About four or five years ago, I started to have acne. It wasn't so bad at first, but it gradually became worse. Ever since that time, I have tried many different acne products, and it's been hard to tell which ones work and which ones don't. I'm honestly pretty tired of my acne.
The first acne treatment cream that I ever tried was probably Clearasil. It wasn't this Rapid Action Treatment Cream though; it was just plain old tinted Clearasil. This product seemed adequately effective. I don't really remember why I stopped using it. It was probably because of my fear of benzoyl peroxide (I will explain why with the next product), and for a while, Target stopped carrying it. As a result, I kind of just forgot about it.
I believe that the next treatment that I tried was this set of Neutrogena products. At first, I thought that this was what was going to get rid of my acne. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to find out because my face became red and irritated after the first day of using these products. Needless to say, I stopped using them immediately. However, I somewhat recall that this set came with a sample of acne eliminating spot gel that was pretty effective.
The next product that I tried was this Clean and Clear toner. I don't really think that this had any effect on me whatsoever. The thing about acne treatments that it is hard to tell if they work because you need to determine if the the product you're using is making your skin clearer or if your skin is clearing naturally. In this case, my skin was more or less the same either way.
The next product is this Clean and Clear acne treatment cream. I think that this was somewhat effective. It's hard to tell if it was effective because at the time that I was using it, I was not sleeping very much and I probably wasn't washing my face as much as I needed to. (Yeah... it was not a good time.) I probably would have had better results if I was more diligent about using it, but it doesn't seem like it was going to work miracles or anything. The reason why I tried this acne treatment cream was because this one contains salicylic acid rather than benzoyl peroxide, which I believed that I was allegeric to judging from what happened with the Neutrogena acne treatment cream. However, I believe that salicylic acid is less effective than benzoyl peroxide.
Finally, we get to "America's #1 Acne Treatment System", Proactiv. This is the product that I am currently trying out. I received this set of products a few months ago, but I felt that I was too busy at the time to dedicate ten minutes a day to taking care of my face. (I know that it sounds ridiculous, but at the time, those ten minutes seemed better spent studying or sleeping.) Now that it's summer, I decided to see if it lives up to its reputation. After all, I've seen enough commercials advertising it, and it was even recommended by my pharmacist. So far, it has been a week, and I've been using it once a day since I wanted to make sure that I wasn't allergic to it. (From the looks of it, I seem to be okay although my skin has been a bit irritable this week.) I'm planning to start using it twice a day next week. I suppose the key to this product and with any product is daily use. So far, I can't really say how effective it has been. Maybe it's better if you tell me.
From what I can tell, the acne on my forehead is getting better, but the bottom part of my face... not so much. I'll keep at it for another few weeks before I make up my mind about it. In the meantime, I'll make sure to update weekly on how it goes.
