Home Remedies for Acne Guide

We here at The Home Remedies for Acne Guide can sincerely sympathize with those who are searching for any product that will help with their acne. We’ve had moderate to severe acne in the past and we know what it feels like to be less confident because of acne. Life was very good when our acne started subsiding (we still occasionally get a pimple here and there). Below is an acne home remedy that many people swear by.

Acne Home Remedies – Head and Shoulders (H&S)

The Details: This home remedy consists of Regular Head & Shoulders Shampoo. Make sure you get the shampoo and not the 2 in 1 with shampoo and conditioner. Lather up and apply the shampoo anywhere you have acne problems. We like this remedy because it doesn’t take a lot of time to apply the treatment.

At this point it may be important to mention that focusing on Acne 100% of the day is not a good idea. Not only does this destroy your self confidence, but it may actually aggravate your acne problem. We like the home remedies for acne that are not time consuming, because they will help you in your quest to not be thinking about your acne all day, but we digress.

Head and Shoulders is a relatively inexpensive acne remedy, another big advantage. Some claim that it is the Zinc ingredient within the shampoo that helps cure the acne. To back this up, there have been some studies that show that Zinc does help cure acne, while others have shown that it doesn’t. This is probably just another example of how one product may work perfectly for one person, and at the same time, the same product may do nothing for someone else.

Acne Home Remedy-Avocado

For this natural remedy, you have to spread avocado paste on your face and then wash it off with warm water. You may be wondering, what is avocado paste? After some research we have concluded that avocado paste is simply avocado chunks mixed with warm water. You mix it together until it makes a texture that can be spread on your face.

The obvious disadvantages of this treatment include time and money. Most of us can barely avoid eating avocados, let alone spreading them on our body. That being said, avocado oil is supposed to clean the skin nicely without drying it out.

We are definitely going to try H&S as a home acne remedy, probably not the avocado treatment. We will try to post our findings in the comment box below. Anyone who has tried one of these home remedies for acne, please post your findings below.

Home Acne Remedy: Baking Soda + Water

This is probably one of those home remedies for acne that you may have heard of before from friends or family. You make a paste out of the baking soda by mixing it with water. You apply the paste to your face and other acne problem areas and let it sit for a few minutes. Afterwards you wash it off with warm water.

Home Acne Remedy: Avoiding Milk

Many experts in the acne field agree that diet plays a big role in acne. One of the common questions out there is “Does Milk Cause Acne”? If milk does cause acne, then a potentially easy home remedy would be to avoid drinking milk.

Arguments for Milk Causing Acne:

Cows actually need to have a calf to produce milk. In order to combat this dairy farmers give the cows hormones that help them to produce milk. Some acne experts believe that hormones may lead to more zits.

Arguments against Milk Causing Acne:

The sheer number of studies performed on this subject make you wonder if any conclusive evidence exists. Some experts claim that milk in no way causes acne, while others claim that milk plays a secondary role, and still others claim that milk directly causes acne.

If you want to know whether this home remedy for acne works, we recommend experimenting for a week or so. Simply try going a week without drinking any milk (try to find the calcium you need elsewhere) and see if your acne shows any improvement.

We have put this home remedy to the test. One of our members lived in Mexico for two years where the milk is sold in cartons instead of gallons. This member didn’t like this new form of milk so he didn’t drink milk for over two years. The results: the member actually had more acne during his time in Mexico than when he lived in the U.S. even though he wasn’t drinking milk.

Yes we realize that this is nothing conclusive and so many other factors could have played into the situation: pollution, change of diet, stress from a change in location etc.

All of that being said, we have a difficult time recommending avoiding milk as one of the best home remedies for acne. The potential loss in calcium and the enjoyment of milk and cookies is indeed a steep price to pay. But who knows, if this cures your acne, then it may just be worth it.

In our quest for the best home remedies for acne, some people have suggested that we try the Proactive Acne Treatment. Although this may be an excellent acne remedy, we don’t consider this product a natural home remedy. If you are looking for a review of Proactive, we are sure you can find plenty of them on the web.

What to Look for in a Home Remedy for Acne

Time – We have mentioned this before, but most acne does better when it is not thought about constantly. From past experience we know that if you are constantly thinking about your acne, then you are probably constantly touching it; not the best thing for curing acne. We highly recommend avoiding home acne remedies that take 20 minutes to cook up, another hour to rest on your face, and another 15 minutes for clean up.  Who has time to do all of that regularly? Here is an example of such a remedy:

Bad Home Acne Remedy – Fruit Pack

This treatment say to boil a pack of 50 grams of blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry leaves with around 1.75 liters of water for 5 minutes. If you don’t see a problem with this home remedy, then feel free to proceed doing it. We on the other hand have no idea where to find blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry leaves (in fact we question whether some of these leaf types even exist!). If the home remedy sounds way too complicated, then it probably is.

