15 Things That Secretly Cause Your Acne Breakouts (4 of 4)

Smoking Habit

Smoking causes several kinds of problems. On top of shortening your lifespan, a cigarette also decreases the amount of oxygen that goes into your skin and face. Smoking is also known for breaking down the collagen and elastin of your body, leading to wrinkles and an increased pore size too, which isn’t ideal for dealing with acne. Furthermore, the carcinogens that are in the smoke can irritate the skin and dry it out.

The simple fix is to give up smoking altogether. This is easier said than done, of course, but you can count this as a reason to give up on smoking too.

Too Much Stress

As we’ve hinted at earlier, stress can cause acne. And if you’re working on treating acne, that alone can cause more stress on you. It’s a very vicious cycle that doesn’t stop until you destress. The reason for all that acne due to stress is that when you’re in that stressed state, your hormones go all over the place. You also produce cortisol, which stimulates your oil glands to make testosterone. The heightened oil production clogs pores and leads to blind pimples and such.

The fix to this is to find ways to destress. Go out for workouts more often, meditate, take some time out of your busy schedule to do something for yourself – whatever that happens to be. All of these things can help you in releasing stress from your body and not damage your skin.

A Bad Habit Of Picking Face

The last reason is that your pimple problem is getting worse is that you’re picking them off. We understand the feeling all too well. They’re just there and you want to get rid of them immediately. So you just pick them off and not worry about them.

The issue with that though is that these pimples will leave red marks that will lead to scars.

Another possible scenario is that by trying to press the head of the pimple out, you also run the risk of the bacteria going deeper into your skin and make matters worse.

Even the act of touching the infected area can lead to bacteria being transferred from your face to your hand. This means that you could effortlessly transfer the bacteria over to other parts of your body this way.

The simple fix to this is again to not even touch your face for unnecessary reasons. If you can’t, some options to consider are things like pimple patches or some other covers that ensure your hand is away from the pimple. Those methods will protect that area and make it heal faster too.

While there are several reasons for acne problems, if you do notice skin issues, the best option to do first is to go see your dermatologist if there is a specific issue. After all, they went to school for this very reason – to answer your questions about skin and acne and help you out!