Accutane is one of the best known acne treatments. They claim that Accutane will help you to finally achieve far better benefits and results, and it will help you even if no other acne treatment has ever worked! They say that Accutane will finally help you to eliminate even the most stubborn cases of acne, and it has worked in many different ways. When it comes to Accutane, you will find that there are many claims. But what’s the truth?

Accutane has been used to treat some of the worst cases of acne, and it has been used to treat acne that has been resistant to all other treatments. When it comes to Accutane, you will find that it’s not necessarily the best acne treatment, it’s the only acne treatment currently available for certain varieties of acne. Acne like acne conglobata actually does not respond to any other known treatment at this particular point in time.

But I would not say that Accutane is the best acne treatment for anything. A lack of options does not mean that something is valuable. Accutane dries out the skin. But it also dries out every other part of the body including the joints and eyes. It can obviously cause irritated, dry, and cracking skin, lips, etc. But it can also cause joint pain, night blindness, and other potentially serious problems. With Accutane, you aren’t even guaranteed to get rid of acne. The side effects are severe, and could even extend to birth defects. Many say it is unarguable, the risks outweigh the benefits.

Dr. Brandt Skincare is a product line that has several different targets. Some of the product are aimed at reducing wrinkles, others at fighting acnes, and some at reducing the pores. We’re going to focus on their acne reducing product lines. There are three main lines that are supposed to help with this. The first is a Pore no More line. This contains a cleanser, refiner, lotion, gel, and more to help unclog pores to give them a more minimized look. It is also supposed to control excess oil.

What is Dr. Brandt Skincare?

The next product line is called Blemishes no More. This product line also has several different products that are all supposed to work together to help fight acne causing bacteria and to sluff off dead skin cells in order to rid the skin of blemishes.

The last product line is an Inner Beauty line. This is meant to deal with several different skin issues, but has anti-oxidants that are supposed to help support health skin and control breakouts.

Final Thoughts

Each line has a different purpose, and the products are not bad products. However, they are all pretty generic. They contain the common acne ingredients, and do not seem to have anything special in them. If most generic products work for your skin then you will probably have success with this one too. However, if you’re looking for something stronger there are other products on the market that contain more than just your normal dose of salicylic acid. They may also be the same price as these over priced products.

Murad is a skin care brand that was founded by a board-certified dermatologist named Dr. Howard Murad. Dr. Murad is also a pharmacist and an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine (emphasis on dermatology) at UCLA. Murad claims to be the first doctor-branded skin care company and apparently Dr. Murad still sees patients to this day despite his company’s immense success. Murad boast a couple of acne solutions but for the purposes of this review we will be focusing on the Murad Acne & Wrinkle Reducer. This product is asserts that it “rapidly improves skin’s appearance by alleviating existing adult acne, preventing the development of new acne, and restoring collagen to more youthful levels.”

Ingredients are listed as Kombucha Collagen Defense, Salicylic Acid, Fermented Black Tea Coenzyme A, Glycine, Alanine, Proline, Serine, Threonine, Arginine, Lysine, and Glutamic Acid. Salicylic Acid is a common and useful anti-acne ingredient that can assist in clarifying the pores to eliminate the onset of future breakouts. Kombucha Collagen Defense aids in the regeneration of collagen which gives aging skin a boost in elasticity and can reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Without any clinical documentation of successful trials and with no way to access customer reviews we feel that we have very little with which to determine this products effectiveness. The ingredients seem sound enough but we don’t see any spark that would lead us to believe that this is an above average product. With a price tag of $58 we would suggest looking for a more proven product or, at least, a similarly composed product at a lower price.

Sold at retailers such as Macey’s and Nordstroms, the Clinique Acne Solutions Clear System Kit has 3 pieces including a cleaning foam, a cleansing moisturizer, and a clarifying lotion. It is based on salicylic acid and “natural botanicals.” But those are the only ingredients named. However, when asked what the ingredients were, the description included details about a formula that would supposedly include a “mild, medicated, cleansing foam helps clear and prevent acne. Removes dirt and excess oil. Unclogs pores. Calms redness, skin feels soft, smooth, and comfortable.”

The thing we have found with Clinique products it that most people buy them because they sell in big retailers. They never really reveal ingredients, concentrations, or any other important information, and the Acne Solutions kit is no exception. They provide only minimal information, including one ingredient that most grocery store brands sell for about $10. There is no reason to believe that Clinique Acne Solutions would be worth your investment.

Providing you with an AHA/BHA Complex, a botanical acne mask, cleansing capsules, and a cleansing gel, Zenmed claims to offer organic solutions for your acne problems, stimulating the healing process within your skin while cleansing dead skin cells from the surface. Ingredients include glycolic acid, salicylic acid, witch hazel, and chamomile among others. The capsules contain ingredients like dandelion, chaste tree, forsythia, gardenia, honeysuckle, red dahlia, and milk thistle.

