Hi,
Here are some INEXPENSIVE non-pharmaceudical ideas. They take some time (a few months) and we are still learning, but this has helped us a lot.

The 'patient' here is my teenage daughter who has severe 'pizza' type Acne (yes, the red lumpy form that hurts). She's had this condition for about 4 years, getting progressively worse. We tried all Rx treatments except accutaine (way too dangerous). I've been helping her (I'm her father), and we're both still learning.

Here is what is working now, much better than the medications, #1 was very counter-intuitive, but it is the most important. I don't know if these suggestions will help you acneone123, but they something very safe to try.

1. Convince the body that you have enough oil and it doesn't need to make more. She does this by taking balanced (omega 3/6) essential oils daily. The magic combination for her appears to be Borrage Oil and Evening Primrose Oil. She also takes Flax Seed oil. At first this only helped a little. Then she experimented with the dose (currently at about 1000mg per day of each). The more she takes, the less oil her skin produces. I can't explain this but my theory is that by taking these oils the body decides or recognizes that it has enough oil to meet its needs (such as the need to secrete excess hormones) and stops producing excess oils. Again, I don't know the exact reason, but it is working for her.

2. Use Bentonite clay for facial deep-cleaning. The clay seems to deep clean naturally much better than the soaps and chemicals, and it somehow restores and improves the natural tone of the skin. This appears to be very important and even without taking the essential oils the bentoinite clay masks helped her Acne somewhat. She puts on a mask of clay about every 2-3 days and keeps it on for 20 minutes or so. I don't know how this works either, but it is amazing, maybe clay is nature's skin cleanser. She is using Aztec brand Bentonite from a local health food store, but probably any good Bentonite clay would work. You can also take clay baths, which probably has a similar effect across the whole body, and is touted as a detox method. (www.magneticclay.com)

3. Take herbal Antibiotics to kill the skin bacteria. She has tried several, but Uva Ursi seems to be working about as well as minocycline, but without the load on the liver. She takes this in capsule form, but tea is also available. Probably there are also other herbals that will kill the vulgaris bacteria.

4. Take supplements to assist in skin healing. She takes a special skin healing vitamin/mineral formula, plus extra beta-carotine (Vit A), and natural Vitamine E.

5. Avoid artifical preservatives or additives, which will help keep the body's toxin handling capacity high. All artificial preservatives and additives add load to the liver which must treat them as poisons to detox. This is especially true of BHA and BHT which are artificial antioxidants made out of crude oil, and are added to most dairy products and cooking oils, and thus are in many processed foods. If you body can't detox these well, these preservatives also can cause neurological problems like ADD/ADHD. You can get lists of foods to avoid from www.feingold.org.

6. Eat very few simple carbohydrates, and keep your diet high in fiber and whole grains. Simple carbs clog up your digestion. Cutting them back helps improve intestinal transit speed and improves detox ability. It also denies easy food to bacteria (simple carbs are like bacteria smorgasborg).

7. Eat mostly organic fruits and vegetables and grains to reduce pesticides (further reducing toxin loads). She is studying GMOs and may start avoiding them now too (genetically modified foods, which often include unnatural proteins that add yet another toxin load, you can find lists of GMOs to avoid on the Internet).

She had some improvement with each of these, but combining all seems to be the best. A pretty simple approach without any exotic cleansing programs or dangerous drugs. After about 3 months on just the first two items, her Acne was at least 50% improved, the discoloring had stopped and the scars started to heal. I'm sure it will take some serious time to heal all the scars, she plans to keep up with all 7 of these items to help maintain the battle, and we will keep exploring.

Maybe some of this can help you.

Best Wishes.
Kurt