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Is Hyaluronic Acid Good for Acne? Here’s How It Can Help
If you struggle with recurring breakouts or acne, you’ve probably tried just about every product under the sun to fight off your blemishes and to get your skin to shine once again.
Several popular skincare ingredients are touted for their “miracle acne-curing” properties. And, of course, anybody who’s spent any time looking into skincare at all is probably familiar with ingredients like Salicylic Acid, Benzoyl Peroxide and even slightly more intense prescription treatments like the dreaded (though effective) Accutane.
Sometimes, though, what works for one person won’t necessarily work for you. But it can seem like an endless search when you’re trying to find the one — anyone who has spent time on dating apps will tell you that — and when you feel like you’ve tried out almost every product in your drugstore skincare aisle, it can be hard to find the motivation to keep searching.
First of all: don’t give up! There’s a solution out there waiting for you. And, as it happens, that solution might just be Hyaluronic Acid.
What Is Hyaluronic Acid?
Hyaluronic Acid naturally occurs in your body, like many popular skincare ingredients. It’s a big part of what gives your skin structure and has a hand in keeping your skin looking full and hydrated.
Not only is Hyaluronic Acid potentially crucial when it comes to keeping you looking young, but it’s also key when it comes to hydration. If Hyaluronic Acid sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because it can hold as many as 1000x its weight in water so a lot of products made for heavy-duty hydration take advantage of that fact.
Why Use Hyaluronic Acid for Acne?
While Hyaluronic Acid’s benefits when it comes to hydrating your skin and helping to reduce the appearance of aging go without question, you may be wondering what this has to do with your persistent breakouts. It actually can help you with acne in two different ways!
For one, Hyaluronic Acid is great for helping to cut back on redness in your skin. In some studies, it has been shown to improve visible wrinkles on your skin significantly and improve the evenness of your skin’s color and pigmentation.
One of the most frustrating things about acne is that it can look angry and red even when it's healing, and it’s hard to feel confident when you feel like your face is screaming, “look at me!” even when you want anything but. Using Hyaluronic Acid can help calm the look of redness and even out its overall appearance to make your breakouts less noticeable.
Additionally, suppose you have blemish scars lingering on your face after years of fighting breakouts. In that case, Hyaluronic Acid’s ability to fill out and plump your skin can also positively affect the appearance of blemish scars. While it’s not the perfect treatment for blemish scars as a whole, you’re going to want something like our Advanced Even Tone Day & Night Treatment to help reduce the appearance of hyperpigmentation on a deeper level. While it doesn’t contain hyaluronic acid, it can be used as an alternative.
So while Hyaluronic is great for improving the appearance of blemishes on one level, it can also be key to stopping them from coming back. If your skin’s barrier is weak, it’s more prone to irritation, germs and other things that can cause blemishes. Additionally, intense acne treatments, especially when used over a long period of time, can damage your skin barrier even further, leaving your face dry, flaky and vulnerable.
Usually, with prescription acne treatments, dryness and irritation will only be temporary, and eventually, your skin will heal, and ideally, your breakouts will subside. But even if you’re just using the usual acne standbys like Benzoyl Peroxide spot treatments, you can do a number on your skin’s hydration level. And even worse — if you’re drying out your skin with necessary and effective acne treatments, your skin can produce too much oil in response in an attempt to restore balance… which is why you needed the treatment in the first place.
Hyaluronic Acid can be super helpful when it comes to improving your skin’s barrier and helping your skin to retain moisture, even if you’re using other products that can be irritating and drying. Not only will this help you heal and improve from drying ingredients faster, but it will ensure that when your breakouts subside, your skin is fully protected and not likely to relapse into the dreaded acne cycle once again.
How Can You Work Hyaluronic Acid Into Your Routine?
One of the many great things about Hyaluronic Acid is that it isn’t thought to have any particular negative side effects, and allergic reactions or sensitivities are uncommon. While in general, we’d recommend patch testing any new product and adding it gradually into your routine to make sure your skin is happy with it before you go all out, Hyaluronic Acid is a pretty safe place to start.
The most common way to use Hyaluronic Acid is in a moisturizer that uses it in its formulation to help your skin retain as much moisture as possible. Our HydraBalance Brightening Moisture Infusion uses Hyaluronic Acid to bind the moisture to your skin so that you can get all of its benefits without having to change up your routine too much. Simply switch out a Hyaluronic Acid moisturizer for your usual one or combine them!
Another option for working Hyaluronic Acid into your routine is to use a serum with it. This way, you can stick with the moisturizer you use and are already in love with, but just add additional vitamins and Hyaluronic Acid. We recommend Super C Brightening Serum, which is formulated with Vitamin C and Hyaluronic Acid — both of which can work wonders when it comes to evening out the look of your complexion, reducing the appearance of redness and hydrating your skin.
In Conclusion
There’s no shortage of products out there that friends and companies advertise as the be-all, end-all of acne treatment. But if you’ve been struggling with acne for a while, you know how hard it can be to find the right treatment for your unique skin. You also know that even products that are great for reducing your breakouts can be super drying and irritating and leave you with a complexion that looks even more distressed than it did when you started.
While you should continue to pursue other acne treatments, Hyaluronic Acid is a great addition to your lineup to help support your skin’s recovery from pesky blemishes, so you don’t have to worry about your glow going away again later on.
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