Dr. Syed Amiry: Hi! I am Syed Amiry. We are at Reston Dermatology & Cosmetic Center in Reston, Virginia. We are talking about how to choose the best over the counter products and in this segment, I am going to talk about acne and how to treat it.

One of the things that's really important is to remember that acne affects both teenagers and older patients. Now a lot of times people wonder and 35 or 40 years old, why is acne still effecting me. Well the problem is, it is really driven primarily by hormones. But the other thing that also effects acne or causes acne is stress. And I see that often, in students that are going to college or there is a stressful event in somebody's life. The other thing that cause acne is unhealthy lifestyle. Which is not eating well, not exercising and just simply not taking care of yourself. In treating acne, it's important to understand how acne forms.

As you know we have pores in our skin and these pores have oil glands in them and the oil is normally produced to the outside of the skin. Well as you can imagine if there is a process that blocks these pores, the oils don't have anywhere to go. And that's exactly what happens in the skin. The skin cells become very sticky and they block the pores. There is a rapid production of oil inside these oil glands and bacteria reside inside these oil glands. These bacteria thrived by the natural oil that's produce in the skin. So the process of exfoliation opens out these pores to the outside and making it less likely for the bacteria to grow but also enable the oil to drain to the outside of the cells and therefore eliminate the whole process or the whole progression from the formation of the comedone or the whiteheads and blackheads to the formation of what is commonly called a zit.

The product I recommend is the La Roche-Posay Effaclar. This is a product that has Salicyclic acid and lipohydroxy acid. Both of these products exfoliate the skin. Treating acne in its initial stages of blackheads and whiteheads is really important, because it's at this stage if we can erase this process subsequently it will not develop and that's why exfoliation is really crucial. And once we exfoliate the skin, at that point it becomes very important to use some kind of anti-bacterial cream or product, and benzoyl peroxide is one of the most common over the counter products that can be used. There are many, many preparations.

So all of these products are very important in either reversing a certain condition or rejuvenating your skin. But how you live your life is just as important.