11 Safe Things You Need To Do To Stop Acne During Pregnancy

Tired of hearing about how “toxic” face makeup is? Can acne medication cause birth defects? Feeling the effects of the flu and fearing what meds you can safely take? These different advisories are often hard to validate, and it’s absolutely nerve-wrecking as a new or experienced mother to constantly have to struggle with making a right choice. The constant fear of putting something in your mouth or face that might hurt your developing baby can get really emotionally draining.

It’s really not your fault that you feel you have no options of safe treatment to fight off acne.

Every expecting mother will undoubtedly suffer from some level of anxiety when acne appears. There’s too much fear-mongering going around in alternative health media where warnings are given for even pimple creams (according to them and their studies). All that information overload leads to some sort of growing mental-paralysis in making simple every day decisions.

“My friends are getting pretty jealous about my glowing clear skin throughout my pregnancy, I didn’t know this was possible until… “– click to find out that one simple trick.

To allay your fears and help you out, here are 14 scientifically-backed things you can should do, that are deemed safe for expecting mothers, or even women who might be undergoing hormonal changes (IVF, puberty, menopause) that help fight acne and keep you and your baby safe.

Visualization Exercises
Water
Sleep
Acne-Busting Fruits
Prayer and Meditation
Probiotics
Keep cool
Stay out of the sun
The best way to wash your face
Removing specific foods from your diet
Clean bedsheets

Women are most prone to acne in their first trimester of pregnancy because of the sudden changes in hormone levels, in particular, androgen levels. Androgen is known to cause an increased production of skin oil, which in and of itself doesn’t create pimples, but create conditions more favorable for acne to form.

Every mother who is expecting will go to inordinate lengths to ensure the health and safety of their unborn child. And understandably so. The body is a marvellous creation and it’s always in a state of repair, no matter what the age of the individual is. What you should know is that if we create the perfect conditions for the body to repair itself, like replace its own dying cells with brand new ones, we then need to focus our efforts to do the things that help it get rid of waste and bodily toxins.

Here’s exactly why and how you do the 11 things that will help fight off pregnancy-related acne.

Visualization Exercises

If prayer and meditation are not your cup of tea, visualization is an alternative to fighting off acne. Visualization is a powerful method of harnessing the power of the mind to effect real change in the material and physical world.

Visualization involves you to mentally create an scene or image of an peaceful setting where your desired results are observed. This could be acne-free skin and a smooth pregnancy with no fear and just all your loved ones around you, speaking with you sharing wonderful experiences with you.

Imagery techniques are very effective as part of the visualization method because they temporarily distract the conscious mind of the current stresses and place the unconscious mind to accept a future desired state of bliss or joy. Focusing time and energy on visualizing a future events takes away the time to dwell on a negative circumstances that cause stress.

How to practice visualization and get-rid of your acne:

Find a quiet and comfortable space where you can be alone
Take a few deep breaths and focus on breathing
Imagine yourself in a peaceful location and everything in that scene is in perfect order as you like
Look at your skin and in the mirror of your imaginary location and see how perfect your skin is
Look at the pregnancy and how smooth it is going and how your baby is born perfectly healthy, cute and cuddly
Smell the scene, touch the scene, look at the scene, hear the wonderful sounds of all the you have visualized
Stay in your self-created mental utopia for 10 minutes
Take another deep breath and relax as you exhale and slowly come back into you present world

Do this as often as you can. Once your sub-conscious state gets used to these emotions, your conscious mind will align its thoughts to those of your sub-conscious. All this is still part of the mysterious power of the mind and its ability to effect change within the physical body both positively and negatively!

As you focus on the positive future, it actually sends signals to your body and is remarkable in how it effectively eases the stress from your mind. As your mind thinks, so will your body respond.

There is no doubt that visualization is an overlooked method because of the insistence to always go for quick results. Visualization has been documented to be highly successful as presented by research centres and hospital studies when used in rehabilitation and therapy. This would apply even to the fields ot business success, public speaking and of course, even acne.

Drink More Water

Women may experience water retention during the second and third trimesters with symptoms like cankles (swollen ankles) and their immediate reaction is to lower their water and fluid intake. But that’s the opposite of what you should be doing if you’re experiencing acne.

