Light therapy

I was going to go onto moisturisers next, but the recent nice Summer weather we have had reminded me of the light therapies that are available (I'll go back to moisturising next time!).

A number of times that I went to my doctor about my acne were in the spring. At this time she would always say "It's coming to Summer now, so the sunlight should help as well." This always struck me as kind of funny that at this time of "SUNLIGHT IS EVIL, DO NOT GO OUT WITHOUT SUNSCREEN!!" that my doctor seemed to be advocating that I actually get sunlight on my skin! Now obviously she was not saying that I should be going out and exposing my skin to as much sunlight as possible, but just day to day, the days are getting longer, less cloudy, you are going to get more sun exposure without trying.

Having looked it up briefly, there does not seem to be any evidence that more sun exposure has any benefit to curing acne. There is a type of UV ray that does kill bacteria, but this is actually filtered out by the atmosphere. And before you curse the atmosphere and start releasing CFC's and shiz, this is a good thing, those rays are extremely damaging, they would do more harm to you than good!

I think personally,I'm so fair skinned, that if I get a bit of a tan in the summer it just hides some of the redness caused by the spots. However I do not usually plan to go out and get tanned, I do try and protect my skin, especially as I burn so easily. And I don't particularly like being in pain. I do though find it unpleasant put sunscreen on my face, it feels so greasy, like it is going to clog my pores further. I haven't tried the spray on non-greasy type, I imagine they would sting like hell on the broken skin on my face? I tend to stick to wearing a hat when I know I am going to be stuck out in the sun. I see no sense in letting my skin burn and damaging it, I don't want to be all brown and wrinkly thanks.

I also believe that my acne actually get worse in the summer, or at least at the beginning, and I put this down to my hayfever. So currently at this time of year the Rapeseed is in flower, as is the grass, and my face, nose, eyes, and bizarrely my inner ears, are itching like crazy. This leads to me touching my face constantly, which I imagine is transferring dirt and causing more spots. I've gone from The Alps on my right cheek and a few rogue pimples, to have a pretty lumpy face all over right now. But I have also been working an early shift at work this week, which can make me a bit lazy when it comes to my skincare regime in the morning, so could be that? But as I experience this every year, I'm going to out it down to inappropriate touching of my face. I take antihistamines to calm it down, but it only takes away the worse of the symptoms, there is still some low level itching going on.

Away from sunlight, there are actually range of light therapies available. Some of which you can try at home, some very expensive, some not so.

I myself tried the Lumie Clear a year to 18 months ago. So this is a bright lamp consisting of red and blue LED's, the red to soothe inflammation and the blue to kill bacteria. This treatment appealed to me as I would not have to use soaps or creams that would cause problems with my sensitive skin. This Lumie Clear in particular appealed compared to the others as it was treating a larger area for fairly reasonable price (at around £150). It is for the treatment of mild to moderate acne, so if yours is severe, this won't be of any use to you I am afraid.

If you check Amazon it has some pretty good reviews, a lot saying that it has at least reduced the number of spots appearing. So I believe that this can definitely work for some sufferers.

It did not work for me. But I believe this was MY fault rather than the products. The main problem I have, is that for this type of treatment to work (and I suppose with any treatment), is that you have to be consistent and follow the instructions exactly. This lamp needs to be used every day. And I am a very forgetful person. A good elephant I would not make. Also the time it took will also cause problems if you are one of the world's ultimate procrastinators. As I am. 

If you only want to treat a small patch of skin, it will take 15 minutes, so no time at all, and you can sit and watch tv as you do this. If you want to treat a larger area of skin, this is where you will have problems. You have two options for this. You can sit and treat it patch by patch with the lamp held against your skin. Each patch will take 15 minutes, so your whole face will take a minimum of an hour. The other option is you can set the lamp up further away and you can do your whole face at the same time. However, the further away the lamp is, the longer it will take. So again, doing your whole face like this will take at least an hour. Except this way, you are unable to perform any other tasks at the same time. The lights are damaging to your eyes. So you need to wear some lovely yellow goggles during the treatment. If you enjoy audio books, this will be fine. But reading or writing is impossible, the light is too bright, and you would either be holding the book in the way or bowing your head putting half of it in shadow. All you could do is listen to the TV. So for these reasons I just ended up using it less and less until I eventually gave up.

So although this therapy has not worked for me personally, I totally put it down to my fault, and I would still recommend it as an option to the acne blighted sensitived skinned out there! :)