What is Acne Prone Skin? How to treat it and Product Recommendations!

Dec 15

In order to treat a problem, you have to really understand where it comes from. I have had hormonal adult acne for 3 years and today we’re gonna talk about what is acne-prone skin who can have it and some of my products and best recommendations of things that I personally love to use, recommendations for you if you have acne-prone skin as well.

My skin profile

What is Acne-Prone Skin?

Acne-prone or acneic skin is a skin condition. You’ll want to think of the skin in three basic types: Dry, Normal, and Oily. But they’re not definitive boxes. The skin is a spectrum, and lifestyle has an impact on the way that your skin behaves. Within those three arbitrary categories, you can have conditions:

Combination
Mature skin
Acne-prone skin
Sensitive skin
Eczema
Rosacea

The list goes on and on but it’s one of those conditions that you just have to deal with on top of your actual skin type. This means, YES, even if you have dry skin you can still be acne-prone. The reason why this is so confusing is that acne breeds in an oily environment. If you have dry skin you don’t really have much oil but that doesn’t mean you can’t be acne-prone.

How to find your skin type

Understanding skin types

How does Acne-Prone Skin occur?

Acne-prone skin generally occurs in two ways.

Your skin has a very hard time getting rid of the top layer of dead skin on the surface of your face. Our skin cells we knew on a 28-day cycle which means there’s always a new skin coming to the surface. And as new skin comes up, your skin naturally sheds the dead skin that’s on the top layer in order for the new to breathe and thrive. But acne-prone skin has a very hard time shedding so the top layer just gets stuck. You’ll see this with dry skin types if they have any flaky skin, so when this happens and you layer occlusive agents, oils, and makeup on, they can actually bind to the dead skin on your face and end up clogging your pores. This is exactly how dry skin can sometimes be acne-prone.

The second way that you can have acne-prone skin has more to do with the oil that’s on your face. In general, we have a microbiome, this is the environment in which our skin lives, and it’s home to both good bacteria and bad bacteria. This is normal for everybody. But in people with acne-prone skin, there tends to be a higher level of bad bacteria living on the skin. You probably heard of the name P acnes bacteria, this is a specific bacteria that love to feed on oil, dirt, and makeup, and all the other stuff on your face. This clogs the hair follicles/pores and allows that bacteria to spread.

These two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. You can have both at the same time. This tends to happen a lot with Combination Skin Types. But oily skin types can have both of them happening at the same time too. And that’s when you start to get inflammation in the skin because of pores are now enlarged filled with all of this excess oil, dirt, and dead skin. This is where you’ll get pustules, papules, and even cystic acne.

Having acne-prone skin is not your fault.

The two things that we just mentioned before have more to do with your genetics and anything that you could possibly do with your skin. This means acne is not caused by bad hygiene, by greasy foods and such. These things can exacerbate the problem and make it worse, but if you have acne-prone skin it’s not because you’re doing anything wrong. And it’s time we get rid of that stigma.

When to see a dermatologist about your acne

Can you have acne-prone skin at any age?

You can have acne-prone skin at any age. It doesn’t mean it’s always going to show or reveal itself. Based on how you take care of your skin and where you are in your life cycle. Generally speaking, teenagers tend to have very acne-prone skin because their hormones are all over the place because your skin is usually very oily, you have a lot of oil on your forehead that’s what puberty does to you. Adult women particularly tend to have a lot of acne as well because obviously, we have periods, our hormones affect our oil production and they affect our skin in our stress levels and all of that changes the way that her body behaves. And that would also and do you have an acne

Men also tend to have acne-prone skin in their 20s, it’s not exclusive to women. Over the age of 30, you can still have acne based on your homeland fluctuations all the way up to your 40s and 50s you can still have acne in your skin. With mature skin you can have acne prone skin as well it’s just far less common because it condition of having mature skin is that you have more dry skin so it’s not as common. I would always recommend going in with a double cleanse our regardless if you’re wearing makeup or not SPF needs to come off your face at the end of the night.