You should consume 8 glasses of water a day according to most healthcare guides. I’m going to make it really simple and recommend that you drink water frequently enough to keep your pee clear. This is simply for the fact that everyone has different body-types and fluid intake requirements. Larger bodies need more water replacement and smaller bodies, less. Activity levels also affect the amount of fluid you should be replacing.

Chances are, if you’re seeing your obstetrician, you will be prescribed with pre-natal vitamins. Some vitamins are water soluble and your body will discharge excess vitamins through pee.If you notice your pee getting tea-colored, it’s a sure sign that you need more hydration. Simple tip: Just keep that pee as clear and as colorless as possible. Keep the body fluids moving and allow your body to do its natural detox process.

Having dark-colored pee is not a good sign because the waste, if left in higher concentrations in your body is not only toxic but also could lead to other health issues like bladder stones and makes it harder for your body to get rid of toxins.

Pregnancy also messes with many women’s bowel-cycles as dehydration occurs which leads to constipation issues. Most would recommend taking yoghurt and fruits, but what seems to be a common cause is the lack of hydration. Allowing your body to move the waste away actually goes a long way to helping your body stop acne from occurring.

By ensuring that you are hydrating well and often in small quantities, you will feel less bloated, and less uncomfortable while resting and sleeping. This also keep your body moving the waste out of your body and letting your body adjust to the changes in hormones which reduces any inflammation response which leads to acne and even cystic acne.

Get More Sleep

We spend about a third of our lives in a state of sleep. This allows the brain to rest as well as the body to repair itself from the day’s activities. Your body during deep sleep is able to effectively slow down many of its internal operations in order to maximize the elimination of toxins and and optimize internal self-repair of every single organ, including the largest human organ: the skin.

The more sleep you can have, the more your body can repair and also better adjust and regulate hormone levels as well as cortisol production. The less sleep you get, the more your body increases in cortisol levels which lead to susceptibility to many health issues, one of which is stress, and then it leads to inflammation response and thus, acne comes soon enough when that happens.

Cortisol level increases also causes the body to create excess sebum and an inflammation response, which is a double-whammy when it comes to acne.

Still aren’t convinced? Just deprive yourself of sleep for a few consecutive days and you will most certainly see acne developing as a response. But, in view of your pregnancy, you really should be getting sufficient bed rest. Growing another human in your body isn’t exactly an easy thing, so sleep as much as you need if you can afford to.

Sleep is critical in your body being able regulate itself so invest in time sleeping if you’re trying to fend off acne.

Eat Acne-Busting Fruits: Blueberries

Here’s where you can add some of the world’s most potent acne-fighting foods to your diet.

One of the most powerful fruits you can add to your diet immediately and safely are blueberries. They are regarded as a superfood because they pack a vitamins A and C, flavonoids. Pound for pound, they contain the highest concentration of antioxidants compared to any other fruit in the world.

Antioxidants are anti-inflammatory and the effectively prevent and slow down the ageing process. Free radicals that are present in the body are arrested by antioxidants and thus reduce inflammation in the body. What this means is that you may be able to reduce the chances of acne developing by reducing your body’s inflammation response through eating blueberries.

Blueberries have some tremendous benefits such as increasing new skin cell production in the body, which encourages healthy skin repair.

There are other fruits that are known to be great for acne, but blueberries, by far, stand out as the best fruits for acne prevention.

Prayer And Meditation

If you find yourself constantly under work-pressure or stress from the pregnancy itself, it would be a good time to consider prayer.

Not to prescribe any religious belief but from a scientific standpoint prayer and meditation is known to help even people with depression. A retired pediatrician Peter Boelens wrote sin The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine an article on The Effect of Prayer on Depression and Anxiety which another person prayed for someone with direct contact, actually reduced depression and anxiety in the person receiving the prayer.

Mindfulness-based meditation also appears to be able to decrease stress and anxiety in several research studies conducted across colleges. This is usually not a pro-religious form of meditation but one in which you can simply practice as part of your daily de-stress routine.

The main idea behind mindfulness is to focus on the sensation of breathing and just not dwelling on any thoughts that come into mind. As your practice more mindfulness meditation, it lets you get comfortable with a wider range of life experiences without being too unbalanced.

