October 18, 2010 • 18 mins
Acne is typically associated with teenagers and puberty, but unfortunately, it doesn't always go away with age. In this episode, Molly and Cristen talk about what studies and statistics suggest about the phenomenon of adult acne.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from house Stuff works dot com? Hold on, Welcome
to podcast. I'm Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. But whenever
(00:21):
you're having a bad day, and I'm sorry to the
teenagers that are about to hear this, Okay, whenever I'm
having a bad day, sometimes I go, well, at least
puberty is over. Oh man, you're right about that. Puberty
is a rough time. We're thinking of your teenagers. It
is not fun. Your hormones are going crazy. And one
(00:43):
thing that I definitely remember from my my puberty years acne. Acne.
It was it was not good news for me, and
it's not good news for a lot of teenagers. But
we're going to talk about today is how this is
gonna be the saddest podcast over. I think I'm the moll.
You really started this off on a down note. Acne
may not end after puberty. That's what people tell you.
(01:06):
If you can just get through puberty, you'll sail through
college with your clean skin, and then it might just
come back, or you go through puberty with pretty good skin.
You're like, whoa touch that bullet. Wait a minute, no,
adult acne strikes. We call that karma. No we don't.
I don't. I don't mean to say that people who
(01:27):
who had clear skin and puberty are bad people. But oh,
I think we can all agree we dislike them just
a little bit. Well, anyway, thoughts thoughts on clear skinned
people aside, Let's talk about some adult acne. Because here's
the thing it might sound. You know, adult acne is
just one of those unfortunate sounding terms, you know, like
(01:51):
I know, yeah, adult acne, Like there's something wrong, Like
it's a complete mismatch, because, like you said, we usually
associate acne with adolescents. But take heart, all of you
people out of high school who are having some some
pimpular attacks. Yes, I just made that word up. It
happens to a lot of people. First of all, acne
(02:12):
is the most common skin condition period, all right, and
it happens to get this eight of people between eleven
and thirty. Yeah, that wasn't eleven and fifteen or eleven eighteen.
That's eleven and thirty. So adult acne is kind of
this new I don't want to say buzz word, but
a new phenomenon of sorts in the skin industry, because
(02:32):
you know, people did think that, uh, pimples were something
that happened to teenagers, and when an adult woman came
in saying, look at my skin, dermatologist kind of would
throw their hands up in the air and say, that's weird.
And for anyone who's ever seen, you know, close ups
of P Diddy on proactive commercials, we all know it.
It doesn't just happen to kids. But you know what,
(02:52):
P Diddy is kind of a rarity, Kristen, because let's
break this down a little bit by gender, because good news, ladies,
it affects us more. Hey, guess what what did you know?
And I'm sure you can just see the reason for
this coming a mile away. And we'll get into hormones
and stress and all that good stuff later, but first,
let's just talk about this breakdown between men and women,
because I thought this was pretty fascinating. It's a two
(03:14):
thousand seven study that was done at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, and this researcher went around.
She had a thousand thirteen men and women aged twenty
and older who were at the school, and you know,
very similar to that eight percent number you throughout Kristen,
seventy three point three percent of these participants at one
time or another had dealt with acne. Most of them
(03:36):
had had it when they were teenagers. But she was
finding a pretty pretty studying percentages of people who are
affected as adults, right, because as teenagers, the breakdown between
men and women affected by acne was pretty much the same. Yeah, yeah,
it's sixty eight point five percent of males sixty six
point eight percent of females. But then but then we
(04:00):
enter our twenties and then fifty point nine percent of
women and forty two point five percent of men reported
experiencing acne. So there we've got about, you know, seven
point five percent difference. During the thirties, thirty five point
two percent of women and twenty point one percent of
men reported experiencing acne. So now we're up to fifteen percent.
And yes, both percentages are dropping, both genders as as
(04:23):
the times goes on, but that gulf between men and
women is getting wider because during their forties we've got
twenty six point three percent of women twelve percent of men,
and during fifties fifteen point three percent of women and
seven point three percent of men. So it can affect
you as long as as your fifties. Yeah, and as
if your head isn't swimming with enough percentages right now,
I'm just gonna throw one more out that kind of
(04:44):
sums up this whole thing, all right from this study, Uh,
three point five percent of men reported that their acne
worsened post adolescents, just three point six percent thirteen point
three per scent of women reported post post adolescents acne worsening.
