Light Therapy and Your Acne: Is It The Answer?

Light Therapy For Acne?

This new treatment for the most sever forms of acne, light therapy for acne, is not recommended for the average pimple. Using light therapy for acne like whiteheads and blackheads would be akin to shooting a mosquito with a bazooka. Those with mild forms of acne will still have to eat healthy and wash regularly as before.

But, according to a BBC News story from 2000, as many as one in twenty adults can have severe acne. These are not the usual blackheads and whiteheads, but painful and persistent pustules that can leave permanent scarring and low self-esteem. No cream or pad can help these sufferers. But now they can have some relief with a promising new treatment – light therapy for acne.

How Does It Work?

The red and blue light (that’s all it is – red and blue colored light) seeks out the bacteria that cause the severe acne. This light therapy for acne is used only 15 minutes a day for at least 12 weeks. In the meantime, you should still follow your doctor’s or dermatologist’s advice and continue taking any prescriptions. Normal white light or sunlight does not work. In order for light therapy for acne to work its best, you must be in or have a colored box that gives off the correct red and blue light.

Colored light therapy for acne is still considered a controversial treatment. Since the scientists who wrote up their findings in the British Journal of Dermatology in 2000, many other dermatologists and medical professionals have poo-pooed the whole idea. They insist the only light therapy for acne that has any use is done with Ultra Violet light.

Using UV Light

The most common form of light therapy for acne is done with Ultra Violet light. The treatments have do be done at the last resort, as exposure over time to UV light will really up the odds of you getting skin cancer (that’s why you should wear a hat and sun block, remember?) It is also not a bullet-proof cure. You will not only get wrinkles prematurely, but some time after the UV light treatment for acne, the acne may return.

But for some people, the benefits outweigh the risks. They truly suffer with severe acne or extremely painful and stubborn genital acne and really have no other choice.

The newest member of the family of light treatment for acne is with N-Lite, a laser light. This treatment is so new that it has not gathered many statistics, but dermatologists who use laser light therapy for acne say the results are promising.