Mindfulness is about cultivating a sense of understanding life as a combination of thoughts and experiences and also focusing on your day in moment-by-moment episodes. You are less likely to lean towards stressing out on various events in your life that are out of your control, like acne or pregnancy fears, and to just focus on the here and now.

Practicing a combination of prayer and meditation will put your physical body in a more restful state, and help it heal and repair quicker, thus allowing hormone levels to be more easily regulated as you go through pregnancy and avoid acne along the way.

Probiotics

Many people today still begin with and end with symptomatic treatment when they fall ill. Once again, this is because of modern-day impatience and a need for instant and quick results.

As more research is conducted in the field of probiotics and beneficial microbes, modern medicine appears to be more accepting of the power of probiotics. We are starting to see them in greater variety at pharmacies and even prescribed in hostpitals and clinics for gastrointestinal related issues, contrast this with 8 years ago where probiotics were limited and often overpriced as well as never prescribed.

I have witnessed countless health conditions like eczema, allergic rhinitis, asthma, chronic fatigue as well as acne fade dramatically as a person suffering symptoms religiously takes high-quality probiotics as part of their everyday diet.

Probiotics have been proven to boost the immune function. The exact mechanism still remains a blackbox but studies suggest that probiotics are good and beneficial types of gut bacteria that are the first line of defence against ingested pathogens that entire your body through eating food.

When parasites and bad bacteria face off with good bacteria, it effectively nullifies any negative effects and allows the body to be less “stressed” having to deal with internal infections, thus reducing any inflammatory-response.

There’s only a few probiotics that I would recommend for truly effective results. How do you tell if the probiotics you are taking is good? Check the content label on the bottle or packaging and look out for the following:

Probiotics that are good have been researched and don’t often try to sell you “50 billion cfu” as though having more bacteria is a good thing when after taking them, especially they die within minutes of entering your body.
Good cultivated bacteria is very human-specific, and they are known to live and thrive within the human gastro-intestinal tract and resistant to the human body’s harsh internal environment. Being able to survive allows the good bacteria to be an effective first line against ingested pathogens and parasites.
Most of the highest quality probiotics will display the exact strain number as in the case of BioOptimizer’s P3-OM (with patent 5,895,758) where they list the single probiotic strain that is effective against yeast, mold, virus and parasitic infections.
Large combination mixes of different strains aren’t exactly a good sign because it shows that the manufacturer does not know the exact strain or the proportions that are going into the product. This makes it a low-quality product with unexpected results.

Note: Avoid mixing different probiotics together wherever possible because even good bacteria may cancel out each other’s beneficial effects. Try a high quality probiotic supplement, and if it works for you, I’d strongly recommend you stick to it.

If you have been consuming processed foods regularly, they may contain chemicals used in preservatives that have mild germicidal effects (also not a good thing for pregnancy) and if you start taking probiotics, you may experience your body undergoing a “healing crisis” where your body is starting to be able to effectively adjust to a higher rate of self-detoxification.

Endotoxins build up within your body if they are not able to be remove through waste over time. With any significantly beneficial change in your body, these endotoxins within your body begin to be “dislodged” and start circulating in the body before removal, so some symptoms of healing crisis are nausea and mild bowel irritation. All of which should pass within a week or two, and longer for people who have been consuming a lot of processed foods, drinking and smoking.

Eventually, as the endotoxins are removed from the body, your body will be much healthier and better for it, able to cope better with the body’s natural hormonal fluctuations and less likely to have acne.

Keep Cool

Many expecting mothers I speak to, experience the feeling of just being warmer and naturally would try to stay in cool places for comfort. But it is also recommended to always make every attempt to keep cool when you are prone to have acne. Cooler skin is less likely to create a favorable conditions for acne to occur.

When bacteria get’s lodged in the pores of the skin with excess skin oils and dirt surrounding it, your skin detects a contagion and starts swelling to deal with the infection site. In this case, acne. Bacterial activity increases in higher temperatures and so does swelling.

By keeping yourself cool, it reduces the chance of having acne!

Stay Out Of The Sun

Outgoing mothers who love the sun may need to cut back on sun-exposure to avoid acne. When exposed to the sun, your skin will undoubtedly get UV damage and skin cells start to die, these dead skin cells in terms become a substrate for bacteria to latch on and multiply, which are one of the causes leading to acne.

