When I was a teenager, I had acne on my face, back, and chest. Growing up in Michigan, I wouldn’t have cared about the body acne if it hadn’t been for the summer. But summers in Michigan are amazing. Everyone is out, in bathing suits, on the lakes, soaking up as much warm weather as they possibly can for the few short months that it lasts. I remember crying to my mom about my back acne, and not wanting to ever take off my shirt because of the spots I was hiding underneath.
I love that 15-year girl that I was, and I’m so sorry for her that no one told her she didn’t have to take pills or use bleaching creams to help heal her skin. Now, I’m very aware that there are a few triggers for back and body acne. Usually by removing the offending agents, my patients can clear up these areas and stay clear long term.
Loofahs, washcloths, or other shower scrubbers: these are huge harbors of bacteria. Once used, they sit in your shower, wet, collecting your dead skin cells, dirt, oils, lotions, etc., in an additionally moist environment. This is a bacteria’s dreamland! So, when we go to use it again, we are taking all of that left over bacteria and spreading it around our skin. And your skin, being incredibly intelligent, mounts a defense mechanism against these bacteria, which in turn presents as acne.
Even if you are changing your loofahs or washcloths after each shower, you’re still using a physical scrubber against already inflamed skin. This is very irritating on acne lesions. I’m not sure how we got to the point in our society where we believe we need these extra gimmicks to clean our skin (believe me, I’ve been there, too), but I always encourage my patients to wash their skin with gentle finger tips only.
One last note: I don’t love the silicone scrubbers either. They may harbor bacteria less than your average loofah or washcloth, but I still think we’re better off using gentle finger tips. You can always set these aside and try again later, but I encourage stopping them in the beginning of your body acne journey.
Body Wash: I’m not sure if you’ve picked this up across my website yet, but if you’re using products with pore clogging ingredients on acne prone skin, you’re always going to be fighting an uphill battle. Please consider the ingredients in your body wash. If you love using that yummy Bath and Body Work’s Extra-Fragrance Enchanted Forest exfoliating scrub, but you consistently have acne on your body, you’re going to need to think again. Similar to finger-tip washing, our skin wants gentle, non-irritating products. Fragrance is the number one cause of skin allergy in the world (that one book by that one derm**). And your body’s way of dealing with that irritant could be acne.
Hair Care: Shampoo and Conditioner spend a lot of time on your head, but those products are always going to end up on your back, chest, and shoulders, too. If there are pore clogging ingredients in those products, they are ultimately going to irritate your skin. Despite being rinsed from your hair in the shower, those ingredients stay on your locks. And if you wear tank tops, or anything that allows your hair to sit on your skin, those ingredients will end up on your skin here as well. This also goes for hair care that is used outside of the shower – dry shampoos, curl creams, leave-in conditioners, hair sprays, etc. They can all play a role.
Body Products: hydrating lotions, massage oils, sunscreens, etc. – hi… it’s me again: pore cloggers. Do not discount the role these ingredients play in our acne prone skin. Check all the products you consistently use on your skin for any culprits.
Stay Curious: this is a term I use a lot with my acne patients (and maybe it’s also a Ted Lasso quote, but I digress). Our skin is really trying to tell us something with acne breakouts. Here are a few circumstances where I experienced acne on my back (despite not having it for years) and my curiosity helping me with the solutions:
Workouts: I love my gym workouts, but in the fall of 2023, I downloaded a Pilates app so I could mix and match with lower impact workouts at home. My living room has a large, albeit scratchy, rug. It was kind of a pain to get out my yoga mat every day, so I began doing my workouts on the rug alone. Around this time, I also started getting acne on my back, and thought this was weird, because again, I don’t experience acne there anymore. But one day it clicked: I was doing my workouts in a sports bra, with my bare skin on the scratchy rug. Now maybe it was specific irritants within the rug – it is, on the floor for that matter, collecting dust, dead skin cells, and whatever else is lurking in our homes. Or maybe it was the friction of my skin on the scratchy surface. But I started wearing shirts for my workouts and the acne went away.
Sauna: there is a sauna at my gym which has become one of my new favorite ways to relax after a workout. I began using the sauna regularly in 2023, and also began experiencing a few acne lesions under my bra straps at this time too. I have a few hypotheses here. First off, it could be the friction of fabric on my skin here, too. I usually won’t get acne under very thin bra straps, but I typically wear thicker bra straps to the gym. The irritation from these straps may be the issue, and the straps themselves may push skin cells, dirt, and sebum further into my skin. Secondly, the laundry detergent that I currently use has Sodium Laureth Sulfate in it (a known pore clogger), and so the combination of my pores being opened from the heat and the laundry detergent on my skin may cause the acne. A really easy way to test this hypothesis would be to use an option that is free of pore cloggers, and when I do test this theory, I will get back to this post. Mostly the acne doesn’t bother me in these areas, and so the benefit of the sauna outweighs the potential lesions I may experience. On the few occasions when I’ve stopped the saunas for a time period, I usually don’t get acne in the areas. Showering quickly after the sauna helps too, though.
You may have read those scenarios and thought, duh, how obvious. Which once it clicked for me, it was obvious. But when you’re living the day to day, sometimes it’s hard to see the finer details, and I urge you to think more specifically about your individual triggers. And start with everything else I mentioned above.
Comments