Video:Top Quick Treatments for Pimples

Transcript:Top Quick Treatments for Pimples

Hi this is Dr. Debra Jaliman, a board-certified dermatologist in New York City and author of the book Skin Rules: Trade Secrets from a Top New York Dermatologist, here for About.com to talk about some quick treatments for acne, both over-the-counter and things you can do in a doctor's office.

In-Office Acne Treatments

In our office, when people come in for acne, some of the quick things we do are: if somebody comes in with cysts, we quickly inject them with intralesional hydrocortisone. What does that mean? Someone comes with cysts we take a syringe, and very easily, we take a very fine needle, we inject each cyst with hydrocortisone and within a matter of days those cysts are gone.

Another quick treatment we do is microdermabrasion. We take a handpiece, it has a diamond tip on it (no grains on it - we don't like those aluminum crystals which some people use on microdermabrasion) and what we do is, we use it on your face and it gets off all the dead skin. It takes about 15-20 minutes, we put goggles on you to protect your eyes, it gets off all the dead skin, you leave with a glowing complexion and it gets rid of the dead skin that clogs your pores and leads to the blackheads and whiteheads.

Another thing we do in our office is medical facials, they also do it in facialists offices, and we steam your face for 15-20 minutes and then we extract all the blackheads the whiteheads. Then we put a mask on to take off the excess oils and then we top it off with a topical antibiotic. So what that does is it kills all the surface bacteria and it also peels off all the dead skin.

At-Home Acne Treatments

Oftentimes there are peel pads people do at home. They have salicylic acid, glycolic acid, you can do peels everyday or even once a week to get rid of those dead skin cells and that's something people do for acne, it's very effective. There's also sonic cleansing systems that people do daily, some people do it once a day if they have sensitive skin, and they make special brush heads for sensitive skin, some of the sonic cleansing systems. And some people do it twice a day, you can use a regular cleanser on it or an exfoliating cleanser, cleanse your skin with it, it gets rid of the dead skin cells, it also gets rid of 95% of the bacteria.

So those are some of the great things you can do quickly to help your acne at home. Any other questions, go to About.com.