As an aesthetician, I always advise my clients to use natural products to treat their skin since it greatly minimizes the risk of toxic chemical buildup in the body. Any product that you put on your skin absorbs directly into your bloodstream and can affect your circulatory system. If you are using topical over-the-counter acne products that are full of harmful chemicals, then you are leaving your body at risk for these chemicals to be absorbed directly into your bloodstream.

For this reason, it may seem like a Shea butter acne moisturizer would be the perfect acne cure, right? Not entirely… Using the right natural products is only one piece of the puzzle. While a Shea butter acne moisturizer may greatly benefit your skin with its natural healing properties, it does not have the ability to completely heal acne at its source.

If you want any hope of clearing up your skin, it all starts with a healthy diet. Poor dietary habits load your body full of toxins, which lead to bacterial overgrowth on the surface of your skin. This toxic buildup will also lead to a hormonal imbalance to trigger oil production in the skin. As you can imagine, bacteria on the skin plus excess oil production will result in chronic acne.

As you start to use natural healing products like Shea butter, make sure that you are also correcting your diet for the best results in treating your acne for good!

Let’s see what a few acne sufferers from the acne.org forums had to say about using a Shea butter acne moisturizer to treat their skin:

I have been buying unrefined Shea butter from Coastal Scents for about 4 years. I buy it every winter because I live in Northern Canada and I shovel snow in the winter for a living. Shea Butter protects my skin, makes an excellent lip balm, and because it's occlusive in nature it protects my face (YES I said FACE) from salt and cold, chapping winds. I don't know why it clogs some people's pores, for me it's always been nothing but an incredible comfort to my skin...but then again, jojoba oil clogs my pores and it's noted MANY places it doesn't do that to alot of people. Goes to show what's good for me isn't good for you and even worse for the next guy

I'm 18, had trouble skin since puberty, and tried many, many moisturizers in my short lifetime. Most were either heavily fragranced or have toxic ingredients. I was pretty skeptical about the effectiveness of shea butter when I first heard about it, but I'm so glad I gave it a try. This stuff helped heal my eczema and got rid of my jawline acne. My skin is smooth and glowing after a few months of diligently incorporating this product in my skincare regime. It's also helped a bit with fading some past hyperpigmentation and red marks.

The bottom line is that using natural skin care products is highly important, but they are not the cure-all to treat acne in your skin. When you begin to balance your diet with fresh, whole foods and lean proteins, your skin will naturally start to heal itself to resist acne.

When that happens, any natural skin care products that you use will be even more effective to hydrate, smooth, and repair your complexion that is now free from acne!

The Turmeric Acne Treatment All Starts with a Balanced Diet- Acne No More

By now, you may have figured out that clear skin all starts with a healthy diet. But did you realize that adding certain spices, like turmeric, to the foods that you eat has the potential to clear and improve the quality of your skin?

The Turmeric Acne Treatment and Your Diet

A healthy acne diet focuses on fresh vegetables, lean proteins, and especially omega-3 fatty acids to restore and strengthen skin that has been damaged by toxic chemicals and additives in processed foods.

As you begin to integrate fresh and natural foods into your diet, one spice that should be at the top of your list is turmeric. Turmeric comes from the root of a plant in the ginger family, and it is normally ground into a powder and used in Indian cuisine.

What Does Turmeric Taste Like?

Turmeric is a vital ingredient in curry powder, and it often has a slight taste of orange and ginger with a subtle bitter undertone. When cooking healthy and fresh foods to balance your diet, turmeric can be used to add flavor to soups, side dishes, vegetables, and lean proteins like fish.

While turmeric has a pleasant and authentic flavor, it is important to discover the benefits that a turmeric acne treatment can provide when you include the spice in your diet.

The Turmeric Acne Ayurvedic Remedy

Turmeric is a natural spice often used in ayurvedic healing remedies to naturally purify the blood and relieve a number of skin conditions.

Turmeric treats:

• The skin


• The heart


• The liver


• The lungs

Since turmeric supports the health of the liver, it will aid in natural detoxification in the body to significantly reduce your risk of acne outbreaks. On top of that, turmeric also has wonderful anti-inflammatory properties to alleviate chronic inflammation in the body that results in severe acne in the skin.

Here is what several acne sufferers from the acne.org forums had to say about the turmeric acne remedy:

Here a cure for all acne people suffer from red mark,scar,Hyperpigmentation.
Turmeric powder or the root from it. It only cost u a few dollar to buy at a asian market With a few dollar will last u a month and help u fade all kind acne,scar,red mark,Hyperpigmentation on your face in a month u will see life agian, and u don't have to waste thousand dollar or go to the pain of that nasty peel,skin bleaching or use harsh chemical that don't work.

I've been trying this for about 4 days now i can definitely tell you it works! Drinking the turmeric prevents further acne forming and applying it to the face helps fight current acne, and reduces scar formation & pigmentation.

The most important point to keep in mind is that using a spice like turmeric by itself will not be able to cure your acne. BUT when you use a turmeric acne treatment in addition to a balanced diet, you will be able to naturally purge your body of toxins, strengthen your immune system, and clear your skin from the inside out.

As an added bonus, you can also use a topical turmeric acne remedy at home to relieve acne in your complexion.

To do so, make a paste of turmeric powder and water to apply to your skin, and rinse with warm water after 5 minutes. This natural home remedy will alleviate surface inflammation, treat hyperpigmentation caused by acne scarring, and strengthen your skin to resist acne outbreaks!

Is Clear Skin as Easy as a Tea Tree Oil Acne Remedy- Acne No More

The tea tree oil acne remedy is unarguably one of the most popular natural acne treatments on the market, normally sold in health stores and through natural health websites online. Tea tree oil provides a number of antibacterial benefits, but does it have the ability to kill acne bacteria on your skin and protect your complexion from further breakouts?

Tea Tree Oil Acne Benefits

A tea tree oil acne remedy is often recommended to treat breakouts in the skin due to its antimicrobial and antibacterial properties. This natural essential oil has the ability to kill bacteria, which is precisely why it is often found in natural lotions, toothpastes, creams, shampoos, and even mouthwashes.

However, the question begs to be asked if tree oil can effectively kill the p. acnes bacteria on the skin that triggers chronic and inflamed acne?

When reading natural health blogs online, I saw several reports that tea tree oil has much fewer side effects than using benzoyl peroxide on the skin. Benzoyl peroxide is an incredibly drying acne ingredient that can often cause side effects like dryness, itching, and flaking in the complexion.

Fortunately, tea tree oil is able to kill the acne bacteria in the skin without causing such side effects.

To date, there has only been one notable study done on the tea tree oil acne remedy. In a randomized trial through the Department of Dermatology at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Australia, researchers compared the results of using 5% tea tree oil to 5% benzoyl peroxide to treat mild to moderate acne in a group of 124 people.

Both of these groups greatly reduced their inflamed acne lesions over a period of three months, yet tea tree oil was proven to be less effective than benzoyl peroxide. However, the tea tree oil acne remedy was again the treatment that caused fewer side effects in the acne sufferers.

In the group using benzoyl peroxide, a whopping 79% experienced severe side effects of burning, stinging, and dryness in their skin!

Let’s check out what several acne sufferers had to say about the tea tree oil acne remedy at the acne.org forums:

It really works and fast, within 1 day I noticed a difference.

This works fabulously assuming you are the right skin type. I am fairly greasy and this works wonders but for some people this may dry you out and may also cause an allergic reaction as it is pretty strong. Be sure to use sparingly, most poor reactions to Tea Tree Oil can be attributed by using in excess.

Tea tree oil saves my day. I used to use OXY with benzoyl peroxide but have found out that tea tree oil is an organic equivalent so I've switched. I have oily face so I apply 2-3 drops evenly over my whole face after moisturizing. It stops acne in its tracks, so to speak.

Now that we understand that a natural tea tree oil acne remedy can be beneficial to kill acne bacteria on the skin, I am going to let you in on a little secret…

Acne bacteria on the skin doesn’t cause acne. Shocking, isn’t it? Acne is actually caused by a poor diet that loads the body full of toxins, leading to a bacterial overgrowth on the skin. While a natural ingredient like tea tree oil can greatly reduce bacteria on the skin, it will not treat the true cause of acne.

For the greatest results, use natural tea tree oil instead of benzoyl peroxide to treat your skin AND clean up your diet to get rid of acne for good!

Acne Light Therapy-Acne No More

Acne Light Therapy

If you are looking for an acne treatment with proven results you may want to consider acne light therapy.

The problem with some topical treatments (creams and lotions) is they can sometimes cause skin problems rather than remove them – some people react to the ingredients, there can be side effects or sometimes they just lose effectiveness.

