If you managed to get through puberty without being afflicted with acne, you probably breathed a huge sigh of relief. But the sad, and sometimes shocking, reality is that even teenagers with air-brushed quality skin are not immune from developing acne as adults. Adult acne usually strikes those in their twenties and thirties, and the statistics show that one in five women will suffer from adult acne between the ages of twenty-five and fifty.

Adult acne almost always appears on the face, and there has been significant research devoted to finding the most effective adult acne treatment. The consensus at this time in the medical community is that photodynamic therapy, although quite expensive, is the best adult acne treatment currently available.

Photodynamic therapy treats adult acne by disabling the oil production in the sebaceous glands which surround the facial hair follicles. And while a successful series of two to three photodynamic therapy treatments can reduce the skin’s oil production by as much as 80%, the results seldom last longer than six months.

Many sufferers of adult acne have resorted to having a series of laser treatments to relieve their outbreaks, but the laser therapy as an adult acne treatment is not as popular as photodynamic therapy, simply because the laser therapy must be performed in individual sessions over a longer period of time.

The one place you should not look for your adult acne treatment is on the drugstore shelves devoted to treatments for adolescent acne. You are no longer a teenager, and you don’t have teenage acne.

You should look for both an over-the counter cleansing and exfoliating adult acne treatment. A good topical adult acne treatment is to wash your face with is Chine Control Cream Cleanser from Biore, and a good follow up with a thorough pore cleansing would be L’Oreal’s exfoliating Acne Response Adult Acne Peel.

You can also choose an adult acne treatment from among several recently introduced home devices, most of which operate in the same way. These home adult acne treatment machines have heads which are heated by an electrical current, and applied to the areas of the face suffering from the acne outbreak. The heat is kept on the affected areas for two and a half minutes, and never rises above an uncomfortable temperature.

The one drawback to such an adult acne treatment is that, to be effective, it must be done two or three times everyday if it is to have maximum effects in the quickest time. Home adult acne treatment machine are usually priced between $200 and $250, and their disposable heads run around $35. The heads, however, need to be replaced fairly infrequently, with each one lasting up to ninety treatments, which can be between a month and six weeks.