Does Mandelic Acid Help Acne?


Firstly, I’d like to start this post of by thanking all of you for reading my posts and I’m so glad you have been loving these quick fire questions posts.

I, personally, enjoy this format of sharing information with you because it’s so straightforward. You get the facts without having to trawl paragraphs of information.

It’s also really important to me that I’m actually helping you so please feel free to DM me or leave a comment about your particular skin questions and I will answer them in the next QFQ (quick fire question) post!

Ok, so yes is the answer.

Yes mandelic acid helps acne tremendously for one very specific reason (two if you wanna be technical but I’ll get into that later). Mandelic acid’s antibacterial properties are extremely helpful in treating acne.

Antibiotic treat acne because they can kill the bacteria that cause the acne in the first place. Usually antibiotic products dry the skin out which is why you have to be extra vigilant when using them because dry skin can cause your skin to be irritated and if you have senstive/acne-prone skin – you don’t really want to cause anymore irrtiation. Remember to use moustirizers when using acne fighting products too!

The second part to this is this; mandelic acid is pretty gentle. That’s why it’s so great for skin types that are overly sensitive/acne prone. It’s actually been heavily studied for treatment on acne prone skin. Infact, this study found that side effects when using a mandelic acid peel were less common with no postinflammatory hyperpigmentation when compared with a lower concentration salicylic acid peel.

If that’s all too confusing to understand it basically says mandelic acid is way more gentle than salicylic and therefore doesn’t cause as much irritation in the skin.

So, yes its great for acne-prone skin because it is gentle on the skin and has tremendous antibacterial properties!

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