Acne Light Treatment has been extensively researched, it is effective in 90% of cases and there are very rarely side effects if you use a quality device that controls the light and the time that you are exposed to the light.

Acne light therapy is not new.  Not so many years ago acne sufferers, particularly sufferers of back acne would be advised to get some sun on their skin.  The dangers of sun exposure were not so well documented.  The truth is that exposure to sun will help acne and those in sunny climates can still use the sun as long as they severely limit the time of exposure and use appropriate sun blocks after just a few minutes unprotected skin exposure.

Modern technology has drastically reduced the danger of acne light therapy.  In an acne light therapy device the strength of the light is controlled and the time of exposure is automatically  set.  This virtually eliminates the possibility of skin damage.

How Does Acne Light Therapy Work

Quite simply blue or UV light kills bacteria and helps to dry excess sebum while red (or infra red) light soothes inflammed skin and promotes healing.

As you can see the formation of acne is a three step process

firstly hormonal imbalance causes an excess of sebum to be created by the sebaceous glands.

This causes bacteria to multiply on the skin surface as the sebum is perfect bacteria food.  The bacteria imbalance causes spots and inflammation.

Light produced from a device such as lumie clear will kill bacteria and help to promote healing, reducing inflammation and visibly reducing the appearance and life time of a spot.

In clinical tests real results were observed in 100 patients after four weeks of treatment.  After 12 weeks skin was 76% less inflammed and 56% clearer.

The device that I recommend is the Lumie Clear Acne Light Therapy Treatment System.  I particularly like this device because it has been extensively tested and it is produced by a company that specialises in light therapy equipment.  Lumie started producing light therapy for the treatment of seasonal effective disorders.  The device is also approved as a safe medical device and is made to high standards of production.

At the ime of writing you can purchase the lumie with 20 % discount from Amazon.  Just click the link below.

How Do You Use Acne Light Therapy?

Acne light therapy is very easy to use.  You simply expose the affected skin to the light once or twice each day.  There are no messy products to apply.  The acne light therapy device will not leave your skin looking oily.  Just treat and get on with your life while the bacteria die and you skin heals.  it really is that simple.

You can use acne light therapy in two ways.

• To treat specific areas of skin where you have experienced a break out


• To treat a wider area if your skin is prone to large areas of acne.

The lumi is particularly good for the tw treatments as it has been designed with a stand to allow you to treat larger areas while you get on with other things.

By holding the device very close to the skin you are intensifying the level of light hitting that area.

This is particularly good if you have combination skin or problem areas that you want to treat.

Using Acne Light Therapy to treat small areas with intensive light will need only a maximum of 15 minute exposure once each day.  I would recommend starting with shorter times and observing how your skin reacts.

You know your skin better than anyone.

If there is a possibility of your eyes being exposed to intensive light you will need to use protective goggles, which are provided if you  purchase a lumie.

In practice this would only aply if you are treating the forehead, nose or upper cheeks.

If you want to treat a larger area you can use your device with the stand.  this will mean less intensity but a wider area of coverage – perfect for treating back acne or if you suffer wide spread acne on your face.

This sort of treatment will need exposure for up to one hour each day, but you are fine to set the device and get on with something else while it works.  Perfect time to pamper yourself, read a good book or watch TV.  My Student daughter uses our machine while she is writing essays!

Most devices will have  a timer, so it is unlikely you will forget to turn the machine off and over expose your skin.

Users Experience of Acne light Therapy

21 out of 27  independent reviewers on amazon gave the Lumie Clear Acne Light Therapy Treatment System either 4 0r 5 stars.  Here are a few of their comments

I noticed an improvement after 2 weeks of use – my skin was less red and spots were fading a lot quicker than normal. I did still get new spots (But no where near as many as normal) up until 6 weeks of use but the last couple of weeks I haven’t had any new breakouts at all.
If I do get any spots they seem to last a much shorter time than they did before, however I am not getting any large breakouts since I started using it and can now wear much less foundation and feel confident.

The only real criticism is the initial cost at £119 it is not cheap at the start.  The counter to this is that it does work for nearly all users and that once you have made the initial purchase you will not need to continue to purchase products to treat acne.

If you consider that most teenagers suffer from acne for anything between 2 and 5 years and that adult acne can occur at any time then the investment begins to look better.

Overall I think Acne Light therapy is worth trying.  If you would like to purchase from Amazon with that £30 (20% discount) here is the link again.