(05:06):
So just it's just not fair. Yeah, what are all
those numbers saying? Yeah, we we got it worse ladies.
And guess what. A majority of those women who have
trouble with adult acne report that they get their flare
ups around menstruation. So here we go. So that leads
us well into the big H word. We haven't thrown
(05:27):
around in a while. I don't think how we christen.
I don't know, maybe like a couple of a couple
episodes or something. Well, that's a long time for us.
And so we're gonna we're gonna turn back to old
hormones because just just as in the teenage years, that's
a major cause of adult acne. But I would say
that the causes of adult acne are a bit trickier
(05:48):
to unwind than they are for teenagers. For teenagers, it
seems that treatment is pretty straightforward and the causes are
pretty straightforward. But it gets a little trickier, a little
trickier once you're out of school. Because the interesting thing
is with the hormones as it relates to women an
adult acne. A lot of times you guys are probably
(06:08):
guessing right now, let me guess, Chris Simali, you're gonna
talk about estrogen for another twenty minutes. Psych testosterone, and it's, uh,
androgen's what you've talked about before, especially if you remember
our peak host podcast. That's UM an androgen imbalance and
some and acne is one of the main symptoms of
peak cost polycystic ovary syndrome and UM. So sometimes women
(06:32):
will go in and people might just immediately jump to
that and that causes the acne people to, you know,
get get kind of thrown off. Because they've done a
few studies about whether androgen's can be the cause of
this persistent acne in later years and women, and studies
are really inconclusive um in terms of, you know, an
extreme abnormality indicating this presence of acne and women. You know,
(06:56):
they've done studies on all sorts of hormone levels and
there's really no clear pattern of um, you know, one
big hormone that's out of whack leading to adult acne.
It's very, very inconclusive, so you can't just say it's
this hormone or another one. But they do think it
has something to do with androgen's, right, because androgen's is
would be a logical conclusion because androgen's If you have
(07:18):
a spike and androgen's, you're gonna have a spike in
sebum production. And sebum is the oil that your face,
oil that gets into those hair follicles, clogs it up.
Mixes with some soloft off skin sales sail sound like
a Southern yeah I'll talking, Yes I am, and then
(07:41):
mixes with some you know, maybe some some dirt that's
gotten in there, and you got yourself a pimple, and
it's it's as Christen said, it's sort of all below
the skin. So you can't look at a teenager or
a woman who's really really zitty for lack of a
better word, and just think, oh, she has hygiene problems.
She doesn't. You can't wash away pimples that happens under
(08:02):
the skin, So that's not the thing that's going on.
So if it's not the androgen's, if that's still controversial,
what else could it be. Doctors are also throwing out
things like genetic predisposition. Sure, if you're got a family
row that's got it, bad news for you. Smoking is
a huge one for women, yes, because smoking also amps
up your sebum production as well, which makes sense because
(08:24):
you know if you're if you're smoking, all of that
smoke around your face is going to dry things out,
and as soon as your face gets really dry, it's
gonna kick that oil production into overdrive. Cosmetics, if you
use cosmetics, you want to make sure they're non kommetogenic. Well,
this goes for cosmetics and for face lotions. All the
(08:46):
stuff on screens too, and sunscreens. Yes, that you're putting
all over your face, make sure that they are non kommetogenic,
meaning that they don't clog pores. Looking for oil free
formulas is also a good idea because there is a
dermatologist in one of our source is that mentioned that
the average American uses up to seven products on the
face and all of that stuff really is not it's
(09:08):
not really helping you out very much. Kick one and
just dedicate your life to it. Don't don't switch back
and forth. All right, let's talk about stress, Kristen, because
this is another controversial one. There are some sources when
we were reading about adult acne that we're like, oh,
stress is not a quantifiable factor in adult acne. You can't.
(09:30):
We don't see a cause and effect. But then people
who have acne tend to be really stressed, and uh,
you know, they thought it was more you know, one
happened and then the other. But I think it's more
of a vicious circle, is what. More people are realizing
that stress can kick that oil and to overdrive cause acne,
and then once you've got the acne, you are stressed
because of acne, and it just it's a vicious circle.
(09:51):
And there's some evidence, according to one paper we read
from England that the stress of having adult acne can
be much greater than the stress of having to teenage acne. Um,
we don't think stress can get worse than being a teenager.
