Knowledge Base

The Best Treatments

We're afraid there is no such thing as instantaneous zit remover, despite what many ads claim, but there are a couple of things you can do to speed up the healing and diminish its appearance.

A secret that the movie makeup artists use to remove redness from pimples and spots is to apply some visine red eye drops. The same stuff that removes the red from your eyes will help shrink the capillaries on your spot. We would also recommend applying a 20% Salicylic Acid solution for 3 minutes, and then rinse it off.

If you have oily skin, and find that you need a little more umph, you can normally leave it on overnight. The oily skin will neutralize the salicylic acid, without the need to wash it off. But be careful, you can only do this with the salicylic acid, not with any of the AHA's like glycolic or lactic, because the molecules are different. The AHA's wont be able to self-neutralize.

Salicylic Acid

Salicylic acid is a chemical compound found in plants which functions as their immune system. They produce it in elevated levels to kill invading organisms, and repair plant tissue.
Salicylic acid has several natural characteristics that will help immediately reduce the appearance of the blemish.

1. Anti-inflammatory and Antiseptic Properties- the Salicylic Acid (also in aspirin) works actively to reduce the redness and inflammation of the pimple, and to eliminate irritation to the spot, further reducing swelling.
2. Germicidal - as a primary hormone in the plant's immune system, the acid helps kill the P. acnes bacteria and restore healthy environment for faster healing.
3. Oil Soluble - the salicylic acid because of its oil solubility is able to effectively penetrate the sebum clogged pores of the skin You might be hesitant about putting acid on your face, but using Salicylic Acid is actually much safer than using something like lemon juice (citric acid) because of the nature of the molecule.

As mentioned earlier, Salicylic acid is oil soluble, which is great for two reasons.
First, the outside layer of you skin is covered in oil, and being oil soluble, the salicylic acid is able to penetrate this outer layer. However the under this outermost layer is the dermis, and this layer is made up of mostly water. As you know oil and water don't mix, and this keeps the Salicylic acid from moving down past the outer most levels of the epidermis, and so it stays on the surface of the skin.

What's the Catch?

Of course nothing is without a downside, and Salicylic's is that it can be very drying to the skin. So if you are using it, you will need to make sure and apply a non-comedonic moisturizer like Cetaphil to prevent excessive dryness.

We provide Salicylic/20 Acid in a roll-on applicators, which should make application easy, as long as you are responsible and careful to apply it as directed. Remember to rinse it off with cool water after 1-2 minutes.