Acne Products

If you have hard-to-treat acne, chances are your doctor has told you about Accutane and Retin-A. For some acne sufferers, these medications are practically a miracle cure, but their side effects can be a nightmare. Fortunately, Tazorac offers the same benefits with much lower risk of undesirable, unintended side effects.

Cystic acne is inherently hard to treat. Acne bacteria don’t just cause redness and inflammation manifesting itself as an oozing pimple. They actually eat through the walls of the pore and invade surrounding tissues. Once the skin pore is destroyed, new skin grows over the area of infection, locking it inside. The layer of skin is too thick to let the bacteria, pus, and inflammatory chemicals drain out, but thin enough that the cyst is visible. Even worse, acne cysts can hurt, all the time.

The old way of treating cystic acne was to lance the cyst. This allowed its contents to drain away, but the puncture itself invited another, disfiguring round of infection. Scarring was all but guaranteed. Surgical procedures for treating cysts were not a whole lot better.

Back in the 1930′s dermatological researchers realized that if a little vitamin A helped the skin grow at a normal rate, a lot of vitamin A might help the skin grow really fast. So fast, in fact, that it would literally open up over cystic acne and let their contents pore out without lancing and without surgery. Giving acne patients about 100 times the daily requirement of vitamin A stopped the production of oily sebum and kept new pimples from forming, but it also dried out the hair and caused birth defects.

In the 1970′s, scientists found a way to purify vitamin A so it had greater potency on the skin. This new chemical had only molecules of vitamin (also known as retinoic acid) that were in a trans- configuration (the identifying chemical groups were on opposite sides of the molecule), so it was called tretinoin. This is the product that was later known as Retin-A. It caused itching, burning, and inflammation, and it also made the skin grow thinner. That thinning of the skin, however, made it possible for cysts to open and heal.
Like megadose vitamin A, however, the product causes a variety of serious side effects.

In 1982, Dr. Gary Peck of the pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche found a way to make a derivative of vitamin A that was given the name isotretinoin. It stopped sebum production, stimulated the growth of the skin so that old cysts could open, and didn’t dry out the hair. This product was marketed as Accutane, and is now available in a variety of formulations under a variety of trade names. It had even worse side effects on the inner organs and unborn children than the megadose of vitamin A, however.

The answer to the problem of serious side effects has been to formulate a third variation of vitamin A known as tazoratene, and marketed as Tazorac. This product is used in just 0.01 per strength. That’s enough to stop the production of sebum. It’s enough to speed up the growth of skin just enough to open it up around infections so they can drain away. But it’s not so much that women of reproductive age have to take two kinds of birth control and all users have to be constantly monitored for liver damage.

Tazorac is different from other vitamin A derivatives in that it is a pro-vitamin. Your skin turns Tazorac into the vitamin it needs as it needs it. This makes the formula effective not just for really bad forms of acne, but also for whiteheads, blackheads, and surface pimples.

The thing to remember when you use Tazorac is to be a patient patient. It won’t work overnight. The full transformation of your face takes about 12 weeks. At first, it will make your skin grow fast enough that you will need to be sure to use sunscreen to protect the newly formed skin. And you absolutely must moisturize every time you use the product. The new skin pushes dead skin cells to the surface fast, and you want to make sure they don’t flake on your face.

Tazorac can be just what the doctor ordered for getting rid of acne for good. Use it patiently and follow directions, and you can experience a total transformation of your complexion.