#3 Tackling Acne Part III
What products do you choose?
Disclaimer: This is meant for general skincare advice and sharing of knowledge. This is not medical advice.
Welcome back! If you haven’t checked out the first two parts of this series then you may want to start there where I dive deep into what acne is, the different types of acne, and what ingredients to look for in acne products. Today will be a bit different as I will show you what I look for in products specifically. If you are like me and have always aimlessly strolled around CVS or Walgreens looking for something useful then you will want to stick around.
I recently wrote a post that talked about How to Choose the Right Product. The summary for this is as follows:
Try to avoid the buzz words. Things like “doctor recommended” or “all natural”. The reason being is that these are just marketing tricks to get you to trust their product. “Doctor recommended” = an expert supports it. “all natural” = it is perfectly healthy for you. These are all fairly misleading but your eyes are drawn to them.
Avoid bright colors. Most good products do not need a bright, pastel color to attract the user who knows what they are looking for. Bright colors seek to convey positive emotion meaning that bright colors = great product. This is not always the case. Most of my skincare products have basic white colors with some color. Nothing special about a bright purple bottle screaming “pick me!”. Not saying that there aren’t good products with colorful bottles but just be careful because they want you to disregard all other information and pick the prettiest bottle.
Avoid fancy names. Nothing against brands that try to sound creative but usually its just marketing to again play to your emotions. Usually these names try to convey a message of “curing” your acne. At the end of the day, the name doesn’t matter. What is inside is what matters.
Another thing to consider is your skin type. Different skin types can benefit from different products. I wrote a post recently that talks about what the skin types are and what cleansers are great to use. Check it out here.
Understanding some of these basic things give you a baseline to start. Everyone is different when it comes to acne and I think understanding where you need to start will make your journey exponentially easier.
Now that we have talked about some of the things to avoid when choosing products, I want to tell you some of the things I look for in products specifically: