There’s a reason the treatment for cystic acne is complex and quite multifaceted – this is statistically one of the most severe forms of pimples. Physically, it is associated with painful, long-standing nodules on the chest, neck and back. Unlike blackheads and whiteheads which are normally just the initial stage of a breakout, cystic acne is often the final progression of a flare-up that was neglected enough or left to its own devices. It’s no wonder that it typically culminates in extreme scarring that at times lasts a lifetime. It could also be part of a breakout syndrome characterized by lesions, scalps and conglobate papules.
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How to Shrink Cystic Pimples
Shrinking a cystic pimple may not be child’s play but it’s not impossible either. Cystic acne spot treatment is built on the foundation of basic home care. This revolves around sanitizing the area around the flareup, applying ice to calm it down and deploying benzoyl peroxide to dry it up and lessen its conspicuousness.
Even before delving deep into the bowels of the best treatment for cystic acne, it is imperative to, first of all, have a good understanding of how to make them less noticeable aka shrinking them. The good news is that you can do it in the comfort of your home by following simple steps.
- Cleaning the area: Wash the area within the vicinity of the problematic area with a pH balanced and gentle cleanser to get rid of dirt, oil and makeup that could potentially aggravate the pimples.
- Freeze it: Applying ice can do wonders in making the pustule less noticeable. Wrap an ice cube or a suitable cool pack around the inflamed lesion for approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Do this with 10-minute intervals for about an hour.
- Topical treatment: Ideally, this will involve a product that contains at least 2% benzoyl peroxide or stronger. The benzoyl peroxide acts as an antibacterial agent that apart from clearing the acne-causing bacteria it also dries up the lesion.
- Warm compress: If a whitehead or white spot forms in the center of the cystic lesion, a warm compress can go a long way in making it less noticeable. You can make a warm compress yourself by soaking a soft cloth in warm water and pressing it down gently on the pimple for between 10 to 15 minutes at a time. Repeat this at least 4 times throughout the day until the cyst heals.
These four steps ought to lessen swelling and pain, in addition to shrinking down the pimple and helping it heal faster as a result. Nonetheless, as much as cystic acne treatment over the counter exists, the best approach is usually preventing the cysts from forming in the first place.
What Not to Do
When it is all said and done, remember that the objective of the best cystic acne treatment approach is to be gentle with the skin, no matter what. With that in mind, do not attempt to squeeze, pop, pick or burst a cystic lesion. While it may be very tempting to pop the pimple, you risk introducing a whole range of foreign disease-causing organisms to the inflamed pore by doing so. And this ultimately drives the acne infection deeper into the dermis making it harder to target. Besides, it is a guaranteed way of making sure that the resultant lesion heals painfully slowly and scarring follows afterward.
Apart from not popping your cysts, avoid the following if you want the hormonal cystic acne treatment regimen that you’re pursuing to work.
- Touching your face needlessly and unnecessarily
- Using harsh skincare products, especially those that contain parabens or alcohol
- Over-scrubbing the face
- Tanning, either via the sun or through a tanning bed
- Applying untested or mythical home remedies such as toothpaste on the cystic pimple
The truth is that a majority of otc cystic acne treatment methods found online are not as effective as they are advertised. Your best bet would be to stick to medications that are recommended by leading dermatologists and skin care experts.
What is Cystic Acne?
As mentioned earlier, cystic acne is one of the most severe forms of pimples. Dermatologists often refer to it as nodulocystic acne given its tendency to penetrate deep into the skin, which explains why cystic acne on chin treatment is such a hard feat to muster.
As a woman, the main symptoms of this type of acne to be on the lookout for include;
- Painful, inflamed and large pimples
- Lumps forming under the skin that take weeks to surface or may never come to a characteristic head
- Extreme swelling, itching and inflammation accompanying the pimples.
