Your Teenager’s Acne

It can be heart breaking to see your teens suffer from acne. The low self-esteem it causes can be extreme. Teens, both – male and female are very sensitive about the way they look. Acne can be hard to get rid of and also leave scars. A good course of action is to prevent them from starting in the first place by taking some preventative measures.

Usually a bad case of acne starts with a blackhead. Your teen picks at this thinking it is a pore filled with dirt. This is an illusion Oil, dead cells and other substance block the pore and mix with bacteria and it is the exposure to air that turns it black. Once these become inflamed they turn into the angry red pustules we know as teenage acne. What it really amounts to being are a hole in the skin that can become inflamed.

Over time these inflamed pustules develop white heads and when these break they cause horrible scarring on the face. Many teens, especially girls find this quite disfiguring. Unfortunately covering up these scars with make up is also not such a hot idea. It can make the acne problem look even worse.

There are some acne home remedies you can try. Some are actually silly sounding but they do work. Some might worsen the condition. Common remedies include toothpaste, egg whites, ice, salt water, and steam, wheat germ and apple cider vinegar. Usually these ingredients are applied directly to the acne pustule in an attempt to shrink the inflammation.

Your teen's acne may also respond to Acutance. If it is you that has the acne keep in mind that you may not be pregnant while taking it. The same goes for a pregnant teen if you should, God forbid, happen to have one!

Sometimes it is just hormones. Birth control pills may be prescribed to a girl to help correct her acne in that case. Some teen girls break out in acne around their period just like we do. In adult acne incases the pustules almost always develop along with a severe case of premenstrual syndrome or PMS.

There are also a lot of herbal remedies for acne. Herbs such as juniper, dandelion root, chamomile, lavender, bergamot, and burdock root can be used to reduce toxicity and improve the overall condition of the skin. Echinacea, pokeroot and red clover may aid us.

Witch hazel is a cheap medicine that can help dry up acne and it has excellent astringent properties.

If scarring is really bad you can get acne laser surgery. This can help clear it completely. Laser surgery is very safe and there is next to no risk of damaging the skin surrounding the scar. This is important as acne scars can affect a person's self-esteem for a very long time in life.

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Does Your Kid Have Lazy Eye?

Lazy eye is a confusing disorder. This is because the eye does not always look 'lazy.' It is a disorder between the coordination of the brain and eye and it usually starts in childhood. It causes the body to favor one eye over the other.
Lazy eye is a disorder of the coordination between the eye and the brain, usually Amblyopia is the medical name for it. The problem is one eye does all the work while the other gets weaker and weaker.

Poor blurry vision in an eye that otherwise seems normal is the main symptom. It is caused by poor transmission of the visual image to the brain from eye in childhood. It is a temporary condition in most cases — thank goodness!

By the way it is possible to suffer form this in both eyes. That is very rare. The one eyed ambyopia is more common. About five percent of kids (one in twenty) might suffer from it. Many people are not even aware they ever have it. This is because it is normal to have slightly stronger vision in one eye.

Sometimes this eye looks so lazy it can actually stray. Mainly it causes poor depth perception. This is rare. Having a crossed eye or turned eye is a completely different eye condition. It is called strabismus. However lazy eye and crossed eyes and turned eyes seem to be used all the time to describe both ambyopia and everything else.

The way to determine whether or not your child has this condition is to take him or her in for a special test called a visual acuity test. It is not done with the letter chart we usually associate with determining eye problems.

A large number of kids with lazy eye go unnoticed until they have their eyes examined when they get older. Therefore, comprehensive vision evaluations by a trained and qualified vision professional are the best idea even for pre-school kids. You don't want your child going through school with undiagnosed compromised vision! Yet it can so easily happen.

Treatment options for lazy eye include glasses, drops, and certain vision therapies, possibly including the use of a patch. Sure you're kid will look like a pirate but at least he will be able to see the chalkboard. Good thing Pirates of the Caribbean was such a hit and pirates are so cool. However expect little girls to have a harder time with corrective eye patch than boys.

You also need to catch this early. Recent research has shown it can be treated until the kid is seventeen. Improvements are possible at any age but the best chance of correcting completely is catching the lazy eye while your child is still a kid.

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