Nearly 17 million people in the United States have it. People of all races and ages have it. Nearly 85 percent of people between the ages of 12 and 24 get acne. For most people, it goes away by age 30. But some people in their forties and fifties still suffer from the skin disease known as Acne.

Acne is a disease that affects the skin's oil glands. The small holes in your skin (pores) connect to oil glands under the skin. These glands make an oily substance called sebum. The pores connect to the glands by a canal called a follicle. Inside the follicles, oil carries dead skin cells to the surface of the skin. A thin hair also grows through the follicle and out to the skin. When the follicle of a skin gland clogs up, a pimple grows.

Acne affects most teenagers and young adults to some extent. However, the disease is not restricted to any age group. Adults in their 20s and even into their 40s can get acne. While it is not a life-threatening condition, acne can be upsetting and disfiguring. When severe, acne can lead to serious and permanent scarring. Even less severe cases can lead to scarring as well.

Western style medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine are in agreement that a healthy lifestyle and good diet are helpful in the prevention of acne. There is, however, the common lack of depth in Western medicine when looking into the root causes of the problem. There are many cases where proper diet and healthy living are not enough to prevent outbreaks. Western style medicine sees certain causative factors such as stress and greasy makeup as contributing factors to acne outbreaks, but the focus is on the topical treatment of the pores themselves and not on the underlying factors.

With the ever-growing list of acne treatments, there is one natural skin care treatment that often goes unnoticed. Acupuncture for acne does provide varying results, but studies have shown that this acne medicine is most effective when combined with proper diet and a change in lifestyle.

Acupuncture is a natural skin care procedure using very thin needles to stimulate the meridians (certain points in the body that balance and restore the energy flow through the body). By contacting specific skin meridians, acupuncture can treat the blockages in the skin that cause acne.

With the various risky side effects and potential dangers of conventional medicine, many people simply do not want to burden themselves with such treatments. There are still a lot of patients who do not want to undergo laser surgery or expensive hi-tech acne treatments.

That is where acupuncture for acne often comes into play.

A dermatologist or a family physician may recommend acupuncture for acne. If acupuncture for acne is considered, the patient may be referred to another doctor for the actual procedure. Sometimes, depending on their experience, a dermatologist or family physician may be licensed to perform acupuncture for acne themselves.

Acupuncture for acne is not without question, however. As there are few studies that have been performed regarding its success with acne, many physicians find it difficult to evaluate whether or not the treatments will actually work. From the studies that have been performed, indications are that acupuncture for acne has shown to reduce the signs of acne.

Even with the uncertainty surrounding the actual success rates of acupuncture as a natural skin care treatment, the main benefit lies in the lack of its negative side effects. Because there are no medications ingested or dangerous surgeries performed, the patient is not thought to be at risk for the harmful side effects that other methods often carry.