But because so a few people recognize that adult acne
is a condition, then having a few pimples can really
(10:13):
affect you, know, you as an adult, particularly because there
are studies that show that people who have pimples who
have acne have a lesser chance of landing a job
than someone who has clear skinting. But you know what,
one thing that can ease our minds about this whole
stress acne vicious circle that you are that you're talking about, Molly,
(10:34):
it's the fact that, let's say you're really stressed and
sometimes and this is highly stereotypical, but you know what,
for me, sometimes it's true. When I am pulling my
hair out with stress, I might want to eat a
piece of chocolate. Okay, I like dark chocolate, al right, Sue.
So but if I eat that piece of chocolate, is
that going to mean I'm going to break out? Am
(10:55):
I going to aggravate this whole cycle even more? So?
There's one thing that's one silver lining with all of this.
There's no scientific evidence linking chocolate or even greasy foods
too breakouts. Now. At the same time, obviously, if you're
just living off of high sugar or high fat diets,
(11:17):
you're not gonna feel very great, and that might again
aggravate that stress level because your body is just not
going to handle it quite as well. But every now
and then, if you like to have that piece of
dark chocolate, no, no worries face, You're not endangering your face.
Let's talk about one big difference between teenage actinge and
adult acne Kristen, where it happens. Yes, because when you're
(11:41):
a teenager, you tend to break out in your oily
tea zone, forehead, yeah, the nose. I'm just seeing pictures
of myself flashing up as soon as I name a
body part. But adults have it more around their chin, yes,
their neck, um, cheeks lower, more at the lower face.
And why the skits harder to treat is because you're
(12:02):
not just treating an oily area. Adults don't have that
oily skin that a teenager might have. They might have
more combination skin and as if things can get worse,
they might also be trying to treat wrinkles right there. Yeah,
So sometimes the things that will treat the acne will
cause the wrinkle. It's it's another vicious or the wrinkle
streams might be too harsh on the skin. That's why
(12:23):
you do what if you if you have noticed that
you all of a sudden are having some some flare ups,
talk to a dermatologist to make sure that you aren't
doing your skin more harm than good by whatever your
daily facial regimen is right, and if it, if the
acne does bother you, then um like Christ and said,
talk to a dermatologists. You might need a slightly different
(12:45):
tweak than what a teenager is. You don't need to
go by. You may not need to go by like
the neutral gena clear soul that we all use when
we were teenagers. And the thing is, with all of this,
a lot of people are talking to their dermatologists. In fact,
so many people and by people I mean adults are
talking to their dermatologists about this that there has been
(13:06):
a huge industry boom related to adult acne. And the
final question, while we've been almost like fearmongering I think
about adult acne, I guess the final question is are
these statistics growing up? Are the incidents rates of adult
acne actually going up as as these studies would suggest,
(13:26):
or have we just become hyper aware of our own
face condition by watching too many proactive commercials? You know
what I mean, yeah, there's this really interesting article in
the New York Times by Natasha Singer called why should
Kids have All the Acne? And it was about sort
of how Proactive had a really genius marketing campaign because
(13:47):
it targeted women of our age Kristen, women who thought
they were past worrying about pimples, and said, you need
to take this aggressive care of your face because you
do get breakouts. The question is is whether these breakouts
are worth treating. So it's almost like half the things
we read and researching this podcast for like, people should
(14:07):
know adult acne is real, and the other half of
things we read were people should know that breakouts happen
and it's not worth investing, you know, hundreds of dollars
in a continuing Proactive or any other acne treatment regiment.
So um. You know. They did raise the point in
that article that it may not be that these numbers
are rising so much as adults have health insurance so
(14:30):
it's easier for them to go to a doctor and
get something they can use on their face, and that
they are just more anxious about it because they think
their acne days are behind them. So to me, the
main takeaway of all of this adult acne research is
to take at least small comfort and knowing that if
you are out of high school, even out of college,
(14:53):
and you're having some out of nowhere some acne flare ups,
you're not alone. You're not alone. I'm willing to tell
you that I've got a giant ZiT on my cheek
right as we record this podcast, so you know, if
you're walking around there having a bad skin day, just
know I'm right there with you today. So that's what
we've got. We want to know what you think adult acne?
(15:14):
Have you experienced it? Do you have a great way
to prevent it? Do you think that you know it
is just something that's being uh boisted on us by
the skin industry, and uh let us know what you think.
