Acne Treatment

The Photobiomodulation Therapy or Low Level Laser Therapy and Acne

Photobiomodulation or the low level laser therapy can be found as well under the names of cold laser therapy or laser biostimulation. It represents an emerging medical technique in which exposure to low-level laser light can stimulate or inhibit cellular function leading to beneficial clinical effects.
One should not confuse the low level laser therapy with phototherapy or with more ambiguous terms such as laser therapy, which may however be used for describing other medical techniques.
The photobiomodulation technique represents the best combination of wavelength, intensity, duration and treatment interval; these choices aren’t simple and thus they are often attacked by controversies. However, photobiomodulation finds itself still at the beginning and thus it is still being explored.

Photobiomodulation’s clinical applications include treating soft tissue injuries, chronic pains and wounds. It is also used in nerve regeneration and some people believe that it is effective also in resolving viral and bacteria infections.
However, there is one clinical application of low level laser therapy that shows great promise: this is the treatment of inflammation, as the anti-inflammatory effect of location-and-dose specific laser irradiation produces similar effects as NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), but without potentially harmful side-effects.
In photobiomodulation doctors use LEDs and other such monochromatic sources; the laser average power is typically in the range of 1-500 mW, while some high peak power, short pulse width devices are in the range of 1-100 W with typically 200 ns pulse widths.
As we’ve said, we haven’t used yet this kind of brand new photo-techniques in fighting acne, but they are worth to mention.
Phototherapy techniques seem to be the next big thing in medicine and we will discuss a little bit later about their other applications.
Although this web site is only about acne, we consider it appropriate to describe these emerging techniques, so that we could find out more about them.

The Phototherapy or Light Therapy and Acne

Light therapy consists of exposure to specific wavelengths of light using LEDs, fluorescent or dichroic lamps or very bright, full-spectrum light for a specific amount of time.
Light therapy proved to be effective in treating acne, as well as other disorders related to skin and not only. We shall limit to acne during this article and talk a little bit more about light therapy’s results in treating other diseases in a further article.
When limited to acne one can speak about blue or red light therapy.
This new method of treating acne gets its root in a very old belief that sunlight improves acne. Sunlight was thought to be good in treating acne due to its antibacterial and the other similar effects of the ultraviolet spectrum. On the other hand, sunlight can never be used as a treatment because its long-term skin damage.

So, it was found out that some of the visible violet light that is also present in sunlight, in the range 405-420 nm activates porphyrin (Coproporphyrin III) in Propionibacterium acnes that damages and eventually destroys the bacteria by releasing nothing else than singlet oxygen. A total of 320 J/square cm of light within this range renders the bacteria non viable.
This part of the light spectrum is found just outside the ultraviolet range and produces little if any tanning or sunburn.
If applied for three consecutive days, it seems that this light is able of reducing the bacteria in the skin’s pores by 99.9%.
Since people normally have few porphyrins in their skin, this treatment is believed to be safe, excepting obviously the cases of patients with porphyria. However, eye protection is strictly needed while being treated with this light, because of the light sensitive chemicals in the retina.
The light for this treatment is usually created by fluorescent lamps, or bright LEDs or dichroic filament bulbs.
The treatment with this light is often mixed with application of red light, which has been shown to activate ATP in human skin cells (this is essentially a photobiomodulation effect), and seems to improve response rates to the treatment.
Overall improvements of an average 80% of acne sufferers that tried this treatment over 3 month showed that this method performs better than Benzoyl peroxide, with treatment being also far better tolerated.
Home use light boxes usually work well and they are effective for people with long-term acne. These home tools are likely to be cheaper than dermatologist office light treatments, and can be repeated over several years for negligible cost, as opposed to once weekly or fortnightly.
However, the strength of light at a dermatologist clinic is likely to be of a much higher strength, possibly negating the disadvantage of not being used so often, the most prominent model of which is Omnilux. As of 2007 even though they are not cheap, the cost is on a par with the total cost of benzoyl peroxide, moisturizer and facial washes over the total life of the light box, and the light boxes may yet get cheaper due to economies of scale.
On the other hand, application in a dermatologist’s office is usually much more costly, and not necessarily any more effective, but the visible blue light is sometimes used with off-label use of aminolevulinic acid; this causes the bacteria to generate more than normal quantities of porphyrins and this greatly improves response. Whilst temporary redness and edema is experienced, this can give over a year of clearance with just a few applications.
There is some skepticism and lack of data over some of the treatments of acne vulgaris through visible light, which is something that is mainly characterizing all the newer and relatively experimental photodynamic treatments.

When Light Is on Your Side!

No Holly-Bible-message here, sorry!
No, this article is not related to God, angels or all kind of strange people’s messages about Good and Evil, Right and Wrong and so on. However, we should admit that light is a good symbol and we should appreciate this coincidence, because we all love light.
Light and sunlight would also mean life and health!
So, light becomes almost by itself a soul healer and its powerful significance is very helpful also in this context.

