You can help to treat acne, breakouts, or recurring pimples naturally and have long lasting effects. 

If you’ve recently transitioned over to a more natural lifestyle, or you’ve been living a natural lifestyle for years, and are struggling with acne, we’re going to share a few tips with you that will help to control your acne from the inside out. Helping to prevent acne naturally involves diet, lifestyle, hormones, skincare products and their ingredients. 

Let’s explore each genre and see how we can improve within each category of our lives for glowing clear skin. 

Don't pick, clean and exfoliate instead! 

We know how hard it is to resist picking those blackheads or pimples, but please, do what you can to resist picking and over-touching your face. Picking and touching your face will only spread the oils and bacteria to other neighboring pores, further advancing the problem rather than solving it. Not to mention all the inflammation picking and touching causes!

Try a natural and gentle exfoliating product to nourish and cleanse the pores and surface of the skin. 

And while we’re here, try not to overwash your face. Overwashing the face will strip the skin of it’s natural oils, triggering your glands to produce more sebum than it needs. Excess oil production leads to oily skin. Oily skin often leads to clogged pores and breakouts. 

Use acne appropriate cleansers for your skin type and try to limit your washing to once or twice a day. Washing too frequently can also cause irritation.

What to eat and what not to eat

The gut and the skin of the face pretty much have a direct line to one another. When certain ingredients are digested and are bad for us, our gut sends us that warning through the skin on our face. Sometimes it warns us over and over again without us connecting the dots and we end up with acne or excess breakouts. 

If you have been dealing with acne for some time now, you may want to start cutting out sugars, dairy products like cheese and milk, and gluten. 

If you absolutely love sweets, try replacing sugar with maple syrup, coconut sugar agave, or rice syrup. If you love dairy products try out milk and cheese alternatives, there are tons of them out there from soy to cashew alternatives. And if you love bread, try bread made from quinoa flour, oat flour and seeds for two weeks and see if eliminating those ingredients has a major impact on your skin. 

Eliminating and replacing foods in our diet teaches us what our body’s like and don’t like, what we need and what we can’t use. Chances are, more than just your skin will benefit from the diet shift. 

Some natural ingredients that may work wonders on your skin

There are many powerful natural ingredients out there. Some are even so powerful they aren't safe to put directly on the skin without a carrier oil. Start experimenting with different natural ingredients and see what works for your skin type. But please, use the stronger ingredients with care! 

Some of our favorite natural acne healers include:

• Aloe Vera- Works wonders for all skin types, hydrates and tones. 
• Raw Organic Honey- cleanses the pores and reduces inflammation
• Cucumber- soothes and hydrates the skin

Have you recently been fighting off acne the natural way? Have you been successful?  What tricks of the trade have you picked up? We’d love to share your insight with the community!