Acne Treatment in Murrells Inlet, SC

What's Covered on This Page

• Why Coastal Living Makes Acne Harder to Control
• How to Know Which Type of Acne You Are Dealing With
• What Does a Professional Acne Treatment Involve?
• How to Prepare for Your First Acne Treatment Appointment
• A More Realistic Timeline of Acne Treatment
• Does the humidity in Murrells Inlet make acne harder to treat?
• How do I know what type of acne I have before coming in?
• What should I expect during my first acne treatment session?
• Can sunscreen from beach days near the MarshWalk cause breakouts?
• How many sessions does it take to see real improvement?
• Is professional acne treatment painful?

Need acne treatment?

843-357-0010

Book An Appointment. Call Jolie Visage Rejuvenation Centre now.

Why Coastal Living Makes Acne Harder to Control

Salt air, humidity, and sunscreen are three things you're probably exposed to daily in Murrells Inlet, three things you need to watch out for with acne.

We're frequently asked about this issue by people who have recently moved here from areas with lower humidity. "My skin was fine when I lived in a dryer climate," they tell us. "But now it's breaking out the way it did when I was in middle school." This isn't a result of their own imagination. Murrells Inlet and the coastal region can indeed play havoc with acne-prone skin.

Here is an overview of the issues your skin is dealing with on an everyday basis near the beach:

• Higher humidity causes excess sweat and oil to get trapped on your skin surface, clogging pores.
• Salt from the ocean air dries out your skin, which in turn stimulates the production of excess oil.
• Many sunscreens cause breakouts, especially heavier and water-proof formulas.
• Sand and wind contribute to the spread of acne-causing bacteria and dirt to various areas of your skin.

This causes your skin to be simultaneously oilier and drier than normal. The resulting combination is what fuels acne that is often resistant to treatment, including treatments at home using over-the-counter products.

For those of us who spend a lot of time on the MarshWalk and around the inlet, this situation can be familiar. We might spend a lot of time outdoors and end the day feeling sticky and tired, leaving us tempted to go to sleep without our normal evening face wash. While the odd night might not make much of a difference in the long run, a habitual lack of cleaning will leave your face clogged. In time, this causes pimples, especially along the jawline and cheeks.

For those in Murrells Inlet with active acne, we've learned that there is often a lifestyle element at play as well as a skin issue. As the American Academy of Dermatology notes, environmental humidity is known to aggravate acne-prone skin. In Murrells Inlet, residents are exposed to that condition at all times of year, not just in summer., it is often important to adjust your skincare regimen to account for this.

Treatments for acne are different for people with coastal skin from those for everyone else. We take into account all of the issues that affect your skin, and we encourage our clients to do the same in their skincare routine. We build your treatment and your skincare plan in tandem. It is only when we have a good picture of all of the issues at play, we can help get your acne under control.

How to Know Which Type of Acne You Are Dealing With

Acne isn't always acne. It's easy to make this assumption if you come to us in Murrells Inlet with acne and expect to be given a quick and easy solution to your problem, but it's also a misconception that often gets people into trouble.

Acne varies in many different ways; it's not always a single problem, but more often a combination. The most common types are the following:

• Comedonal acne manifests as blackheads or whiteheads. This kind of acne does not cause inflammation or redness. It is simply clogged pores that won't respond to any amount of face washing.
• Inflammatory acne is when you see a red, inflamed, pimple-like bump. Often, this type of acne is painful to the touch and deep-seated.
• Cystic acne is an even deeper and more severe type of acne. There are hard lumps underneath the skin that remain there for weeks and sometimes months. This is very common for both teens and adults who are hormonally changing.
• Hormonal acne typically appears in the lower part of the face, jawline and chin, for instance, along with the forehead or back or elsewhere. This kind of acne typically comes in and out with a cycle, such as around menstruation time.

We find that many patients who are frustrated by "bad skin" actually have a particular type of acne, and a particular treatment is what they need. The right treatment for them is not necessarily what someone else has, even if they have the same type of acne. Some people have a chemical peel that does well for a mild case of comedonal acne, but do not respond well to deep cystic acne. For us, every treatment starts with a careful look at skin problems to determine what is happening with the patient's acne.

A common example is this. An individual is using a drugstore cleanser, and has used it for several months. The breakouts on the forehead have cleared up, but the chin breakouts are much worse than ever. You would expect a single product to have done the same thing on each area, but the forehead acne is actually comedonal and the chin acne is hormonal.

The two different types of acne do not respond to the same product.

This is the case for so many people we see.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, as many as 50 million people suffer from acne in the United States at any given time. We do know that the type of acne is more important than the amount of people with it. For the right treatment, a patient needs a particular plan that meets their specific needs and problems on any given day. We take all kinds of information into account: location and severity of breakouts, the age of your skin, the likelihood that you might suffer from acne, and the extent to which acne may be causing scarring in your skin.

With all this information, we build the best plan for you.

What Does a Professional Acne Treatment Involve?

When you arrive, we talk. There is no immediate rush to get to the actual treatment room. There is no guessing what is going on with the skin. We want you to tell us about what you see with the skin and for how long.

People who come for an acne consultation have, at times, tried many, many different drugs in different stores. This means they have tried many products. This means they are probably frustrated with acne and this means they probably need a new solution.