But what is this article in fact about?
We want to introduce you to two new ways of treating acne: light therapy and low level laser therapy. Although we have not tried them yet, they should be at least mentioned here because of their being so interesting.
So, the two “light” ways of treating acne are the following:
[Pay attention and do not confuse light with laser, because they are the same thing just from a non-pro’s point of view. They both shine, but they are not the same thing and you will see the difference between them in just seconds, or minutes, depending on your reading speed…]

Have You Known This? Skin Care

After all those advices and threats…, we’ve decided to make you smile! At least a little bit.
We’ve reached some analyzes and charts showing some numbers that should both amaze you and make you smile.
So, have you known that one square inch of your skin is home to:

• 65 hairs
• 100 sebaceous glands
• 78 yards of nerves
• 650 sweat glands
• 19 yards of blood vessels
• 9,500,000 cells
• 1,300 nerve endings
• 20,000 sensory cells?

We bet you’ve known these all!
The next time you use the expression “I know it like the back of my hand,” consider this. And not only…
We should also inform you that our body’s largest organ, that is our skin, yes, makes up about 15% of our total weigh and covers 20 square feet!
Our skin protects us from all the exterior threats against which it is able to protect us. It allows us to feel pleasure or pain, coldness or warmness and it is continually working to “dress” us in a continually new skin.
However, this amazing organ isn’t powerful also against our deepest inner fears. We ourselves should cope of these ones!
So, despite the fact that our skin is like a mask that protects the other organs from the exterior threats, our skin is an integrated part of our body.
We should take great care about it and you should help it fight against all the things that might harm it.
Acne is only one of our skin’s old enemies. There are also others. But since this web site it is about acne, try to read everything we wrote here and to understand acne.
Our web site will provide you with all the information that we can possibly get about acne, but it will as well represent a point from where you can start fighting against acne and help your friend, the skin!
Be a winner!

Hormonal Acne: Last but not Least, There Is Hope!

If the last articles scared you, try to forget and don’t worry! Today there are lots of treatments and lotions against any kind of disease and there is nothing that you should be afraid of, so don’t even think to worry!
Although it is normal to worry, you should control our thoughts and feelings. Try to remember only that you should analyze your body very well; thus, only if you consider that you might suffer from hormonally-influenced acne or from any type of acne, you should immediately go to a dermatologist or at least to visit your own physician!

You should never wait and see what it follows next, because there is always something to be done and the longer you wait, the severer and more painful the treatment will be! And that’s for sure!
So, keep in mind: don’t wait and see! Analyze your body, notice the changes, go to the dermatologist!
Smile! There is hope!

Hormonal Acne: 2. Problematic Cycles

So, although it all started with puberty, for most of the young women acne remained somewhere in the past. They won’t be able to tell you when they stopped suffering from acne.
Thus, many women pass into adulthood without outgrowing their acne. Other may not develop this skin disease until their 20s and 30s, experiencing persistent breakouts a week before their period.
These big differences may vary from woman to woman and they show how different any woman is from another, how different each organism and each chemistry is from another!
During the course of a normal menstrual cycle (this is the case when the woman is not taking any kind of hormonal pills, such as birth control pills and others like that), estrogen levels peak at mid-cycle and then decline as the woman nears her period.

After ovulation, the woman’s ovaries begin to produce progesterone, which is another feminine hormone and which has the role to stimulate the sebaceous glands. So progesterone makes the sebaceous glands to produce more sebum and with the extra sebum comes also acne.
Thus, hormones are also responsible for acne in a percentage of pregnant women, as well, because the sebaceous glands go into high gear during the third trimester of the pregnancy, causing oily skin and frequent breakouts.
Some women might also experience acne after menopause, because of the estrogen levels’ beginning to taper off and testosterone becomes the dominant hormone within their bodies.

Hormonal Acne: 1. How Did It All Started?

What could be the relation between love and acne? Between warm, touching feelings and an irritating skin disease? The grotesque, strange connection between these two different things is made by hormones!
Love and acne have the same root; they have both begun to talk through you starting with puberty. Those were the times, weren’t they?…
So, starting sometime before adolescence, around the age of nine or ten, the adrenal glands started to produce dihydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), which is an androgen. Other androgens, or so called “male” hormones, that are at work in a woman’s body are testosterone and dehydrotestosterone (DHT). They have both joined in at the onset of puberty.

And little by little, DHEAS, DHT and testosterone started to stimulate the sebaceous glands to secret more of the skin’s natural oil, called sebum. Although during this period, boys suffered a lot more from acne (since they had more male hormones), girls started also to cope with zits, spots and so on.
At that time, acne was a sign for both boys and girls. It was the symbol of the fact that they started to grow up and to head towards adolescence. Love’s bites and hot feelings came also along with acne!

