Acne treatment is expensive. Prescription medications, doctor visits, lab workups, and moisturizers, clarifiers, ointments, masques, mud, and serums can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month. Not every acne treatment that works, however, has to cost a lot of money. Here are seven homemade acne remedies that the drugstores would just as soon you didn't know.
Home remedy #1. Use your humidifier or vaporizer even if you don't have a cold.
If you have a home humidifier or vaporizer to moisten the air when you or some member of your family has a cold or sinus infection, consider using it for acne, too. The extra humidity in the air will keep your skin from drying out and tightening to trap oil inside pores.
Home remedy #2. Milk of magnesia is cheap, it's safe, and it can be a miracle worker against acne.
Milk of magnesia, as its name suggests, is a terrific source of magnesium, the most neglected mineral in most diets and supplementation routines. A scant teaspoon (about 3 ml) of milk of magnesia a day is not so much that you will have to make additional trips to the bathroom, but it is a great source of magnesium for your skin.
You can also use milk of magnesia directly on your skin. If you spread it very smoothly, it is a good concealer and it can help exfoliate dead skin, opening pores, and smooth out acne scars.
Home remedy #3. Try a milk mask.
Drinking milk seems to aggravate acne in most people, but spreading milk over the skin and allowing it dry may actually clear up acne, especially if you use a probiotic milk (or yogurt). The Lactobacillus bacteria in probiotic dairy products crowd out Propionibacterium acnes, the acne bacteria, and help keep pores open-provided, of course, you wash off the mask after it has dried for about 20 minutes. Ayurvedic medicine typically uses milk or yogurt with nutmeg.
Home remedy #4. Try a honey mask.
Raw honey is a potent infection-fighter, so potent that there have been clinical trials using honey as an antiseptic before face lifts and other cosmetic surgeries. Dabbing a little honey on the face and then lying down to rest someplace for 20 to 30 minutes so it can set into a mask lightens redness around pimples and stops whiteheads and blackheads from becoming inflamed. You can even make milk and honey or yogurt and honey masks. Just remember to wash off any mask with warm water 20 to 30 minutes after application.
Home remedy #5. Soap and water.
As hard as it may be to believe, simple soap and water can be the best cleanser for certain cases of acne. It's certainly the cheapest. Just don't use any kind of soap that has an abrasive ingredient, like Lava, and avoid scented soaps, like Irish spring. Oilier skin responds well to Dove and dryer skin responds well to Ivory.
Home remedy #6. Instead of benzoyl peroxide, try soaps and creams made with tea tree oil.
Benzoyl peroxide and tea tree oil are about equally effective for controlling the infections that cause common acne. Tea tree oil, however, does not dry or irritate the skin, and it also controls staph infections, which benzoyl peroxide does not.
Home remedy #7. If you buy sunscreen or cosmetics, make sure they have this "magic word" on the label.
And that word is "noncomedogenic." This means the product does not induce the formation of comedos, the tiny whiteheads that are the first step on the path to blackheads, pimples, nodules, and cysts. Make sure any product you use to make sure skin more beautiful does not cause the acne you are trying to treat!
