The simple fact is acne only ever happens when



(a) Your pores block

AND

(b) Oil builds up

Chocolate categorically does not 'cause' this to happen. An imbalanced diet might make acne more likely but it isn't the 'cause' (great news if you are chocolate lover).

There is no exact cause of acne. Your skin can happily go about its business shedding skin cells and producing sebum oil for years then suddenly your pores become blocked and acne appears.

There are however many situations in which your pores will have a higher tendency to block. To get rid of your acne and have a full treatment, you need to understand why and how this happens.

While trying to find the most likely reason your pores are blocking, it is very important to note that excess oil on your skin is not a 'cause' of acne. Your face could be swimming in oil and no acne would occur if your pores were clear of blockages.

Suggested causes of blockages in pores are;

- Hormones

- Diet

- Genetics

- Vitamin deficiency

- Steroid use

- Stress

- Cosmetics

And so on... most of these suggestions result in one or both of the following,

1. A sudden increase in oil production

2. A decrease in the speed of your skin cycle

The most common cause of blocked pores is a sudden increase in oil production. When your sebum glands suddenly produce more oil than normally, your pores cannot release is fast enough onto your skin and will block, trapping oil and creating acne.

Should you be in a period of your life (e.g. teens, pregnancy, and severe stress) where your hormones are not balanced, you may suffer from sudden increases in oil and thus acne. Similarly, if your diet is not balanced, you will also suffer from this.

A decrease in the speed of your skin cycle is the most common cause of adult acne. This might be caused by work stress, diet change or even menopause.

What ends up occurring in this case is the skin is not used to how slowly the new cells are being pushed to the surface so it holds on to the dead cells for too long. These then end up blocking the pores.

We don't know why some pores block and others don't however we do know that once you have had acne in a particular skin area, the walls of the pores will be weaker and more prone to folding in on themselves and narrowing the exit for the oil. A small blockage that would get easily swept away by the oil in another pore might then block that particular pore.

Some types of exfoliation can help avoid a blockage in your pores from dead skin build up and we will discuss those later. The point to note now is that the surface of your skin is not flat.

Using a regular exfoliant with little beads in it from the chemist is not going to remove dead skin cells from inside the crevasses of your skin. It is most definitely not going to remove any dead skin cells that have gotten inside your pores. If you can feel the grains of the exfoliant, they are too big to get inside your pores.

Regardless of the cause of blocked pores, once the pores are blocked, the result is the same... acne.