What Causes Spots- Acne No More

What Causes Spots

Sometimes it is good to go right back to basics and ask the simple question “what causes spots?”

Like most things once you understand what causes spots it is far easier to work out how to tackle the problem.  Which acne treatments work best and how to avoid any spot treatments that are really not going to do you much good.

Much has been written about what causes spots but just what is accurate and which bits of the theory can you use.

What Causes Spots?

The formation of spots is really quite easy

Firstly your body starts to create excess sebum

The sebum mixes with dead skin cells and blocks pores or hair follicles

Your body reacts to the blocked pore and creates pus to tackle the foreign body

The sebum is also great food for bacteria

The feasting bacteria starts to increase

The increased levels of bacteria irritate your skin causing inflammation

You get another out break of acne

This means that what causes spots breaks down to three basic things

• Excess Sebum


• Blocked pores and follicles


• Bacteria

Lets examine each of those three

What Causes Spots – Excess Sebum

Sebum is absolutely necessary for healthy skin.  It keeps your skin supple and waterproof.

Sebum is created by the sebaceous glands that are found just below your skin, most of the time healthy levels are produced and your skin remains clear.  But Sebum is one of the prime factors when considering what causes spots.  The reason is that sometimes your body is triggered into producing too much sebum.

The main reason for excess sebum production is an imbalance in hormones, particularly the male hormone testosterone (despite its name testosterone is actually naturally present in both men and women).

Hormonal imbalance occurs at many stages in the human life cycle but is particularly prevelant during puberty which is why acne is often thought of as a teenage condition.

Your hormones can also be sent into imbalance at other stages of your life.  For women pregnancy and the menopause are key times, as is the monthly cycle.

The best things you can do to help control excess sebum is to maintain a healthy diet which will help your body to cope with hormonal change and use a treatment regime that will help control and remove sebum.

One additional thing to consider is that your body will be triggered into producing sebum if your cleansers are too harsh

What Causes Spots – Blocked Pores and Follicles

Each day you produce new skin cells and the old ones are shed.  If the dead skin cells are removed from your skin they cause no issues,  but they can be one of the factors to consider if they block a skin pore.  Then they become part of what causes spots.

Once a pore is blocked sebum will gather and your bodies immune system will start to react in the same way as it would if the blockage came from outside the body.  White blood cells will surround the skin cell and pus will be formed to try to remove the blockage.

In this way spots form under your skin days before you see them.

Tackle this by gently exfoliating your skin at least once a week.  You can also use a face pack to draw impurities out of the skin.

What Causes Spots – Bacteria

Although you may not like the idea the whole surface of your skin is home to thousands of bacteria.  Most of the time you live quite happily with them and they cause you no problems.

But when you provide them with a banquet or sebum they feast and start to reproduce.

Once the levels increase your skin starts to be irritated by them and you will notice redness and inflammation.  this can be particularly prevelant around spots.

The combination of spot formation and inflammed skin is what we recognise as acne vulgaris.

Tackle this by using appropriate treatments to kill bacteria and return the surface of your skin to balance.

The important thing to consider when thinking about what causes spots and how to tackle them is trying to create a balance.

Clean Sebum too thoroughly and your skin will be encouraged to produce more

Harsh anti bacterial cleaners can irritate your skin

What Causes Spots – My favourite solution

I used to recommend creams and lotions and cleansing products as my favourite acne solution, but just lately I have been impressed by the results obtained using acne light therapy.  Managing bacteria and reducing sebum present on your skin is made easy by the regular use of blue and red light.

Blue light kills bacteria

While red light soothes the skin and promotes healing

Light is really easy to use and can be applied close to the skin to intensively treat small areas.

Or by using a stand the light can be applied to larger areas while you get on working at your desk or watching TV

15 minutes each day will be enough to bring visible results in a short time and very significant results in under 4 weeks

The thing that I really like about acne light therapy is that it is easy and clean to use.  There is very good evidence that suggests that it is an effective treatment.  The levels of blue light used are very safe to expose your skin to and it is an effective treatment for larger areas such as with back acne.

Light therapy does not require you to use lots of lotions and creams which can become less effective over time.  It is a natural treatment and although the initial outlay is fairly high there are no ongoing costs.  Over a lifetime of acne treatment light therapy would probably be a very cost effective solution.

Once you know what causes spots it becomes so much easier to choose an effective  treatment that will clear up your spots and make sure you get fewer future problems.