Overall, this variant of acne typically takes longer than usual to heal. It is also more likely to be followed by scarring than other less severe acne types especially if you don’t adhere to the correct topical treatment for cystic acne.
Even worse, if it goes untreated or unattended, cystic acne sometimes morphs into acne conglobata – a very severe variant of acne that precipitates into deep acne cysts forming underneath the skin. Acne conglobata is also characterized by inflamed lesions that leak a foul-smelling fluid.
What Causes Cystic Acne?
Even before delving into the specifics of cystic acne natural treatment, it is important to, first of all, get a clear picture of how cystic acne comes about.
You see, acne usually forms when a skin pore becomes blocked with natural oil, dead cells and bacteria. The clogged pore then goes on to become inflamed after an infection sets in paving the way to swelling and redness. There are several factors that contribute to this, and each of them ought to be put into consideration if you are to craft the best spot treatment for cystic acne.
- Hormonal fluctuations, e.g those that come in the backdrop of pregnancy, puberty or menopause.
- Medical conditions that may wreak havoc in your hormonal profile such as PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome)
- Your skin’s microbiome i.e colonization by species of bacteria that are known to cause inflammation or associated with acne breakouts
- Medications such as steroids, oral contraception, lithium and steroids
- Chronic emotional stress which causes the release of acne-causing androgens
- Genetics and family history which makes some people more susceptible to acne than others
It has also been found out that certain types of food tend to trigger the onset of cystic acne in some people more than others. These include food with a high glycemic load and dairy-based products.
Having said that, it is vital to note that although some of these factors in isolation may not cause a breakout, in combination they can precipitate a nasty flare-up.
Treatment of Cystic Acne
Successful acne cystic treatments don’t just happen. They are a combination of discipline, resilience and selecting the best approach to treat cystic acne for your skin. And, sometimes, this may involve a combination of more than one approach to ensure that you don’t get a relapse in the future.
Topical Treatments
In general, a topical treatment for cystic acne revolve around the following ingredients
- Benzoyl peroxide: It kills bacteria and prevents the proliferation of these pathogens or pores from getting clogged or blocked.
- Topical antibiotics: The antibiotics kill the bacteria that could worsen or cause the most severe types of acne. They also assist in preventing the formation of more pimples.
- Retinoids: They include topical products with formulations made of acne-bursting ingredients such as tretinoin, retinol or adapalene. However, it is imperative to bear in mind that these vitamin A derivatives are not suitable for everyone.
That aside, the following otc cystic acne treatments are your best bet as far as this goes.
Maryann’s30% Glycolic Acid Pads
As much as exfoliating acid pads may not sound like the ideal acne cysts treatment, these tone-enhancing wipes help prevent the pimples from putting down roots in the first place. And this is by opening up the skin pores by getting rid of the dead skin cells and sloughing off debris from the pores. Besides, these chemical peels eliminate dryness, skin tone unevenness, dark spots and other skin imperfections that could be keeping you away from your dream flawlessness.
That being said, this is generally a very well-developed formula that combines a foray of natural ingredients whose objective is to trigger a fast skin cell regeneration rate. Consequently, this will translate to the open cystic lesions healing faster without exacerbating a flare-up from the underlying epidermis layers. Overall, these glycolic acid peels are mild enough for use with sensitive skin while still remaining potent enough to stomp the progression of blackheads to full-blown cystic acne pimples.
AENO Cystic Acne Treatment and Scar Remover
As the name suggests, this formulation is geared specifically towards treating cystic acne, and it is quite easy to see so.
For starters, it employs a potent formula that acts as a rapid-acting cleanser for clearing clogged pores, blackheads, whiteheads and zits before they progress to more severe forms of acne. This ensures that you don’t have to deal with this painful type of acne as long as you incorporate it into your preventative acne cyst treatment regimen.
Secondly, the cream is laden with natural skin-healing ingredients such as aloe vera, echinacea extracts, arnica montana flower extract, tocopherol and bentonite clay. Applying these onto inflamed skin has been observed to calm itchiness and fasten the healing process of the epidermis thereby lessening the severity of the breakout.