Money- Most people searching for home remedies for acne are looking for a relatively inexpensive method of treating acne. Some of the best remedies for acne are the most inexpensive ones. When things start getting price/complicated we usually recommend running for the hills.

Let’s take our leaf example from above. Let’s imagine that these blackberry leaves do exist, they are probably pretty pricey.

Products You Already Have – In our opinion the best home remedies for acne are the ones that allow you to use products that you already have or buy regularly. We are talking about the products that you could go to your refrigerator or kitchen and grab the products right now. We recognize that some excellent home remedies may require you to go to the store to buy needed ingredients, but we suggest looking for remedies that use products you already have.

In conclusion find remedies that don’t take a lot of time or money; and as an added bonuses look for home remedies that you may have sitting around at home already.

Before we proceed with our home remedies for acne, we need to discuss the different types of pimples (zits) in existence. The reason being is that certain home acne remedies will be more successful for specific types of pimples. If you already know all of this, feel free to skip ahead.

Black Heads: These bad boys come from the skin’s own pigment reacting with the air. In some cases, they aren’t extremely visible to others, but this type of zit tends to hang around for a long time.

White Heads: These occur when sebum (oil) is trapped in the pore. In many situations, whiteheads aren’t the worst type of zit to have; they can be fun to pop and they are often small enough that they aren’t visible to others.

Papules: We refer to these as the red pimples that don’t have any white in them. They are usually larger than white heads and trying pop them won’t do you any good.

Pustules: These are a lot like Papules (in that they are bigger than white heads) the difference being that these do have white in them and can be popped (hurray!).

There are more severe types of pimples then listed above, but we don’t recommend home acne remedies for the severest type of acne (in those situations it is best to contact a dermatologist).

Home Acne Remedy – Oatmeal

Many people claim that you can use oatmeal to help cure your acne. This is ironic as some experts claim that eating grains can cause acne.

Applying the oatmeal – You prepare the oatmeal as you would when you are going to eat it. After it is prepared, make sure to let it cool until it gets to a lukewarm state. Apply the oatmeal to your face. At this point you just wait for the oatmeal to start drying out. Once the outer layer of oatmeal has crusted a little (this usually takes about 15 minutes), you wash it off with warm water. Repeat this night and day.

We personally aren’t going to try this one out. Although it may work, who wants to spend all that time cooking oatmeal, applying it, waiting for it to dry, and then washing it off? If you’ve tried this or are planning on trying it, then please let the Home Remedies for Acne Guide know if it was successful or not by posting a comment below.

Welcome to The Home Remedies for Acne Guide. This site has received its inspiration from an individual who has actually had to deal with acne. The site will consist of providing general information on acne as well as home remedies for acne.

I, the author of this site, plan on personally testing some of these home remedies, unfortunately I too still have a few zits (although they will come in handy for purposes of this website). I realize that everyone has different skin and so it is important that everyone remembers that results will vary—in fact this is the case with all acne medicines, not just home treatments.

To combat the fact that not everyone has the same skin, I will also be scouring the Internet for other reviews on the particular home acne remedy that I am researching.

Let’s get started!

Home Acne Treatment #1  (Toothpaste)

The treatment goes that all you need to do is take the toothpaste and dab the paste on top of the pimple. Most people seem to recommend leaving it on for only a few minutes (10-20 minutes) because of the potential to chemically burn your skin. After the time is up, you simply wipe off the toothpaste with water.

Other Factors: Some people say that the type of toothpaste doesn’t matter. Others claim that you need to avoid any sort of special toothpaste (i.e. gel and whitening toothpastes). They recommend trying regular Colgate or Crest toothpaste.

Our Findings: This isn’t going to “cure” all of your acne problems. Applying toothpaste does appear to reduce inflammation on a swollen pimple. Applied regularly toothpaste appears to dry out the zit, but don’t count on any miracles here.

As with all home remedies for acne we suggest you be careful about what you try. If you are having a photo shoot the next day, then we don’t recommend experimentation. However, if tomorrow isn’t the biggest day of your life, then why not experiment and find out what works best for your skin. Toothpaste does seem to help for some people; however, be careful because some people report awkward looking red marks after use.

For myself personally, I’ll only use toothpaste if I find myself in a situation where I don’t have other, safer acne remedies that I’ve already tried. That being said, toothpaste has reduced the inflammation on my own pimples and worst case scenario it gets me to stop picking at them because I don’t want to get toothpaste on my hands.?