Testosterone adds fuel to the acne fire, which means men often struggle with acne. Testosterone also revs up oil glands, so oily skin and clogged pores can be a lifelong skin problem for men too.
The good news is that most men outgrow their worst acne-prone years after adolescence. It’s still important for men to pick the right skin care products to control skin oil and clogged pores.
I’ve developed efficient skin care routines that use powerful, multitasking products to tackle men’s skin problems.
The bottom line is that it takes just a few low-maintenance, but targeted, skin care steps for a man to have healthy and attractive skin that looks well groomed and youthful.
I treat a lot of men in my dermatology practice. The most common skin issues that I see when treating men’s skin are:
- Age spots that can be easily lightened,
- Facial dandruff that patients think is dry skin, but isn’t,
- Clogged pores and acne,
- Dry, flaky skin on the arms and legs, and
- Athlete’s foot that is confused for dry skin.
In this five-part blog series titled The Best Skin Care for Men, I’m going to give you my low-maintenance skin care recommendations for these common surface skin problems. I will cover each of these skin problems in a separate post, so you can pick the posts that specifically fit your skin problems. Implement the simple skin care changes that I recommend and get ready to see a huge impact on how you look, without a big effort. This is post #3: Clogged Pores and Acne.
Dermatologist’s Simple Grooming Fixes for Men’s Most Common Skin Problems: Clogged Pores, Blackheads, and Occasional Pimples
Step #1: Face Washing
Wash your face twice a day with the Clarisonic Brush or Buf Puf Facial Sponge and one of the following strong pore cleaning cleansers based on your needs:
- Normal skin with rare to no pimples or acne: Glytone Mild Gel Wash
Glytone Mild Gel Wash Cleanser
- Mild to moderate acne: Foaming Acne Treatment Cleanser
Foaming Acne Treatment Cleanser
- Moderate to severe acne: Foaming Benzoyl Peroxide Acne Treatment Cleanser(benzoyl peroxide will bleach fabric so be careful with colored shirts, towels, and pillow cases)
Foaming Benzoyl Peroxide Acne Treatment Cleanser
Step #2: Product Application
Most men shave in the morning, so I have them apply sunscreen after they shave and wash their face. The number one sunscreen choice of my male patients (and my husband) is Elta Clear SPF 46. It’s easy to spread, feels really light on the skin, and doubles as a moisturizer. Plus, Elta Clear contains niacinamide to help get the redness out of your pimples.
Nighttime is the best time to apply your therapeutic product to help control acne and unclog pores. Pick the product based on your needs
- Really oily skin and/or skin with large blackheads: Use Salicylic and Glycolic Acid Acne Treatment Pads to clean pores and remove any remaining oil.
Salicylic and Glycolic Acid Acne Treatment Pads
- Normal to slightly oily skin with clogged pores: Use Glytone Exfoliating Lotion.
Glytone Exfoliating Lotion Step 2
- Normal to dry skin: Use Dr. Bailey Skin Care Glycolic Acid Facial Cream.
- Active acne with pimples and blemishes: Use Benzoyl Peroxide Acne Treatment Cream (benzoyl peroxide will bleach fabric so be careful with colored shirts, towels, and pillow cases).
Benzoyl Peroxide Acne Treatment Cream
All of these products work even better if you also apply them during the day under your sunscreen, so that’s an option.
This article is part of my series on The Best Men’s Skin Care. To read other posts in the series please click the titles:
Best Men’s Skin Care for Flaky Facial Skin
Best Men’s Anti-aging Skin Care Products
I have written numerous of posts on how to treat teenage acne in young men. These recommendations also are useful if you’re a man whose skin still struggles with acne after adolescence. I’ve listed the posts below.
Photo: Thanks and gratitude to Vancouver Men’s Fashion Week 2011, photographer Christopher Shawn Pike and model Frank R. Bailey IV.
Dr. Bailey, why no mention at all of how diet and stress affect acne? You’re calling this an “intelligent skin care revolution” but it’s based around treating symptoms (acne) instead of root causes (diet and stress).
Products like benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid, and other facial scrubs / cleansers dry out the skin (that’s their mechanism – they’re meant to unclog pores by getting dead skin cells to slough off properly), but this irritates and dries out the skin, so you have to compensate by putting on a moisturizer. This undermines the effectiveness of the drying agent, does it not? So you get into a vicious cycle of attempted drying – moisturizing – drying – moisturizing, all the while adding more and more “products” to the skin and irritating it further.