And the email addresses mom stuff at how stuff works
dot com, and let's rering a few emails that we've
gotten to that very email address. I have one hair
(15:39):
from Vonn and it's about our tribute to Doll podcast.
Kristen Bon writes, while I'm a guy, I did have
a bunny rabbit doll as a small child. It's more
of a stuffed animal, but I couldn't function. My thought
the thing. I brought it everywhere and did everything with it. Apparently,
the day I got it, it belongs to my mother's
a child, I had the task of naming it. So
of course Sesame Street was on and the word of
the day was Exit. Apparently I was so moved by
(16:01):
this word of the day that it became the name
of my rabbit doll. To this day, I can't see
an exit sign without thinking about bunnies. Also, I once
lost Exit before bed one night. My parents frantically searched
for the dolls. I cried. They couldn't find it, but
they remember they had another rabbit doll in the attic.
They gave the job to me and suggested I name it.
I didn't want to name it, so they naturally suggested
the name of Entrance. So as a child, I had
(16:24):
no idea Why other kids thought my stuffed animal dolls
have funny names totally made sense to me. Nice All right, Well,
I've got an email here from James, and this is
in response to our episode on chivalry. He said, I
can understand from the female perspective how constantly being on
the receiving end of these courtesies would seem like an
unbalanced equation, but rest assured that we don't give these
(16:47):
acts because we view women the lesser. Every time I
hold the door for a woman or give up my
seat on the bus, I'm making a reaffirmation to myself
that I am a gentleman, not hinting that I view
her inferior in any respect. I also tend to believe
that whereas women can vocalize their intent and feelings towards
others with greater ease, most of us men are left
(17:08):
primarily with our actions to speak for us. Treat us
like a magic act. Be entertained by what we're saying,
but watch our actions for a proper glimpse at our
intent and motivations. Interesting. That's an interesting perspective, James. Thank
you so. If you've got some to say, email us
again Mom Stuff but how Stuff works dot Com. You
can also tell the world and not just us, if
(17:30):
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Com for more on this and thousands of other topics
because at how stuff works dot com. Want more how
(17:53):
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot Com home page. Ye brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand and twelve camera. It's ready, are
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from house Stuff works dot com? Hold on, Welcome
to podcast. I'm Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. But whenever
(00:21):
you're having a bad day, and I'm sorry to the
teenagers that are about to hear this, Okay, whenever I'm
having a bad day, sometimes I go, well, at least
puberty is over. Oh man, you're right about that. Puberty
is a rough time. We're thinking of your teenagers. It
is not fun. Your hormones are going crazy. And one
(00:43):
thing that I definitely remember from my my puberty years acne. Acne.
It was it was not good news for me, and
it's not good news for a lot of teenagers. But
we're going to talk about today is how this is
gonna be the saddest podcast over. I think I'm the moll.
You really started this off on a down note. Acne
may not end after puberty. That's what people tell you.
(01:06):
If you can just get through puberty, you'll sail through
college with your clean skin, and then it might just
come back, or you go through puberty with pretty good skin.
You're like, whoa touch that bullet. Wait a minute, no,
adult acne strikes. We call that karma. No we don't.
I don't. I don't mean to say that people who
(01:27):
who had clear skin and puberty are bad people. But oh,
I think we can all agree we dislike them just
a little bit. Well, anyway, thoughts thoughts on clear skinned
people aside, Let's talk about some adult acne. Because here's
the thing it might sound. You know, adult acne is
just one of those unfortunate sounding terms, you know, like
(01:51):
I know, yeah, adult acne, Like there's something wrong, Like
it's a complete mismatch, because, like you said, we usually
associate acne with adolescents. But take heart, all of you
people out of high school who are having some some
pimpular attacks. Yes, I just made that word up. It
happens to a lot of people. First of all, acne
(02:12):
is the most common skin condition period, all right, and
it happens to get this eight of people between eleven
and thirty. Yeah, that wasn't eleven and fifteen or eleven eighteen.
That's eleven and thirty. So adult acne is kind of
this new I don't want to say buzz word, but
a new phenomenon of sorts in the skin industry, because
(02:32):
you know, people did think that, uh, pimples were something
that happened to teenagers, and when an adult woman came
in saying, look at my skin, dermatologist kind of would
throw their hands up in the air and say, that's weird.