Most of the ingredients in the pill have mild diuretic and possible cleansing properties. Salicylic acid and glycolic acid could theoretically cause increased healing and acne reduction in the skin. But the formula only uses 2% salicylic acid. We would be significantly more impressed if it used 5% or 10%. 2% is not nearly significant enough to produce results. The only ingredient that is impressive besides that is witch hazel, and again, they do not actually provide the quantities, making us wonder if they use such an insignificant amount as they do with the salicylic acid.

The Zenmed Cleansing system sells for $99.95 for a month’s supply. We can’t say what exactly they are charging you for, though we suspect it is largely the packaging. There are no particularly powerful ingredients or concentrations in this formula, and the likelihood is it will do nothing for your acne.

A hand held electronic device, Zeno is one of the most recent rage of acne treatments. It works by heating the skin to 120 degrees for 2 minutes to kill bacteria and improve the growth of proteins to reduce inflammation. So how do you keep yourself from being severely burned considering the temperature is 120 degrees. They say you use replaceable tips, though we’re not sure how this is supposed to protect the skin, being that they claim the skin itself is supposed to be heated to that temperature.

The basic device is $150-$200, and the replacements for the tips range. However, even the manufacturers admit this expensive solution does not work on everything, and some even say it only works on extremely small blemishes, not blackheads, whiteheads, scars, surface blemishes, basically all the things you’re trying to get rid of. In addition, as we suspected, many have complained about the heat and discomfort associated with Zeno, leaving a burning sensation and commonly red marks. All things considered, we would be uncomfortable recommending Zeno to anyone.

Claiming to be “the only non-prescription acne treatment proven to work in medical studies”, Vitacure B5 must have forgotten about products based on benzyl peroxide, salicylic acid, or tea tree oil. They also claim that it meets and beats USP standards. The USP is the United States Pharmacopeia, which doesn’t do anything. They have guidelines, not standards, and there is no way for them to actually enforce or endorse any entity. While vitamin B5, otherwise known as pantothenic acid, can cause acne as a sign of deficiencies, there are quite a few others that can do the same thing, and deficiencies only account for some of the common causes of acne. Vitacure B5 does not actually name any of the other potential ingredients, leading us to believe they don’t have any. We would not suggest this solution that only targets a small amount of the population, if that.

An acne pill in some ways comparable to Accutane, Vilantae is prescription free and less expensive than some alternatives. It claims to reduce oil production in the skin and prevent excess oils from being released. However, many have complained that they experienced greater stool production, stomach irritation, and headaches.

In addition, many have found that they actually experience an increase in acne and not a reduction, which is the exact opposite effect from what people are buying this product for. The suggested dose is 15 pills per day, which is excessive for any product, and it also means you will be spending significantly more money to get through the month. We would not suggest this product.

Comparable to Proactiv in some ways, Triclear uses a 3 step treatment plan. The main difference between Triclear and Proactiv, the price tag. Triclear charges you a “discounted” price of $69.95 for one month’s supply. Are you kidding me? Why would you pay that much for a treatment that compared itself to Proactiv when Proactiv is cheaper, and other imitators are even cheaper than that!

Moreover, like many scams, Triclear does not actually provide any type of ingredients list, and they don’t even bother naming supposed main ingredients. What would motivate any buyer to purchase this product without any actual information. I mean do you buy your prescription medications from some dirty guy on the street who assures you they’re legit? Then why would you take that risk with your acne treatment?

Triclear allows you 14 days for your “free trial offer” and then they start shipping you that very expensive autoship program, which is extremely difficult to cancel. This is probably because if they didn’t do something like this, no one would actually continue to buy their product after the first time! If you need more evidence, multiple users have reported actually breaking out when using this particular formula. So if you really want to take the risk, go ahead. But there are so many obvious signs with Triclear.

Formulated by leading pharmaceutical companies, Tretinoin functions under several different names, however the main ingredient always remains the same. It uses a form of vitamin A, and they use varying concentrations depending on the name and on the needs of the consumer. The problem is that even with all the irritation this product causes and its prescription status, Tretinoin takes 6-9 weeks to show results, that is if it works at all, and the side effects have been reported to be extremely severe.

You can generally find Tretinoin at a cheaper price. But depending on the concentration, you could pay anywhere from $40-$180 per 45 gram tube. You obviously have to use it for at least 2 months if not longer, not really knowing if it will work for you or not, and we would not recommend it with the side effects. We would not suggest Tretinoin in various ways.