While hope can reassure us enough to keep ourselves from momentarily falling apart,  the idea of hoping and waiting for a treatable medical condition to magically get better is a path that will likely lead to frustration and failure.   

Are you putting on creams or taking pills with the “hope” of better skin “one day” ??

    If you are hoping and waiting,  you may be in for a very unpleasant surprise.  This condition does not get better “one day”.   If on the right road, this condition swiftly gets better in the first week of treatment.  If you have been on treatment for over 3 weeks and you think you are not getting better, any amount of hoping, wishing, waiting, or blogging will not increase your chances of magically getting better.   

Are you hoping and waiting to grow out of this problem??

   Don’t make this classic error.  I have 38 year old acne sufferers emailing me all the time with their stories of lifelong acne.  Hoping and waiting is the worst treatment plan of all…

Here’s an critical tip for all acne sufferers:

   The longer acne sits active in your skin,  the more stubbornly resistant and chronic it becomes.  If you hope and wait or get on a amateur treatment plan that doesn’t quickly inactivate you in a few weeks,   you are essentially missing your window of opportunity to crush and extinguish this problem early before it becomes a chronic condition.   I usually say,  ”If a cheap program doesn’t rapidly inactivate the problem within 2-3 weeks,  it’s time to step up to the best and safest treatment plan possible to eliminate this problem sooner rather than later.”  

The Real Fears of Scarring:

    Besides making the active acne much more resistant, the biggest side effect of Hoping and Waiting is the continued wear and tear of the skin while you wait for a magical improvement.   This can’t be emphasized enough.  If your treatment plan is not rapidly inactivating your skin in the first 1-2 weeks of treatment,  you are risking 3-Dimentional scarring on a daily basis.  You have to understand that time = scarring.  It’s a race against time and every day you wish, hope, or wait is another wasted day that could have been spent healing with an true expert in the field.  

“What if I’m already seeing a top dermatologist?  should I still not hope and wait??”

     The simple answer is that you never hope and wait.  Ever.    I never put down the work of other doctors because I’m positive there are many great dermatologists out there with massive passion for this needless suffering.  However, regardless of reputation,  if your doctor can not reassure you that you are rapidly improving in the first 2 weeks,  then you have a real problem because you are being  left alone with no other option than to hope and wait…

After reading this, many people may ask…..,

“Well then….,   How long does it take to show real improvement on Dr. Neal’s Acne Bootcamp program??”      

 If you are not confidently improving on this program in the first 48 hours, something is wrong and you will be expected to contact Dr. Neal by email with some urgency.   48 hours is the longest we ever wait in this program.  Ever.

What if I’m already on Accutane??  Should I still not hope and wait??

     If you have made the careful and wary decision to start accutane,  many will tell you to be patient.  As much as I agree with this idea in general, there are problems with this scenario as well.  If you are having massive inflammation during your full course of accutane, then you risk scarring up your skin pretty badly.  Even worse,  what if you patiently wait for these pills to work and then you end up getting unlucky and remain active?    Should you hope and wait for another course…?   how about a third…?   (We’ll discuss the pros and cons of Dr. Neal’s Acne Bootcamp vs. Oral Isotretinoin in another post)    

Bottom line here:   If you are not rapidly getting better while on accutane,  you should try to see your doctor twice as often to make sure he or she knows of your progress or lack there of.  Unfortunately,  Accutane is not the cure for acne.

    One of my goals as a physician who has developed a large practice in a era where people are wary  of medicine, doctors, asking for help, and emotional coaching is to push the new idea of, “The side effects of Inaction”   Rather than being scared of treatment, my goal is to get people to understand the dangers of inappropriate or lack of treatment.  These real side effects include scarring, increasing the stubbornness of the condition, mental and emotional deterioration, introversion,  and victimization.  

**The side effects of inaction should be feared above all else.

-Dr. Neal

©2009 “Are you still Hoping and Waiting??”  by Dr. Neal Schwartz

©2009 “The Side Effects of Inaction”  by Dr. Neal Schwartz