And for anyone who's ever seen, you know, close ups
of P Diddy on proactive commercials, we all know it.
It doesn't just happen to kids. But you know what,
(02:52):
P Diddy is kind of a rarity, Kristen, because let's
break this down a little bit by gender, because good news, ladies,
it affects us more. Hey, guess what what did you know?
And I'm sure you can just see the reason for
this coming a mile away. And we'll get into hormones
and stress and all that good stuff later, but first,
let's just talk about this breakdown between men and women,
because I thought this was pretty fascinating. It's a two
(03:14):
thousand seven study that was done at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, and this researcher went around.
She had a thousand thirteen men and women aged twenty
and older who were at the school, and you know,
very similar to that eight percent number you throughout Kristen,
seventy three point three percent of these participants at one
time or another had dealt with acne. Most of them
(03:36):
had had it when they were teenagers. But she was
finding a pretty pretty studying percentages of people who are
affected as adults, right, because as teenagers, the breakdown between
men and women affected by acne was pretty much the same. Yeah, yeah,
it's sixty eight point five percent of males sixty six
point eight percent of females. But then but then we
(04:00):
enter our twenties and then fifty point nine percent of
women and forty two point five percent of men reported
experiencing acne. So there we've got about, you know, seven
point five percent difference. During the thirties, thirty five point
two percent of women and twenty point one percent of
men reported experiencing acne. So now we're up to fifteen percent.
And yes, both percentages are dropping, both genders as as
(04:23):
the times goes on, but that gulf between men and
women is getting wider because during their forties we've got
twenty six point three percent of women twelve percent of men,
and during fifties fifteen point three percent of women and
seven point three percent of men. So it can affect
you as long as as your fifties. Yeah, and as
if your head isn't swimming with enough percentages right now,
I'm just gonna throw one more out that kind of
(04:44):
sums up this whole thing, all right from this study, Uh,
three point five percent of men reported that their acne
worsened post adolescents, just three point six percent thirteen point
three per scent of women reported post post adolescents acne worsening.
(05:06):
So just it's just not fair. Yeah, what are all
those numbers saying? Yeah, we we got it worse ladies.
And guess what. A majority of those women who have
trouble with adult acne report that they get their flare
ups around menstruation. So here we go. So that leads
us well into the big H word. We haven't thrown
(05:27):
around in a while. I don't think how we christen.
I don't know, maybe like a couple of a couple
episodes or something. Well, that's a long time for us.
And so we're gonna we're gonna turn back to old
hormones because just just as in the teenage years, that's
a major cause of adult acne. But I would say
that the causes of adult acne are a bit trickier
(05:48):
to unwind than they are for teenagers. For teenagers, it
seems that treatment is pretty straightforward and the causes are
pretty straightforward. But it gets a little trickier, a little
trickier once you're out of school. Because the interesting thing
is with the hormones as it relates to women an
adult acne. A lot of times you guys are probably
(06:08):
guessing right now, let me guess, Chris Simali, you're gonna
talk about estrogen for another twenty minutes. Psych testosterone, and it's, uh,
androgen's what you've talked about before, especially if you remember
our peak host podcast. That's UM an androgen imbalance and
some and acne is one of the main symptoms of
peak cost polycystic ovary syndrome and UM. So sometimes women
(06:32):
will go in and people might just immediately jump to
that and that causes the acne people to, you know,
get get kind of thrown off. Because they've done a
few studies about whether androgen's can be the cause of
this persistent acne in later years and women, and studies
are really inconclusive um in terms of, you know, an
extreme abnormality indicating this presence of acne and women. You know,
(06:56):
they've done studies on all sorts of hormone levels and
there's really no clear pattern of um, you know, one
big hormone that's out of whack leading to adult acne.
It's very, very inconclusive, so you can't just say it's
this hormone or another one. But they do think it
has something to do with androgen's, right, because androgen's is
would be a logical conclusion because androgen's If you have
(07:18):
a spike and androgen's, you're gonna have a spike in
sebum production. And sebum is the oil that your face,
oil that gets into those hair follicles, clogs it up.
Mixes with some soloft off skin sales sail sound like
a Southern yeah I'll talking, Yes I am, and then
(07:41):
mixes with some you know, maybe some some dirt that's
gotten in there, and you got yourself a pimple, and
it's it's as Christen said, it's sort of all below
the skin. So you can't look at a teenager or
a woman who's really really zitty for lack of a
better word, and just think, oh, she has hygiene problems.
