What Dermatologists Don’t Tell About Acne

I REGRET TAKING ACNE MEDICATION

I took Minocycline as prescribed by a dermatologist that my friend introduced to me. And boyyy did I regret it.

At first, it looked like things were getting better. But it was about 5-6 weeks later before I started getting weird (I’m going to tell you the raw, unedited version of all of this so prepare yourself =) white spots on the corners of my lips. Then I started getting a little acne on the left and right side of my chin area. The only thing was, I had never had acne, in my entire life, in these areas before up until now.

Infection Bubbles formed on my lips

After taking them for another 2-3 weeks, I stopped the acne antibiotics because my mom (who is also a health nut and reads A LOT, but more my family story later…) kept nagging me about the negative effects of acne anti-biotics. I ignored her at first but after seeing these these weird white bumps on my lips and that my acne was coming back, I stopped.

Now check your own lips if you’ve ever taken acne anti-biotics. I had about 15 white bumps on each side of my lips! Just when I starting to get a little freaked out I realized what was probably happening. Somehow the effects of the antibiotics that I was wearing off the and the acne was coming back. This time the strain was stronger than before and affecting different more parts of my face. The white bumps were infections “in my lip” but because… well… because that normally doesn’t happen (the acne infection in the lip) it turned into these bumps that I really didn’t know how to get rid of.

Check the lips out of a normal person and see if they have these bumps, they might have a little bit but not as much as I had before. In this picture, a lot of the white infected bumps have already gone away and it’s been about a year and a half after I stopped taking any acne antibiotics and I still have about 6-7 white bumps on each. But I’m just glad that they’re slowly going away.

So… why are acne antibiotics bad? Because acne antibiotics kill both good and bad bacteria.

Acne antibiotics work, at best, only short-term because eventually the bacteria strains adapt, mutate, and resist the antibiotics becoming more aggressive and a lot stronger than before. If you’ve ever taken a biology course then you should know what I’m talking about. I’ve taken several college core biology courses for fun and they teach you this in class. It’s also like this for many serious diseases including various forms of cancer. That’s why the antibiotics and medication for those diseases don’t work, they can slow down the disease but eventually bacteria strains adapt, become stronger, and more aggressive which usually ends up spreading to other parts of the body called “metastasis.” But ANYWAY…

Ever heard of pro-biotics? You know why people eat yogurt right? I got this picture off The Yoplait Website . You see where it says “Live & Active Cultures”? That’s pro-biotics or the “good” bacteria that I’m talking about.

Everybody has good bacteria or “friendly flora” living in their bodies. Specifically in this case, we’re talking about the 20+ different strains of friendly bacteria with crazy names such as “lactobacillus”, “acidophilus”, “bifidobacterium”, “[really ultra complicated names goes here]”, etc. that live in your G.I. tract walls (colon, upper digestive tract, etc…) that fight off & kill harmful bacteria, kill parasites & worms, digest & breakdown plaque, keep the proper pH, and a variety of other functions that basically help you stay healthy and break down food. Essentially, they are very, very important Without them, you’re nutrient absorption would drop to less than 10%.

Antibiotics wipe them out COMPLETELY.

And if they aren’t re-implanted right away then you’re definitely going to have a problem with bad bacteria such as candida, parasites, and pretty much a myriad of “bad” bacteria causing a whole lot of problems. You might develop food allergies, heartburn from pH imbalance, and some chronic nutrient deficiencies due to long list of side effects that antibiotics have (ask a dermatologist about the freaky possible side effects of “Accutane”). Allow me to illustrate this with a picture for effect.

There will be more about this later but for now, simply understand what the job of the antibiotic is; to indiscriminatingly kill bacteria. They are very, and I must stress this, VERY harmful to your long-term health which reflects onto your skin and other organs. If you must, try to use them only short-term but for goodness sake, NEVER long term.

Perfect Example of Friend who took Acne Antibiotic Story

I have this friend I met my freshmen year in college. I actually never really knew he had an acne “problem” because his face was pretty clear with the occasional blemish. Then, I saw him a couple months ago (it’s Sept 07 & we’re about to finish undergrad as I write this) and he had some real bad acne. Because I didn’t even know he had an acne problem, I was shocked and I pretty much asked him, “… What the hell happened?”

I soon found out that he was on antibiotics freshmen year and that eventually something happened so he stopped. That’s when his acne came back. Recently, when I saw him again, he’s back on a new line of acne antibiotics and his face is starting to clear up (because he’s killed everything in his body). He was telling me about how great it was because now he can just eat “whatever” and not have to worry about breakouts (this is so bad, more about this later).

The reason I bring up this story is because it’s a perfect example of how acne antibiotics didn’t solve his problem. In fact, if he keeps this up long-term, things might get real bad.

The point…

The point here is that all that crap out there doesn’t work so stop falling for it and save your money, lol. Don’t get steroid shots, don’t fall for the 3-Day acne free solution, and PLEASE stop taking acne antibiotics. Because in the end, if you have a healthy body, you’re acne and any other problems will all be cured themselves.