Safe Spot Treatments!

This post also appears at the Purely Primal Skincare Guide blog!
Are there alternatives to harsh spot treatments?
If you’ve watched my blog video on what to do when you get a zit, you know I’m a fan of a few natural spot treatments for blemishes. (And one a little less natural, but useful under the right circumstances.)
If you’re a Purely Primal Skincare Guide owner, you’ve got the lowdown on a few other favorites as well.
In this post, I’m giving the rundown on three MORE spot treatments that are really effective, non-toxic, and gentle on the skin.
So many people are looking for more natural alternatives to harsher, skin-thinning treatments like benzoyl peroxide, and better approaches than just popping, picking and hoping for the best.
But since most “spot treatments” don’t really work like they promise, it’s tough to know what to do. Do you opt for the harsher stuff, or try to keep it natural?
The natural treatments I like really work, and for even more firepower, I think there’s a great middle ground between safe, effective and natural – which I talk about in this post.
Spot treatment 1: Ice, ice, baby!

ICE your blemishes. ICE THEM. Don’t pick at them. Ice them – the second you notice they’re forming.
Icing reduces inflammation, the circumference of the blemish and its irritation. Wrap an ice cube in a thin washcloth and apply in a few 5-minute cycles: hold it against the blemish for one minute, then remove for 4 minutes. Repeat three times. And from there, STILL don’t pick or pop.
You can ice a blemish in five-minute cycles several times a day for several days in a row.
Spot treatment 2: Melaleuca (Tea Tree) Oil from this company

Okay. So I’ve had mixed feelings for a long time about tea tree oil. While I generally recommend it as a safe essential oil treatment that can be used undiluted on the skin, I started to feel like it just worked….eh, okay.
I’ve used tea tree oil with varying levels of success over the last decade, and I started to realize that my clients felt the same way: some loved it, others just didn’t see a difference.
Then, I tried the tea tree oil from Young Living. Look, I don’t often talk about the brand-specific essential oil stuff, but the truth is: I don’t think I’d used the good stuff until I used YL’s tea tree oil. It works every single time.
All I can assume is that the various brands of tea tree oil I’d bought at the store were simply not uniform in quality or potency. That’s the only explanation I have for my lukewarm experience with it prior to this.
If the store-bought stuff works for you, fantastic. If not, and you still want to try a natural, non-toxic, effective essential oil-based spot treatment, think about trying the YL brand. You can get signed up whole-hog through me at this link and IT’S UP TO YOU whether you sign up for the discount as a distributor by grabbing a starter kit (if you’re ready to jump in to the EO world feet-first, that would be the right option) OR simply sign up as a retail customer to grab some of their tea tree oil.
Either way, you won’t be disappointed. The cost is higher, but the effectiveness blows other tea tree oils out of the water (and I’ve tried them all).
Spot treatment 3: Zinc-based treatment with green tea extract

Since spot treatments are just dabbed on small areas of the skin, not used anywhere and everywhere, and because the effective ones really do keep you from picking, popping, scarring and introducing more irritation and bad bacteria to those nasty zits, I think it’s totally acceptable to use products that are just sliiiighly less than completely natural.
The Zit Ender from SkinActives fits that bill.
It actually is based on some great, anti-inflammatory, natural ingredients, including zinc, which can help regulate bacteria and sebum production, and components from green tea that show amazing promise for acne.
While it’s a more complex product than I normally opt for, it’s definitely one to try!
Thanks for reading!