She doesn't. You can't wash away pimples that happens under
(08:02):
the skin, So that's not the thing that's going on.
So if it's not the androgen's, if that's still controversial,
what else could it be. Doctors are also throwing out
things like genetic predisposition. Sure, if you're got a family
row that's got it, bad news for you. Smoking is
a huge one for women, yes, because smoking also amps
up your sebum production as well, which makes sense because
(08:24):
you know if you're if you're smoking, all of that
smoke around your face is going to dry things out,
and as soon as your face gets really dry, it's
gonna kick that oil production into overdrive. Cosmetics, if you
use cosmetics, you want to make sure they're non kommetogenic. Well,
this goes for cosmetics and for face lotions. All the
(08:46):
stuff on screens too, and sunscreens. Yes, that you're putting
all over your face, make sure that they are non kommetogenic,
meaning that they don't clog pores. Looking for oil free
formulas is also a good idea because there is a
dermatologist in one of our source is that mentioned that
the average American uses up to seven products on the
face and all of that stuff really is not it's
(09:08):
not really helping you out very much. Kick one and
just dedicate your life to it. Don't don't switch back
and forth. All right, let's talk about stress, Kristen, because
this is another controversial one. There are some sources when
we were reading about adult acne that we're like, oh,
stress is not a quantifiable factor in adult acne. You can't.
(09:30):
We don't see a cause and effect. But then people
who have acne tend to be really stressed, and uh,
you know, they thought it was more you know, one
happened and then the other. But I think it's more
of a vicious circle, is what. More people are realizing
that stress can kick that oil and to overdrive cause acne,
and then once you've got the acne, you are stressed
because of acne, and it just it's a vicious circle.
(09:51):
And there's some evidence, according to one paper we read
from England that the stress of having adult acne can
be much greater than the stress of having to teenage acne. Um,
we don't think stress can get worse than being a teenager.
But because so a few people recognize that adult acne
is a condition, then having a few pimples can really
(10:13):
affect you, know, you as an adult, particularly because there
are studies that show that people who have pimples who
have acne have a lesser chance of landing a job
than someone who has clear skinting. But you know what,
one thing that can ease our minds about this whole
stress acne vicious circle that you are that you're talking about, Molly,
(10:34):
it's the fact that, let's say you're really stressed and
sometimes and this is highly stereotypical, but you know what,
for me, sometimes it's true. When I am pulling my
hair out with stress, I might want to eat a
piece of chocolate. Okay, I like dark chocolate, al right, Sue.
So but if I eat that piece of chocolate, is
that going to mean I'm going to break out? Am
(10:55):
I going to aggravate this whole cycle even more? So?
There's one thing that's one silver lining with all of this.
There's no scientific evidence linking chocolate or even greasy foods
too breakouts. Now. At the same time, obviously, if you're
just living off of high sugar or high fat diets,
(11:17):
you're not gonna feel very great, and that might again
aggravate that stress level because your body is just not
going to handle it quite as well. But every now
and then, if you like to have that piece of
dark chocolate, no, no worries face, You're not endangering your face.
Let's talk about one big difference between teenage actinge and
adult acne Kristen, where it happens. Yes, because when you're
(11:41):
a teenager, you tend to break out in your oily
tea zone, forehead, yeah, the nose. I'm just seeing pictures
of myself flashing up as soon as I name a
body part. But adults have it more around their chin, yes,
their neck, um, cheeks lower, more at the lower face.