Lastly, the formulation is intended to rein in some control on excessive sebum production if you happen to have naturally oily skin. A controlled oil production makes extreme cases of acne less probable, in addition to reducing the size of the active cystic pimples.
AENO’sAcne Treatment Natural Cream
Honestly speaking, acne cyst treatments don’t come better than this. The formula deployed here works by gently exfoliating the skin around the cystic pimples making them less noticeable and kickstarting a crucial repair stint that leads to subsequent healing of the inflamed tissues. In addition, the multi-action cream banishes the possibility of an active breakout worsening into cystic lesions by clearing the skin pores and reducing the conspicuousness of visible ones. This form of multi-action formulation ultimately culminates into fewer incidences of cystic acne and halts future flare-ups.
Systemic Medications
Unlike topical cystic acne treatments, systemic medication typically works by targeting acne through orally administered drugs. And contrary to topical treatment which tends to have a more concentrated impact, systemic medication has a greater widespread effect in attempting to cure cystic acne from the inside out.
The principles of systemic treatment appear to revolve around the following operating objectives.
- Antibiotics: Oral antibiotics, though not as effective as their topical counterparts, can help lessen the severity of breakouts. A dermatologist can recommend an acne cyst treatment that contains minocycline or doxycycline to bump up the effectiveness of the acne-bursting regimen.
- Retinoid treatment: Potent ingestible medications containing isotretinoin may significantly improve your symptoms of severe acne by triggering a permanent clearing of zits and blackheads. That aside, it is not recommended while nursing or during pregnancy.
- Oral contraceptives: Women with extremely volatile hormonal cycles may find relief in oral contraceptives that contain a little bit of estrogen which can improve the severity (or lack thereof) of cystic acne.
- Spironolactone: it is designed to reduce the amount of androgen in your system which conversely translates to fewer inflamed pimples in the long run.
Here are some of them you can try today.
AENO Perfect Skin Pills for Cystic Acne
Also you can try a similar product by S Raw Science Anti-Acne Supplements.
A meticulously formulated cystic acne natural treatment, these pills are revered when it comes to relieving you from the scourge of cystic acne scars within a reasonable timeframe. It employs a systematic mode of treatment that aims on tackling inflamed lesions from the inside out. According to the specialists behind this form of treatment, this is only possible due to the fact that the pills are sourced from 100% natural ingredients with zero risk of side effects even with long-term use.
Wellabs’ Zinc Drops
Zinc is a little-known skincare ingredient that has carved its name in the hall of the best treatment for cystic acne among heavy hitters such as retinol and salicylic acid. First, zinc is effective in combating pimples just by warding off the blackhead-causing elements (which are viruses and bacteria) known to cause hyperpigmentation and, eventually, scarring. Second, zinc has routinely been observed to be key in improving the skin-healing ability of even badly-inflamed skin, something that is critical in lessening the conspicuousness of cystic pimples in the long run.
In other words, you can improve the health of your skin – and in the process your cystic acne symptoms – by upping your intake of this essential mineral through supplementation.
Cystic Acne Scarring
Treating cystic acne is just one of the facets of dealing with one of the most severe forms of pimples known to man. The other part is getting rid of the scarring that will most probably follow in the backdrop of a cystic acne episode. Fortunately, AENO’s Cystic Acne Treatment and Scar Remover takes care of both of these contrasting spectrums with a single blow. This is possible by the combination of potent skin-repairing ingredients that are geared towards reducing the conspicuousness of skin pores and fading the scars or marks that are left behind after a nasty episode of cystic acne.
In Closing – The Takeaway
Treating cystic pimples is a multi-faceted affair that calls for the input of different modes of calming inflamed angry-looking pimples. The trick here is to work out the best treatment for cystic acne that is adapted for your skin profile.