I can completetly relate to the anguish of an overactive face full of acne. Starting from age 13 forward I have had to deal with severe acne. i used to joke that my face was like a connect the dots game. Now I am 27 and still fight it religiously everyday. I'm a quite a bit better than when i was younger but now it is a cystic kind of acne.

As for facial care I have found that what we have all done to ourselves over the years by diligently fighting the good fight against the Acne is is essentially turn our skin into "sensitive skin". This is vrom all the over the counter stripping agents we have all used. About 2 years ago I realized this and it changed my life totally.

I tried a few different companies that aproach things in a natural way but finally after suggestions of two total strangers I settle on Zia cosmetics. It is worth every single penny you can save for it. However the very best part of Zia is that you can by it in trial size at any health food type store. Go to their website ziacosmetics.com and you can learn more. The fresh cleansing gel is my favorite. You only need a very small amount to wash your face. Make sure you have your face slightly wet then massage, not scrub(there is a difference) the gel into your skin. Oh man it smells great and feels great. I also recommend picking up their herbal gel as a moisterizer. The herbal gel runs about $20 for a bottle that looks entirely too small to do a damn thing for you...but it does.(ask to get a sample of it by putting some in a salad dressing container) Use two drops each time you wash your face in the morning and night(4 drops all together) and you will feel and see the difference in a few weeks. But honestly you can start to see and feel something with in a couple of days. It's great stuff. I would reccomend buying the sample size of the cleansing gel and the toner for oily skin these are both $3 a peice and it will give you a great introduction. I also highly highly suggest the Papaya enzyme peel in a sample size to try. If you like the clay mask you will love this too. It makes your skin glow...use it sparingly as far as the amount of times per week and you should see a dramatic difference. this also is about $3 for a sample size. All of the full sizes of these products run anywhere from $11 to $22 but will last you around 3 months which if you break it down is like between 10 cents to 20 cents a day depending on the product. It is soo worth it. Stop the over the counter junk it won't help and only raws out your skin. A couple of lines are ok for repair after you have really gotten to the real work of repair(enhancers we will call them) but it's not goign to help change your life. Beleive me I tried...please take my adivce you will thank yourself later. I also understand the concern about finances I too am not rich and live paycheck to paycheck. But just remember that your skin is with you every single paycheck you spend and if you don't do something about it it will still be with you the same way it was yesterday and the day after that.

I still have cystic Acne and am now in the process of cleansing which sometimes makes it worse(sucks it's like a bad joke sometimes...:)) but I know there is a light at the end of a tunnel some where. The biggest huggest most important thing is to be DILLIGENT"!!!! I know how easy it is to forget to wash my face at night because I am tired....i do it still it's an old habit that probably gave us all the much more horrible conditions than we should have had. However on the flip side do not overdue it. Oily skin folks have been trying for centuries to figure out how to rid themsleves of this issue by doing everthign possible to rub scrub or peal it all away. It's not the layer on the outside that is the issue it's the layer on the outside the inside and the soulside. Start to see it as inconsequetial in your life....it's impossibly hard to do and i'm not the best at doing it but in the last year it has helped the heck out of me. Changing your state of mind...changes..your state of mind...it's amazing:)

Ok one last thing for the breakouts you have and will have as even the zia mixture will not help(but it sure makes your skin glow and get's rid of the smaller less cycstic pimples) got to blemishbegone.com and by a bottle of the blemish remover. If you diligently apply this with their "tip" treatment you will see amazing results. Big stubborn agro cystic zits take longer but if you have patience and don't pick(which is sooo darn hard no to do) then they will not only shrink but they shrink into a black head that you are able to get rid of easily. It takes about a week ish for the black head to appear but if you are diligent and do this every single night it won't matter if you have to wait a week or so to get to the blackhead(it's actually more like a plug)stage becuase your boil will have dramatically reduced to a red spot and it won't be so bothersome anymore....but still keep applying. I you can feel anything at all in there then keep applying. it won't all come out until you get to the plug stage. Cystic ones are hard because what they have done is created a shield overthemselves and essentially covered up their pore which is why they get so weird and raised looking. Though it's not a good suggestion(disclaimer) when it get's too big you can pop out the old pus in there by touching it lightly. Then what you do is quickly start the "tip" application process and just keep dosing it every 10 minutes until you go to bed.(no longer than 2-3 hours or you will irritate it an dthat sucks too) If you are lucky enough to have the next day off start again in the morning. It will dry up to almost nothing more than larger than another annoying pimple. keep at it and eventually you will get to the plug stage. If you can be patient the plug will come out itself which is the best way to extract it. The reason for this is becaise all of the minerals and botanical ingredients are based in a woodgrain alcohol mixture. so sucking things out is what it does. This is about $20 a bottle but has been lasting me over 3 months now. The other cool part is that what it is really meant for is scares!!! You can also apply it to any scares you have on your body like your face and eventually they will begin to fade evne the pitted ones.
The only bad part is that it makes you skin peel...but what doesn't?? The cool part about the pealing is that the skin underneath is soft and beautiful not raw. Let the skin sluff off naturally...try not to pull any scabs of sooner than needed.

Last but not least the best part of the Zia regimine is that your face glows radiantly!!! Even though you have a couple stubborn zits on your face(my mouth is surrounded by like 8 right now) the rest of your skin glows radiantly. My family and freinds and strangers comment on how glorious my skin glows....it's awesome.

So go ahead and give this all a try and do a simple bowel cleans to start like psyllium and Bentonite and you will see the difference. Just be prepared for a few extra zits as you get cleansed but they will go away.

Think of it this way... Acne is reaccuring becuase each time it errupts the problem isn't fixed. So each time a new pimple jumps up it's your opportunity to fix it once and for all. Just like cleansing it make take a couple of trys to totally cleanse it but it is worth the battle. Even with my 8 cystic zits on my face right now I feel way better about myself than I did about a year ago when I first started herbal methods.

Good luck and take care,

Melissa

On re-reading my previous message, I noticed the number of mistakes I made but anyway I guess it conveys what I was trying to say. In the last bit, what I mean was that I am debating whether or not to use clearasil.