And why the skits harder to treat is because you're
(12:02):
not just treating an oily area. Adults don't have that
oily skin that a teenager might have. They might have
more combination skin and as if things can get worse,
they might also be trying to treat wrinkles right there. Yeah,
So sometimes the things that will treat the acne will
cause the wrinkle. It's it's another vicious or the wrinkle
streams might be too harsh on the skin. That's why
(12:23):
you do what if you if you have noticed that
you all of a sudden are having some some flare ups,
talk to a dermatologist to make sure that you aren't
doing your skin more harm than good by whatever your
daily facial regimen is right, and if it, if the
acne does bother you, then um like Christ and said,
talk to a dermatologists. You might need a slightly different
(12:45):
tweak than what a teenager is. You don't need to
go by. You may not need to go by like
the neutral gena clear soul that we all use when
we were teenagers. And the thing is, with all of this,
a lot of people are talking to their dermatologists. In fact,
so many people and by people I mean adults are
talking to their dermatologists about this that there has been
(13:06):
a huge industry boom related to adult acne. And the
final question, while we've been almost like fearmongering I think
about adult acne, I guess the final question is are
these statistics growing up? Are the incidents rates of adult
acne actually going up as as these studies would suggest,
(13:26):
or have we just become hyper aware of our own
face condition by watching too many proactive commercials? You know
what I mean, yeah, there's this really interesting article in
the New York Times by Natasha Singer called why should
Kids have All the Acne? And it was about sort
of how Proactive had a really genius marketing campaign because
(13:47):
it targeted women of our age Kristen, women who thought
they were past worrying about pimples, and said, you need
to take this aggressive care of your face because you
do get breakouts. The question is is whether these breakouts
are worth treating. So it's almost like half the things
we read and researching this podcast for like, people should
(14:07):
know adult acne is real, and the other half of
things we read were people should know that breakouts happen
and it's not worth investing, you know, hundreds of dollars
in a continuing Proactive or any other acne treatment regiment.
So um. You know. They did raise the point in
that article that it may not be that these numbers
are rising so much as adults have health insurance so
(14:30):
it's easier for them to go to a doctor and
get something they can use on their face, and that
they are just more anxious about it because they think
their acne days are behind them. So to me, the
main takeaway of all of this adult acne research is
to take at least small comfort and knowing that if
you are out of high school, even out of college,
(14:53):
and you're having some out of nowhere some acne flare ups,
you're not alone. You're not alone. I'm willing to tell
you that I've got a giant ZiT on my cheek
right as we record this podcast, so you know, if
you're walking around there having a bad skin day, just
know I'm right there with you today. So that's what
we've got. We want to know what you think adult acne?
(15:14):
Have you experienced it? Do you have a great way
to prevent it? Do you think that you know it
is just something that's being uh boisted on us by
the skin industry, and uh let us know what you think.
And the email addresses mom stuff at how stuff works
dot com, and let's rering a few emails that we've
gotten to that very email address. I have one hair
(15:39):
from Vonn and it's about our tribute to Doll podcast.
Kristen Bon writes, while I'm a guy, I did have
a bunny rabbit doll as a small child. It's more
of a stuffed animal, but I couldn't function. My thought
the thing. I brought it everywhere and did everything with it. Apparently,
the day I got it, it belongs to my mother's
a child, I had the task of naming it. So
of course Sesame Street was on and the word of
the day was Exit. Apparently I was so moved by
(16:01):
this word of the day that it became the name
of my rabbit doll. To this day, I can't see
an exit sign without thinking about bunnies. Also, I once
lost Exit before bed one night. My parents frantically searched
for the dolls. I cried. They couldn't find it, but
they remember they had another rabbit doll in the attic.
They gave the job to me and suggested I name it.
I didn't want to name it, so they naturally suggested
the name of Entrance. So as a child, I had
(16:24):
no idea Why other kids thought my stuffed animal dolls
have funny names totally made sense to me. Nice All right, Well,
I've got an email here from James, and this is
in response to our episode on chivalry. He said, I
can understand from the female perspective how constantly being on
the receiving end of these courtesies would seem like an
unbalanced equation, but rest assured that we don't give these
(16:47):
acts because we view women the lesser. Every time I
hold the door for a woman or give up my
seat on the bus, I'm making a reaffirmation to myself
that I am a gentleman, not hinting that I view
her inferior in any respect. I also tend to believe
that whereas women can vocalize their intent and feelings towards
others with greater ease, most of us men are left
(17:08):
primarily with our actions to speak for us. Treat us
like a magic act. Be entertained by what we're saying,
but watch our actions for a proper glimpse at our
intent and motivations. Interesting. That's an interesting perspective, James. Thank
you so. If you've got some to say, email us
again Mom Stuff but how Stuff works dot Com. You
can also tell the world and not just us, if
(17:30):
you go over to our Facebook page and like us
and leave us a comment, and you can follow us
on Twitter, where our name is mom Stuff Podcast. And
last but not least, you can see what we're doing
during the week on our blog. It's called Stuff Mom
Never Told You, and it's at how Stuff works dot
Com for more on this and thousands of other topics
because at how stuff works dot com. Want more how
(17:53):
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot Com home page. Ye brought to you by
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