What is Acne and Acne Scars? How can Omniya Clinic help you?

How the Aestheticians at Omniya Clinic can help treat acne and acne scars?

Basics About Acne and Acne Scars

Acne and acne scars are amongst the biggest skin concerns for most people. Acne affects about 85% of people between the ages of 12 and 25. Although acne and acne scars are more common in this age group, it can affect anyone, from new born babies to people aged in their late 50’s.

You get different degrees of acne ranging from mild pimples, blackheads, whiteheads and papules to deep inflamed pus-filled cysts and nodules. Acne and acne scars are more common on the face and neck area especially the jawline and can also be present on the back, chest, shoulders, upper arms and buttocks.

Acne can also be hereditary, so if a parent has had it, the child is likely to as well.

What Causes Acne and Acne Scars?

Skin is covered with tiny holes called hair follicles, pilosebaceous follicles or pores. Follicles contain sebaceous oil glands, which produce sebum, the oil that prevents hair and skin from drying out.

Dead skin cells normally rise to the surface of pores, to be shed by the body. During puberty, hormones can cause excess oil production, so that it clumps together with dead skin cells inside the pore and with dirt or oil from outside. The cells and oil become trapped inside the pore, creating a sticky plug: this is acne.

If the bacteria that lives on the skin – Propionibacterium acnes – enters the clogged pore, they can multiply quickly, causing inflamed irritated skin and if the inflammation goes deep into the skin an acne cyst or nodule can appear.

Acne is not infectious, and it is not caused by greasy foods or chocolate, make up or stress. However these factors can make acne worse or make it harder to treat. It can also be made worse by smoking.

Types of Acne

Dermatologists grade acne in four categories, according to the severity (in Grade numbers):

• 1 (mild): mostly confined to whiteheads and blackheads, with a few papules and pustules
• 2 (moderate, or pustular acne): multiple papules and pustules, mostly confined to the face
• 3 (moderately severe; nodulocystic acne): numerous papules and pustules; the occasional inflamed nodule; the back and the chest may also be affected
• 4 (severe nodulocystic acne): numerous large, painful pustules and nodules; inflammation.

The type of treatment will depend on the type of acne.

Treat Acne

How can we treat acne at Omniya Clinic?

Acne can be treated, and we recommend that you use a good home care routine together with some professional treatments.

The severity of acne will determine what treatments are best for each patient.

Skin peels can be fantastic for treating acne, this can help shed that layer of dead skin cells that may be causing blocked pores and help remove the excess oil. The peel that we most commonly do for acne is a salicylic peel. This helps treat oily, acne prone skin and can also help enlarged pores to an extent.

We normally combine skin peels with LED Light therapy, this helps kill bacteria on the surface of the skin and can help the healing process of any open skin from any extractions.

IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) can also help mild acne. The light emitted from the Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) directly targets over active sebaceous glands. This can greatly reduce the total number and severity of active lesions. This would lessen the inflammation and occurrence of breakouts. The light stimulates the production of new collagen to improve skin texture which can also help improve post acne scaarring, either pitted scarring or scarring that has cause hyperpigmentation.