Acne Symptoms Vs Causes
Symptoms and Causes are Two Different Things
Did you know that acne is only a symptom of a deeper problem in your body? While those little red bumps might seem like the source of frustration, the truth is that they are only the sign of an underlying issue. Symptoms are simply your body announcing the presence of something that shouldn’t be there, much like an alarm.
Imagine if your smoke alarm went off in the middle of the night because of a fire in the house. You get up, go to the alarm, cut the wires, then return to bed without investigating the rest of the house. In the same way, attempting to make only the acne go away is to ignore a much greater threat to your system.
Treatments like facial creams or acne antibiotics only concentrate on the acne. They aren’t designed to look for the causes, which means that you’ll have to keep buying them in order to make the acne go away. While inconvenient, a greater concern is that this could make things worse for your body. Acne is the alarm that your body is using to draw attention to a problem. If you get rid of the alarm, you’ll have nothing to let you know if that problem grows more severe.
This is why natural healing treatments are safer and more effective. They supply the ingredients that are missing in the body, thus healing the problem and solving the symptoms. This is the basis of many holistic therapies, such as naturopathy, homeopathy, nutritional therapy, and even Chinese medicine. People the world over have begun to turn more and more to natural products in all areas of their lives, not just in medicine. If you’ll go to the trouble of finding organic fruits and vegetables and even products for your hair and skin, how much more important should it be to find a natural solution for the problems inside the body?
“One of the biggest tragedies of human civilization is the precedents of chemical therapy over nutrition. It’s a substitution of artificial therapy over nature, of poisons over food, in which we are feeding people poisons trying to correct the reactions of starvation.” –Dr. Royal Lee, January 12, 1951
You Are Already One Step Closer to Healing Your Acne
Modern acne medications and treatments, like much of today’s medicine, focus on suppressing the symptoms rather than finding the root of the acne cause. In doing so, they upset the body’s natural balance and rhythm. If you were to disrupt even one cell’s normal function, your body will not react properly if that cell is called upon to do its job. Just one prescription drug enacts thousands of biochemical changes to multiple cell functions. Add two or even three drugs and your body now has hundreds of thousands of inhibitors on its normal healing processes. That doesn’t sound very healthy, does it?
The elegance of natural treatments is that they work with the body to improve health and healing, not against it. Our bodies have millions of intelligent pieces that all work together with a precise rhythm. If given the nutrients it needs to continue that natural flow, the body will supply both vibrant health and outward beauty all on its own.
So What Causes Acne?
1. Hormonal Imbalance
Oil glands, or sebaceous glands, are located deep in the skin and are responsible for keeping hair follicles and skin well-lubricated. The rate at which these oil glands produce oil depends on a hormone called androgen. When the amount of androgen in the body becomes elevated, more oil is secreted from the glands, which has a greater chance to trap foreign elements and become acne. Many things can cause this rise in androgen imbalance but the two biggest factors are puberty and increased stress.
2. Poor Skin Care
An increased production in oil can easily create acne. The extra oil can’t reach the surface of the skin fast enough, so it becomes blocked in the pores, instead. Dead skin cells, dirt, and other foreign elements are trapped in the excessive oil and acne forms. You need to take proper care of your skin to prevent this problem and over-the-counter skin care products aren’t always the solution. These often have harsh, drying properties which dry out the skin too much. Dead skin cells multiply because of the dry environment, sebaceous glands excrete even more oil to compensate, more pores are blocked, and your acne becomes much worse.
3. Bacteria
Bacteria is not always bad. In fact, one type of bacterium, called P. acnes, is present on the surface of the skin to drive away harmful bacteria and keep the skin soft. When you are prescribed antibiotics or anti-bacterial cleansers, you are effectively destroying this good bacteria along with the harmful bacteria that breeds inside the blocked pores. It also destroys the healthy bacteria inside the body that supports intestinal activity. Without this bacteria, the intestines will build up harmful toxins in the digestive track, which can further aggravate acne.
4. Stress
When you become tense or stressed, your body is releasing a stress hormone called cortisol. Cortisol increases the skin’s oil production, which, as we’ve already seen, can be a bad thing by blocking pores and creating acne.
5. Diet
Most people consume too many overly processed foods, such as soda, sugar, and hydrogenated oils and not enough fruits, vegetables, and water. This causes the body to become acidic, which in turn creates a sluggish liver and digestive system. When food travels too slowly through your body, toxins can easily build up without being eliminated by the usual processes. These toxins are then expelled through the skin, causing more of the elements needed to create acne.
