If you’ve ever used overnight spot patches, you’ll know that they’re nifty little circles that can help your skin to repair itself when breakouts occur. Place over each zit, they’re able to draw out all that nasty stuff and prevent unsightly whitehead pimples from occurring.
The question is, do they work on all spots? What about the more severe types of acne that appear like pustules, papules and lesions? Let’s find out shall we?
How Overnight Spot Patches Work
Basically, when we say lesion, we’re talking about a term that describes the unevenness of your skin when spots appear that don’t break the skin’s surface.
Regular blackheads & whiteheads appear quite quickly and can disappear just as fast when treated with the soothing hydrocolloid gel you will find inside spot patches.
The reason why spot patches are very effective against less severe zits than those that are simply raised, red bumps, is that no poison can be drawn through unbroken skin.
Sticking a patch over this kind of skin will do very little and can even irritate the skin if you’re unlucky enough to have an allergic reaction to the adhesive (it’s very rare).
They Can’t Stop Acne From Coming
The essential difference is that spot patches can only help you with acne that’s already arrived and erupted through the skin’s surface. Until that point, they can’t do anything to prevent them from ‘breaking out’.
So, what this means is that if you have major cystic acne, you aren’t going to have much joy in controlling it. That said, there are products and treatments that will help you.
How to Approach the Problem
There are a bunch of routes you can take if your acne is not the kind that overnight spot patches can help with. Let’s take a look at a few of the choices you can make.
- Cortisone & antibiotic injections– while they may reside at the ‘emergency’ end of the treatment spectrum, they can be very effective in getting the problem under control.
- Salicylic acid products– available in topical acne-fighting products, salicylic acid works to bring down inflammation at the same time as providing an exfoliating action.
- Foaming cleansers– removing dirt, skin cells and oil with a foaming cleanser may not help you with your current acne cysts, but it will work to prevent further breakouts.
- Retinoids– again, helping to rid your skin of dead cells, vitamin A products like Adapalene can ensure that your pores stay healthy and unclogged.
Use Overnight Spot Patches – But For the Right Thing
So, in summary, spot patches are for zits that have already flowered and broken the skin. Their job is to keep the wound clean, as well as bacteria-free while drawing out the pus. If the skin hasn’t broken yet, what’s the point?
If you are suffering with the more severe forms of acne as described, it’s probably best to go and talk with your dermatologist so that you treat the right issue with the right products.
Patches may not cost a lot, but you still don’t want to waste them. Use them – as many do – to deal with your existing zits, but don’t waste them on cysts that they just can’t help.
Everything else is simply academic.
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