When nothing else works, sufferers? final response to what they regard as their intractable condition is to see a physician. By this time, of course, patients are likely to be distraught by their ?horrible? acne. In too many cases, influenced by their patients? concern, physicians overreact by prescribing antibiotics or Acutance.

In rare cases, truly intractable acne may justify the use of these, powerful drugs in spite of their cost and potentially serious side effects. They should be used only in the very rare instance when our Acne Cure program has been fully implemented yet the acne still persists.

Side effects from antibiotics fall into three categories:

1. Some patients complain of immediate unpleasant side efficiently than such as severe headaches from tetracycline, dizziness from minocyline, and increased sun sensitivity from both.

2. Antibiotics destroy some microorganisms more efficiently than others, changing the bacterial balance in our bodies. As a result some of these microorganisms usually kept in check by “enemy? bacteria, may find that enemy weakened and therefore have chance to grow unchecked. For example, many women who use tetracycline find that they fall victim to vaginal yeast infections.

3. Finally, there is a longer-term problem which may prove to more serious than the other two. The bacteria in our bodies tend to ?learn? how to withstand specific antibiotics by evolving n strains that are resistant to them. Thus, if you use such drugs necessarily (for instance, to eliminate acne that can be easily curd by simpler means), you may remove a potential cure for a much more serious disease. Indeed, indiscriminate use of antibiotics has been widely decried by many leading physicians. Nevertheless, antibiotics remain widely prescribed for acne. For example, an estimated 10 percent of all tetracycline sold in the United States is prescribed for that purpose.

Even more draconian than antibiotics is the ?ultimate? acne cure, namely Accutane . This is a highly effective but somewhat dangerous drug of last resort. It works by inhibiting the production of sebum, and it is almost magically effective against even the most severe acne.