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Does Botox Help Acne?

Acne can seriously impact our self-esteem. Not only can it affect how we feel about our physical appearance, but studies have also found that the side effects of facial acne can include everything from anxiety and depression to severe psychological distress. If you’re suffering from acne, you’ll want to clear it up as soon as possible. With Botox touted as the latest remedy for clear skin, you’re probably wondering – does Botox help acne? 

How Does Botox Help Acne?

Suppose you’re vaguely familiar with Botox already. In that case, you’ll know that it’s used to treat fine lines and wrinkles by freezing the muscles in the face to prevent signs of aging. When it comes to treating acne, Botox functions similarly: however, instead of disabling the facial muscles, Botox disables the sweat gland neurotransmitter, meaning your face sweats less and your skin is less susceptible to breaking out. When a qualified aesthetician or dermatologist performs Botox acne treatments, this process can positively impact the skin and help prevent future breakouts. 

Are Botox Treatments For Acne Safe?

In general, Botox is a safe cosmetic treatment. It was FDA-approved in 1989 and has since been widely used to treat fine lines, acne and even curb excessive armpit sweating! However, when Botox is used as an acne treatment, there are several points to keep in mind. The first obvious point is that acne occurs all over the face: this means that any Botox acne treatment would need to use excessive amounts of neurotoxins (Botox) to treat the acne thoroughly. To treat a full face of acne, the dose of botox required would be high enough to potentially impact the muscles in the face, limiting your facial expressions. Not only can excessive Botox injections create minor, temporary deformities in your appearance, but it’s not a long-term solution, and upkeep would be costly. 

Does Botox Help With Acne Scars?

While you should never treat active acne, you can help improve the appearance of old scars from earlier breakouts with Botox. Botox works by using neurotoxins to relax the facial muscles, putting less stress on existing scar tissue and making them less visible as a result. However, botox cannot fill scars, so this treatment is often finished by injecting hyaluronic fillers or derma fillers into the damaged skin. You can also treat acne scars without expensive surgical procedures: acne scars respond well to chemical exfoliants, Retinols, and at-home techniques such as micro-needling. 

Does Botox Help Cystic Acne?

While Botox can’t help the appearance of current cystic acne, the treatment can undoubtedly help reduce cystic acne breakouts. Cystic acne occurs when bacteria and sweat become clogged under the skin and form large, angry, red pimples, and people with oily skin are the most susceptible to this type of acne. So if you manage to reduce the amount you sweat with a botox acne treatment, these outbreaks should lessen over time. 

Does Botox Help All Types of Acne?

It’s important to remember that acne occurs for several reasons, and sweat is only one contributing factor. Hormones, environmental factors, and even diet play a role in combatting cystic acne.

Before rushing to the local dermatologist to get some lunch-break Botox, try first to identify the source of your acne problem. As explained in our eBook, Unmasking Acne, acne breakouts are often be caused by underlying health issues. Thyroid problems, fungal acne, and Candida can all contribute to acne and skin breakouts, so if you’ve tried everything and your acne persists, you might want to check that there aren’t any underlying problems at play.

So, Does Botox Give You Clear Skin?

Considering the question objectively: does botox help acne? Yes and no. Botox acne treatments can certainly help clear up sweat-induced breakouts, and if you suffer from cystic acne, you’ll probably see a marked improvement with some injections. However, it’s not a quick-fix treatment, and it’s certainly not a treatment that poses zero risks. So if you’re looking to treat acne thoroughly, Botox treatments should not be your first step in treating your skin.

What Should I Do To Improve Acne?

Acne breakouts can occur for many reasons, whether hormonal, health-related, or environmental. Make sure you change your bedding sheets often and wash your skin with gentle, non-abrasive soaps. If you’re taking any medication, check with your doctor about possible side effects. And if you’re dealing with recurring flare-ups, try to clean up your diet before venturing into any other acne treatments. UnMasking Acne ranks over 170 different foods and drinks ideal for clearing up your skin. 

Originally Published: December 26, 2021

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I’ve helped over 2,500 people clear their acne naturally. If you cannot easily find an answer to your question on the website, please reach out to me by email ([email protected]) or send me a message on Instagram or Twitter. I will reply within 24 hours.

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sam wood is GoodGlow's Chief Editor
Analyzed by Sam Wood
Hi I’m Sam Wood. I’m the chief editor, lead acne expert, and health coach behind GoodGlow. I’m also an author of one of the top selling acne books on Amazon, a husband, father of two, and a pretty good cook!

I’m so glad you found GoodGlow and hope the information I have spent the last 10 years cultivating will help you clear your skin and improve your overall health.

I began experiencing acne breakotus as a sophomore in high school, but unlike most of my friends, my acne actually got worse as I got into my 20s. I exercised regularly, ate healthy (or so I thought) and spent hundreds of dollars a month on high end skincare products and supplements to help clear my skin. Despite these measures my acne breakouts and scarring only got worse as the years wore on.

This greatly wore on my self confidence and mental health. Simple things like taking pictures or going out with a large group made me feel self conscious. So I avoided these situations whenever I could help it.

As a last ditch effort I decided to try an extremely restrictive diet recommended by a close friend with an autoimmune disease. After following this diet for about two months my skin started to clear for the first time in over 8 years. The good news is that this restrictive diet is not actually necessary for 99% of people to permanently clear their skin, and over the course of a few months I was able to add back about 90% of my “normal diet”.

After clearing my skin I spent the next 4 years self experimenting on myself with different diets, supplements, skincare products to try and find a pattern for what was triggering my acne breakouts. I even tried different meditation, ice baths, and accupuncture to try and isolate the root cause of the breakouts.

In the end I realized that an extremely restrictive diet was not necessary for clear skin. The most important thing to do is to avoid inflammatory foods in your diet. Some common examples of this are fried foods, alcohol, sugar, and dairy.

Most impoirtantly I stopped reading trendy websites for skincare advice and began reading medical journals authored by dermatologists and nutritionists. Although the information in the articles was great the information was not easily understandable to most readers (including me). I spent hours dissecting individual posts and looking up terms I did not understand. Over the next 6 months I gradually began to understand these journals and started self experiemting some of the research on myself.

After experiencing quite a bit of success personally, I started sharing my research on forums and with close friends struggling with acne. When I shared the research it was in easy to understand, plain English. Everyone I talked to loved what I had to say and kept asking more and more questions. So I decided to start a blog so I could just send someone a link when they asked a question instead of rewriting something I had sent 100 times before 😅

While the same directional principles apply to everyone, acne is very personal and should be treated on an individual basis. That’s ultimately why I created GoodGlow. To help everyone reverse engineer the root cause of their acne and clear their skin permanently.

To date I’ve helped over 2,500 people clear their skin using a natural, holistic approach. If you are unable to find an answer to your question in any of the articles my team has written please reach out and I will do my best to guide you to the proper information and resources so you can make a thoughtful, informed decision. Read more of Sam's articles.

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