Spend any amount of time looking at ways to stop acne, and sooner or later, you’re going to come across spot treatment patches. These nifty little circles offer a soothing action that protects open spots against infection while helping to draw all of that nasty gunk out!
At what they do, these products are awesome. They do exactly what the manufacturer describes, and they do it well – allowing people to enjoy clearer, healthier skin. That said, they do have a narrow range of uses, so if you think they’re going to get rid of your spots on their own, you’re mistaken.
How Spot Treatment Patches Work
Here’s how it usually goes. You notice a spot that appears on your face, which then erupts and breaks the surface of your skin. The pimple is painful, red and obvious, causing many people to touch it more than they should and transfer bacteria and all manner of nastiness around the face.
Spot patches are something of a hero product here, as just one of the things they do is stop you from picking your pimples! That’s not all that spot treatment patches do either, as the hydrocolloid gel seals off what is essentially a face wound.
What Spot Patches Don’t Do
So, there’s lots of good stuff going on with spot patches. However, when you start using them for spots they’re not designed to cope with – that’s when the trouble starts. You see when you use them on unsuitable pimples, they’re not going to do an awful lot for your skin.
In particular, when you try and use spot patches of papules and cysts – the larger, more severe types of acne that live deeper under the skin won’t be even mildly affected by them. The only type that is suitable is those that have broken the skin.
Without the skin being broken, your patches have no way of drawing out the impurities. Instead, you need to back your patches up with some benzoyl peroxide.
Spot Treatment Patches Work Best With Other Treatments
Ask your dermatologist, and he or she will say the same thing – spot patches are a great complement to your acne control routine, but they’re not a substitute for it. That’s why you should be using a suitable strength of benzoyl peroxide wash or something similar.
Only then will you be able to attack the route causes of your acne, which are chiefly bacteria, dirt and dead skin cells. Benzoyl peroxide is designed to penetrate beneath the skin and unblock those meddlesome pores that cause so much of a problem.
All spot patches can do on their own is stop you from inadvertently spreading spots to other parts of your face. They’re great for healing too, but they have no ability to penetrate the skin – so stick to using them on spots that have broken the skin’s surface.
Spot patches aren’t enough on their own, as they’re simply not designed to be.