The sun also prematurely ages your skin as the free-radicals readily react in the presence of sunlight to dry up and damage skin cells. If you have to head out into the sun for a picnic or just some fresh air, use a sunblock that won’t irritate your skin so you can enjoy your day out without increasing your risk of getting acne.

The Best Way To Wash Your Face

Use a Facial Cleanser and Not Soap

Use a suitable facial cleanser for your skin type instead of soap if you’re doing this. Facial cleansers are generally a lot more gentle on your skin and don’t risk breaking the skin’s fine blood vessels that lead to dry and inflamed skin.

Use a Dedicated Makeup Remover

If you wear make up, don’t just rely on your facial cleanser to do the job of washing off your make up. Modern makeup contains properties that often allow them to be smudge-free, which means it is also harder to remove and may need to be removed using a dedicated makeup remover.

Use a Makeup Remover Wipe

Using a makeup remover wipe is an excellent way to get rid of makeup before you actually start using your facial cleanser. It’s usually the preferred choice in makeup removal because it’s faster and you don’t need another free hand just to apply the cleanser on a cotton pad.

Washing You Hands Before Touching Your Face

Very often, we go about touching our faces without realising how many pathogens live on our finger tips, so if you are prone to having acne, you want to eliminate all possibilities of getting germs on your face. Wash your hands clean before even starting your facial cleaning routine!

Exfoliating – Just Enough But Not Too Much

Sometimes your skin accumulates hardened oil deposits and dirt in its pores and an facial scrub comes in handy. But you want to scrub no more than once a week if your skin is prone to acne as excessive scrubbing leads to blood vessel breaks and inflammation.

Scrubbing too much results in excessive dryness, which may lead to the body producing excess oils to compensate for the lack of moisture.

Removing Specific Foods From Your Diet

Acne is an inflammation response to an an infection. Certain food types are known to increase the body’s response to inflammation. The biggest culprits are:

Milk: The lactose in milk is known to induce insulin spikes which increases inflammation
Sugar: processed sugar is found in cookies and almost every snack you can find on grocery shelves. This also causes insulin spikes and a similar effect in increasing the body’s inflammation response.
High-Glycemic Foods: Processed foods like white bread, cereals, rice cakes, ice cream also similarly cause blood sugar levels to rise and increase the chances of getting acne
Fried Foods: Fried foods like fried chicken, fish and chips, french fries are associated with triggering the inflammation response which exacerbates acne conditions, making them more sore and red

Generally avoiding the above foods will assist in allowing your body to be less “toxic” and assist in healing itself while keeping endotoxins at bay.

Sleep on Clean Bedsheets

We’ve all been guilty of missing a bedsheet change at some point in our lives. If you can, and for the sake of stopping acne, try to change your bedsheets once every two weeks to minimize the amount of allergens as well as bacteria from coming in contact with your skin. The less foreign contaminants your body has to deal with, the less likely you will get acne.

If you find that your skin is more oily than usual and you don’t want to wash your bedsheets too often, at least wash your pillowcase once a week and wash your face before you sleep each night. This will cut down the amount of dirt that comes in direct contact with your skin.

Do you have pets in the home that climb on your bed? Make the bedsheet changes weekly for the benefit of your skin and keep that acne away.

Avoid jumping into bed if you haven’t taken a shower or washed your face as these habits will add to the bacterial count on your linen.

Use the bed linen wash mode if you have one for your washing machine. The linen mode will ensure that hot water is used and this helps kill off most bacteria in your sheets and keep it smelling fresh so you get to enjoy a comfortable night’s rest!

Keep Acne Away And Feel Great

The biggest benefit you can have from these 11 tips are that once you make them part of your life, it wouldn’t be just acne you fighting effectively against, but you will also be having a healthier life as a result! Acne is a symptom of an internal condition and it’s always wise to address the root issue of any problem.

If you found these tips helpful, please feel free to comment or sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date on the best tips for skin and healthcare. Also please feel free to read The Plan That Got Rid Of My Acne For Good — Be Happy And Free to find out more about the simple step-by-step plan that will keep you acne free for life.