Men who have facial hair have another facet of complexity added to their fight against acne – they have actual hair as a blockade to treating and successfully defeating acne in those areas because the areas that produce hair also happen to be factories for oil (sebum) production as well as collectors of debris and poolings of oil, which is the perfect breeding grounds for acne causing bacteria.  Not to mention that fact that ingrown facial hair on men can cause acne, since they essentially are a clogged pore that runs wild and usually becomes a large whitehead that i svery visible to the naked eye, if it weren’t for the hair obscuring the view.

So, is there really any different way to deal with acne that happens to be amongst a lot of facial hair in men, or do you just have to sort of bit the bullet and hope for the best, applying creams and serums on the face in these areas, hoping the medication will reach the acne postules that it needs to?  Well, it’s a combination of both, but here are some pointers for dealing with acne in your beard guys!

You will need to make sure you are cleansing the entire bearded area of your face each time you wash, and make sure you are using some sort of acne clarifying face wash (I prefer it’s actually a clear gel or soap), with salicylic acid, this will help dissolve the sebum that builds up in the pores where your beard grows, and therefore help to treat and prevent acne from growing there.  Don’t just glide right over the bearded area, but make sure you are lathering the entire area to get the cleanser right down in there, into the skin area and the pores.

A common mistake for guys with beards is that they just lather the beard hair and not the skin underneath.  Make sure you finger tips are reaching the skin under the hair.  Then, I recommend you get either a prescription topical medication or a strong salicylic acid based gel, nothing cheap, make sure it’s high quality since this is extra hard to deal with acne caused by having facial hair, and apply it to your problem areas every night until the problem clears up.

You may notice especially more acne when you’re trying to grow a beard for the first time, this is because the skin is getting used to the hair being there, and ingrown hairs are more likely to occur in this phase, whereas when you have it fully grown out, you should see less of a problem there.