The real cause of clogged pores is dead skin cells getting stuck in the pores because they don’t slough off properly, correct? This is caused, in turn, by endogenous hormones, like androgens, and exogenous hormones, like IGF-1 from eating dairy. Eating dairy, for example, also directly stimulates androgen production (and over-production), which makes the sebum glands produce too much oil, and further prevents skin cells from sloughing off properly.
The same problems arise from eating a high-glycemic diet, vis a vis androgen over-production resulting in excess oil production, follicular hyperkeratinization, and inflammation.
That’s another thing – why recommend niacinamide to reduce redness of acne when acne redness directly points to a high state of body inflammation? Having red, swollen acne shows you that your body is in a dangerously inflammatory state. If I had my best interests in mind, I would go directly to the source of the inflammation (diet – dairy, high-glycemic foods, sugar, vegetable oil, gluten – and stress) and you can bet your all that I’d be trying to get rid of that inflammation as quickly as possible. Acne is one of the least dangerous conditions around, but it points to problems in the body that will eventually lead to much, much more dangerous conditions if left unchecked. Resolve inflammation and blood sugar problems, resolve most Western diseases.
The point is that all of the root causes of acne have to do with diet and stress. Okay, admitted, we’re dealing with a diathesis-stress model here, so genes definitely play a huge factor, but for those of us predisposed to get acne, the most effective way to get rid of acne is surely through diet and stress management.
When has a surface, symptom-level treatment ever been more effective than a root cause treatment? Furthermore, when has a symptom-level treatment ever been more “intelligent” than a root cause treatment? I know that, in general, allopathic medicine today tends toward symptom-level treatment, ignoring root causes… but in the name of good science, can’t we turn this around a little bit and start to recognize that root-cause treatments are ridiculously more effective? (Sure, if you teach a man to fish, he won’t keep coming back to buy fish from you. But that’s a bad, bad argument formed on wrong assumptions about human nature. Teaching people the true cure, instead of selling them products or regimens, will get you far more good will, because you’ll be creating so much more value in the world.)
For anyone interested in how to cure the root causes of acne, the information is out there. The Paleo diet is a great place to start. Google is your friend.
Great information Dr Bailey we can always count on you for great skincare information to share with all our ETSIS fans-aloha from Honolulu.
Hello Devin,
You’ve got a lot of energy for this topic and I love that. You are absolutely right about diet and acne, and diet and skin problems for that matter. I’ve written a lot on the subject and am passionate about it. Diet or no, people still need the right skin care products because personal care is multidimensional.
Here is one of my fairly recent posts on diet with links to some of my other work http://www.drbaileyskincare.com/blog/the-best-diet-for-healthy-skin-in-2012/ My post more specific for acne and diet is here http://www.drbaileyskincare.com/blog/4-diet-changes-that-can-improve-your-acne-dermatologists-advice-2/
I’m not a Paleo diet fan though, I am a mostly plant based/veggie heavy diet fan as you can see
Hope that helps you to find the information on my site that you are looking for. Keep up the good work of encouraging people to reevaluate their diet and it’s connection to their health.
Warm Regards,
Cynthia Bailey MD
Black marks on the skin are the most occurring problem for men.. Need proper guidelines to get recover from it as soon as possible…Really feeling confident by looking at your blog..But can you tell me some more suggestions based on the problem and treatments..
Treatment always starts with diagnosis so an appointment with a dermatologist is the first step. My post with anti-aging recommendations has suggestions for hyperpigmentation due to age spots, freckles and melasma.
I like all products especially OTB oil off cleanser sensitive or tolerant skin formula because my skin is very dry and sensitive. Thanks for the post…
I like all products especially OTB oil off cleanser sensitive or tolerant skin formula. Thanks for sharing with us…
Hey, the products that you’ve mentioned above seems really awesome and I am thinking to try this but currently I am using Retin A skin cream. I am just confused as now I want to use the products that are mentioned in the article. So,is it possible to use these products over the cream that I’m using. Should I try these products?
Melissa,
I have many posts on how I incorporate tretinoin into anti-aging and acne skin care routines. Please use the search box for my posts that discuss the combination therapy.