Some companies started with the idea that you had to fight the problem from the root, thus from inside the body. So it is for the American company Frutels, which concocted natural black chocolate, a combination of minerals and vitamins charged with stimulating the skin’s defenses to fight the causes of acne and cleanse the skin from within. This kosher product, containing neither sugar nor artificial ingredients, appears to give results in less than two weeks. Help: Clear Skin from the British company Works with Water, which came out in September 2009, appears to reduce pimples by 95% in two months. This first soluble food supplement of the sector was developed with the ingredients maker DKSH. Available in a ready-to-drink version with a raspberry or rose water flavor, it contains Praventin, a bioactive protein rich in lacto-ferrin and Aloe vera .

Like in other skincare segments, accessories are gaining terri-tory. Along with an anecdotal Japanese MP3 player that delivers negative ions to attack acne (just think!), or Panasonic’s Pore Cleanser, whose role is to unblock pores, a great deal of work is being done to achieve results as to the Propionibacterium , alias P. acnes bacteria, the main bacteria responsible for the appearance of pimples. How? Some products like Zeno from Tyrell are betting on heat, which uses the reaction of micro-
organisms to thermal shock to spur their self-destruction; and others are using light, like the California company Therative with its ThermaClear device, and the Israeli company
Lumenis with its ClearLight. The latter is the first FDA-approved device for treating acne – which it does by destroying the famous P. acnes bacteria. Still others combine both; like No! No! Skin, which destroys pimples and speeds up the healing process. In short, things are evolving; it’s just that highly inflammatory acne still hasn’t found its master. It remains to be seen how things will unfold.