10+ years of painful bacne

Hi Reddit,

I really need some help with solving my persistent back acne issue. Since it’s a prolonged issue I’ve done a lot of research and have come to learn there is no “one type of acne” or skin blemishes so I’ll try to provide as much background as I can. For the record I do not have a dermatologist in my city to diagnose me.

I am also a bit of a “granola” I don’t like using harsh or abrasive chemicals. I went that route through puberty and my face only got better when I started following the “less is more treatment” with cold water and soap. I feel chemical heavy creams etc often exacerbate my issues or create new ones/sensitivities as well they are often times overly expensive.

I have never had so much as the he odd pimple on my face through puberty and my back acne seemed to get much worse after high school (going from 3-4 large pimples that would come to a head on my back to now having many small red bumps and deeper red bumps that are under the surface. This runs all the way down onto my buttocks and the rear sides of my thighs with a high proportion of deeply imbedded “unpoppable” pimples down there.) I have never popped or picked at my back and have always resisted doing so.

I am extremely hygienic always washing right after my frequent workouts/runs The only things I have found to help is switching to beeswax/goats milk bar soap and using that to clean my body and hair while using a lufa to reach all spots on my back and rinse with cold water to seal pores before I get out.

I used to only wear the cleanest laundry never rewearing shirts and clean my bed clothes each weekend but found the “extra clean” shirts were making it worse so I have switched to making my own detergent which helped but has not completely resolved the issue. I’ve been struggling with this for 10+ years since puberty and have no dermatologist, nor do I have the time to properly self test 20+ products individually for months at a time.

Any suggestions or stories of what have worked for others would be really appreciated in helping me get to the root cause of this. I do have a naturopath if that is worth looking into.