Hormonal Acne. Women Only; Guys Allowed

Hormonal acne is represented by the acne breakouts that appear only before and during the women’s period.
This kind of acne is caused by the hormonal imbalance produced in the women’s bodies during this time. Once this period is over, acne slowly disappears as if it were never there. Until next month, women will be free to enjoy their lives as girlfriends, wives, sisters or daughters!
As girls and women might have already noticed hormonal acne is likely to fail to respond to traditional therapies, such as topical retinoids and systemic or topical antibiotics.

Physicians usually have about six clues that can help them to identify whether your acne is influenced by hormones or not. These clues are the following:

• Adult-onset acne or acne breakouts that appear for the first time in adult women
• Acne flare-ups preceding the menstrual cycle
• A history of irregular menstrual cycles
• Increased facial oiliness
• Hirsutism or excessive growth of hair, or hair in unusual places
• Elevated levels of certain androgens in the blood stream

Hormonally influenced acne typically appears for the first time around the age of 20 – 25, although it can strike as well both teen girls and mature women. However, it becomes most persistent in women over the age of 30.
In these cases patients are usually experiencing acne lesions on the lower face, that is especially the chin and the jaw line. While some women may have breakouts also on their chest and back, most of them have acne blemishes exclusively on the face.
Hormonally-influenced acne is usually moderate and it gets limited to inflammatory papules, as well as small inflammatory nodules and occasional comedones. However, the women’s faces aren’t perfect anymore and this makes hormonally-influenced acne even more irritating then “normal” acne.
When you know that you suffer from acne, you’re at least involved in fighting it and you hope that someday it will all disappear. But when you suffer from time to time because of this irritating disease, it is even more annoying. Acne becomes like a real phantom that haunts your from time to time. As if that period weren’t enough painful and irritating!
We will next present a scenario that will introduce you to the inner mechanism of hormonally-influenced acne.

Acne, Hormones and Women

We’ve discussed about corticosteroids and we’ve said that these are some hormones or drugs that have hormone-like effects. But our bodies contain other many, many hormones and our health depends on their being properly balanced.
When you feel that something is not working inside you and physicians shake their heads without being able to say what the matter is, it could be in fact related to hormones.
These little parts of our organism are amazing! They are practically abstract and invisible, but they manage everything!
However, women will always know more when it comes to hormones because they seem to suffer the most because of them. Women are more sophisticated and sensitive than men because only they are able to bear children. They are the only creatures that can bring to this world our next presidents, astronauts, physicians, chemists, warriors, rappers, murderers, painters or simple, common people.

Women will always be different because of this single reason. They are capable of giving birth. But although some of them won’t ever have a child, they all share the same monthly physical process.
And for millions of these women, it happens like clockwork every month: cramping, mood swings, bloating, and ACNE. Before their period, women change a lot both from the physical and psychological point of view. And this happens every month, more or less sharp!
They change both from the physical and psychical point of view because hormones control everything: they control the way we feel, as well as the way we look. They can bring us acne, as well as other even severer diseas…
So, because of hormones, women’s mood is changing from a second to another; they can now cry and then laugh; they can suffer all kind of pains or inner, almost mystic deceptions. And most of then are also irritated by all those acne spots from their faces!
And it all has to do with hormones.
Experts have always known that acne is influenced by hormones, but research on this topic has been relatively limited. However, there is a recent study, conducted by dermatologist Alan Shalita, MD, which confirmed that nearly half of all women from all over the world experience acne flare-ups during the week preceding their period. We will try to find Dr. Alan Shalita’s entire study and to share with you the information, but until then let us start digging a little bit and find out more about hormonal acne.
As you might have already guessed, these articles will address only women’s problems related to acne. Men can also read so that they could find out more about their beloved wives, girlfriends or even sisters and their monthly fights against lots of more or less imaginary things.
Thus men will be able to understand women better and to be alongside them when they are in need.

7. Thyroid Preparations

Thyroid preparations are represented by some thyroid medications, such as Thiouracil or Thiourea, and they are used for stimulating the thyroid gland in patients with low thyroid function.
However, these preparations are known for triggering acne. If taken in large quantities, iodine, which also helps to regulate the thyroid function, might as well cause acne breakouts.

As you may have already noticed, the medications that are likely to trigger acne as well, as a side effect, are prescribed for very severe disorders, diseases and illnesses.
In this context it is probably obvious that it becomes less appropriate to worry about acne; your life is in danger and it would be abnormal to stop the medication because it causes also acne.
We’ve presented these medications only so that you could know about their side effects.
You should always fight for your life. And when you get better you’ll have enough time to worry and destroy also this irritating but insignificant disorder that is called acne.