The following is what we normally do during a visit:

1. We perform an assessment of the condition of your skin, with the purpose of deciding what type of acne you are dealing with: hormonal, bacterial, or clogged with product.
2. We then cleanse the skin and prepare it so that we can better see what is happening under the surface.
3. We then decide what form of treatment to perform for the patient. It can be in the form of a medical grade facial or a chemical peel. In some cases, we perform extractions. It depends on what we found.
4. We work in sections, treating your skin carefully. No aggressive procedures, nothing that leaves your skin raw.
5. We apply soothing post-treatment products and walk you through your home care routine.

A typical session is scheduled for about one hour. Plenty of guests come during their lunch break. "Why won't this go away?" is the question I'm most likely to hear in my chair. That's where we need to start.

We aren't just treating your skin as it presents itself right now. We're getting to the root of your acne patterns, preventing future breakouts before they happen. Acne treatment actually isn't as uncomfortable as clients often expect. They often walk in bracing themselves for an intense and unpleasant experience only to find that it's quite relaxing.

Your skin may appear somewhat red immediately post-treatment, but that fades within hours. Throughout your visit, we document any observations we make and the actions we take. That ensures each appointment builds upon the progress of your last, rather than simply picking up the previous treatment where it stopped. Your skin will change as your treatments progress, and our approach changes with it.

This is what makes acne treatment so effective.

Need help with acne treatment?

843-357-0010

Book An Appointment. Jolie Visage Rejuvenation Centre is ready to help.

How to Prepare for Your First Acne Treatment Appointment

It may feel a little strange going into a skincare clinic for the first time. Many of our guests who come to our Murrells Inlet clinic have already been using a dozen different drugstore solutions. They're annoyed, skeptical, and tired of not having clear direction. Here's how to get ready for your first visit.

1. Avoid using any new products for at least five days before your visit. We want to see your baseline skin, not how it has recently reacted to a new product.
2. List out anything you've used prior to acne treatment. Cleanser, spot treatments, prescription acne solutions, anything. Bring it all, or take pictures of any bottles.
3. Come in with a clean face. No makeup, no sunscreen, no moisturizer if possible. We're going to be looking closely at your pores, texture and scarring.
4. Write down exactly what is bothering you the most. Is it cystic breakouts along your jawline? Are your pores along your nose clogged with blackheads that don't want to go away? Are you breaking out with acne that leaves dark spots that linger for months? The more specific you are, the faster and more accurate we can formulate an effective acne treatment plan.
5. Eat something before coming to the spa, and bring a glass of water with you, too. Some acne treatment options can leave a guest feeling hot and slightly flushed. We don't want you feeling faint if this is your first visit.

Guests often apologize to me when they see what their skin looks like after they sit down. You don't need to. We're acne professionals, this is our expertise. It may surprise you how much we inquire about lifestyle during acne treatment.

What do you sleep like, what are your stressors like, how is your diet, what about your hormones? Acne is much more than a surface skin issue, and it starts further down than most people realize. How you answer those questions will help determine if a medical-grade facial or perhaps a chemical peel down the road will be beneficial for you. Most of your first visit will last approximately 45 minutes, allowing us time to really talk about what may or may not be contributing to the issues you're experiencing before we get started with any skin care services.

You will have a clear idea of the problem, as well as an understanding of your next steps and how we will go about addressing them. If you are feeling nervous before your first visit, you're not alone. In fact, most of our success stories started when a new client was a little nervous.

A More Realistic Timeline of Acne Treatment

Acne doesn't disappear overnight. That is a fact we make very clear with all of our new clients coming into the practice here in Murrells Inlet. It can be frustrating because most people who seek our help have probably tried dozens, if not hundreds of topical products in hopes of getting clearer skin, so why is that not working for them? It is simply that your skin operates on its own time frame and your acne didn't just appear in the past week so it's not going to clear up in the next week either.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, the majority of acne treatments require six to eight weeks before seeing noticeable changes, which is consistent with what we see day-to-day at our practice. The following is an approximate timeline of what our new clients can generally expect:

1. Weeks 1-2: We begin your very first treatment and implement a simple home skin care regimen. There may be some redness and dryness. That's all very normal and expected.
2. Weeks 3-4: You may notice some temporary increase in breakouts, also known as purging. Although it's disheartening to see the acne come back, this is a good thing because it's just clearing out the congestion from below the surface of your skin.
3. Weeks 5-8: The improvement phase begins. Your breakouts decrease in frequency, redness reduces, and your skin texture begins to change and smooth out.
4. Months 3-6: We tweak your home care and treatment plan as needed. Some clients add in a chemical peel and/or medical-grade facial at a regular rate in order to speed up their acne results. For other clients, we hold steady and keep doing exactly what you're already doing.

Clients who are willing to power through the purge are the same ones who end up with the clearest skin in the longest amount of time. Clients who give up at week three start over at another clinic and run right into the same problem again. We check in with our clients at regular intervals throughout their acne treatment. Humidity can make a bigger difference than most people would expect and our skin changes according to the seasons.

For that reason, we tweak your plan over time and what may have worked in January may not work in June. We don't promise you clear skin from two visits. That's not how acne treatment works, but we will give you a real idea of where you are in the treatment process so there are no surprises. With patience and the right plan, you'll see results.

We've witnessed it happen several hundred times.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about acne treatment services in Murrells Inlet

Ready to Get Started?

Book An Appointment Call 843-357-0010 today.