acne help
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acne help
| Sat, 08-19-2006 - 11:05pm |
my daughter's acne is getting worse in spite of us trying nearly everything on the market. Proactive, benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid, natural stuff, antibiotic wash, noxzema, etc.....
HELP!
HELP!

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Thanks again so much--this was the most helpful, thoughtful post I've ever read on this topic! If I can ever help you with anything, just ask. I have a talk show where I interview alot of experts. So, I do get a chance to pick people's brains. So, I hear alot of tips. But there is nothing like hearing what another mom has experienced.
Hi - I don't have a teenager (yet) but my oldest is starting to get pimples. I just wandered over here to see what kinds of concerns other mothers had about teens.
Anyway, my siblings and I never had perfect skin as teens but one of my sisters had terrible, painful, cystic acne. None of those creams or treatments helped. She was finally diagnosed with PCOS and given hormone treatments. While birth control can often be used as a hormone treatment - sometimes it isn't strong enough. It's worth taking your daughter to a gynecologist if nothing at all helps because it could be hormonal and my sister found it was quite easily treatable.
Hope this helps. I've bought my pre-teen some products from Lush (can be bought online if there's not one near you) and the body shop because she has sensitive skin. A product called Herbalism (from Lush) has actually worked quite well for her.
Another thing that can really aggravate acne is scrubbing at it too much - I've been told that gentler products usually work better. And thanks to an earlier poster for the pillow case tip - I hadn't thought of that. I disinfect the phones in the house which is a similar tactic.
>>the antibiotics will give her cancer because of the sun and instructs her not to take them until October.<<
That facialist tech should be reported to her supervisor and told that what she did is inappropriate. She should not be advising her clients of their other treatments, that's why they pay their physicians.
Taking certain antibiotics makes one more susceptible to skin cancer, and care needs to be used when exposure to the sun is expected; sometimes sun exposure is unavoidable. HOWEVER -- one can definitely become sunburned in the winter, even when skiing! The month is irrelevant. HOWEVER -- IF YOU PROTECT YOURSELF SUFFICIENTLY FROM THE SUN, YOU CAN CERTAINLY TAKE THE MEDICATION ANYWAY, ESPECIALLY IF IT'S NECESSARY! SHE SHOULD TALK TO THE DOCTOR! There is super-high SPF sunblock, SPF-treated clothing, not to mention good old long-sleeves and hats. She should discuss her typical outdoor activities and plans, etc., with the DOCTOR.
Perhaps the two of you can agree to make and go to an appointment with the doctor just to talk!
I know you wrote that she is afraid of medical stuff, but maybe if you sit with her and explain how you can see the acne's affected her life, starting out HS with a different look/outlook might change her whole life. Dd15 used to be the same until she decided she loved camp so much she had to have certain vaccine boosters, tetanus, tb test, etc., every year. She'd never needed any until she was 14 ... so she gripped my arms/hands so hard she almost broke my skin! Idk if I'd want my kids on accutane, though, but I certainly would encourage the antibiotics and laser, especially since you are willing to both pay for it and take her!
I suppose my kids lucked out in the acne area. They have hardly any compared to what I had, and dh says he had more too!
On the friend issue, if kids are shunning her because of a skin condition, are they such great friends anyway? Not all of her peers have to be her friends! This is a difficult age anyway, as far as friendships go, but it's one way to weed out the jerks and superficial, insensitive clods.
You have a talk show? Where/when/what kind?
Good luck to you and your dd!
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In peace,
Max
In peace,
Max
Wow, Dary, and you said you can't write! Your posts are as long as some of mine :::wink:::.
Ikwym about asking your kids friends' parents! That's what I like about iVillage. It connects us to the kinds of parents we want to ask (like parents of 3 year olds, parents of all girls, parents of special needs kids, etc.), for different topics.
I looked at your profile afterward and saw all about your talk show, that is cool! You're in Toms River; I've heard of that but never have been there. My BIL (dh's bro) lives in Pine Valley next to the golf course; besides that and the Jersey shore (Brigantine & points south), occasional trips to Cherry Hill Mall or Deptford Mall, and sometimes farmers markets, that's my exposure to NJ LOL. Although I love the shore, and in fact, my summer's not complete without at least one weekend stay somewhere there. This year our main summer vacay is Ocean City, Maryland, but for Labor Day weekend, we're going back to Wildwood Crest :D. Where in NJ did you live? My 20dd's bf is from Paulsboro, and dh used to work (a really long time ago) at the Gaudios' stores in Woodbury & then Audubon. I was born in 1960 -- wanted so bad to go to American Bandstand but my parents I guess felt we (I'm a twin) were too young or something, tsk ;)!
All my kids went to a small (although not as small as your kids' school, it sounds; there were approx. 2 classes per grade, of 16 - 20 kids per class) private school from 1st grade to 7th, the oldest and youngest through 8th, and the 'baby' started in kindergarten, and they all told me about the snobbishness in part of 6th grade, all of 7th and part of 8th grade. It can be rough.
My girls didn't go through acne, but they inherited both my & dh's tendancy to be overweight. My oldest has the 2nd unfortunate inheritance of being short, so she's got a double whammy -- flawless mediterranean complexion, but short and fat :(. She hated high school. Now she's about to enter her junior year at Hofstra, and she is happy and successful. The other two are not as heavy as their older sister, but still not anywhere near size two! My goodness, I think I was a size 10 once, for about a minute, one time in college ROFLMBO! Snobby young teenage girls can really put the ones they deem the "outcasts" through the wringer! Being a twin, being overweight, and being shy, my sister and I suffered through a number of mean kids!
You would think that since my kids were at a religious school, that kind of thing wouldn't happen, but it did anyway. You had the kids who lived in the different neighborhoods splitting off, and the carpoolers splitting off from the bus riders, stuff like that. But some of the most well-off parents were the most down-to-earth. Amazingly I found this out when they did a mail fund-raiser last year. I remember volunteering at the elementary level, and becoming friendly with one woman, who I thought had a lot in common with me. I never knew she was one of the top supporters of one of the scholarship funds until last year! And some of the real clique-y kids' parents were so ... ordinary! Goes against what we think, doesn't it?
And it makes me wonder how they will all end up when they're our ages :D.
TTFN.
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In peace,
Max
In peace,
Max
If by real illness she means that acne doesn't really cause people to die, then that's true, but the same can be said for many medical conditions that are just as serious as what she thinks of as "real". There are also many many medical conditions, both acute and chronic, that are even more hidden than acne.
For example, many people where I work think I am lazy for taking the elevator instead of the stairs, especially so because I am overweight. But I have a chronic problem in my left foot, and something unrelated in my right knee, and both conditions can cause my legs to buckle suddenly; I'd like to avoid falling on the stairs, though, so I use the elevator, even for one flight. If I had to take the stairs, which I do when we have fire drills, I walk so slowly to be careful, that I'd lose much work time during a typical day! My dh is a cardiac patient, and he's only 47yo. You wouldn't know it to look at him out in public, though -- another hidden condition.
Acne, if it's severe, can definitely take it's toll on someone's life and emotional well-being, as we all know.
Prayers to your dd, Dary. TTFN.
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In peace,
Max
In peace,
Max
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