Our Top Topical Herbs for Acne

The Holistic Herbalism Podcast

When you’re dealing with a skin problem, it’s good to come at it from both directions: internal and external. Today we’re focusing on the external remedies, highlighting some of our favorite ways to work with topical herbs for acne.

Steam is a great way to deliver aromatic herbal constituents to the whole surface of the face, and as the warmth opens the pores, these can get deeper in to the skin. A simple rosewater toner is great to tighten up the pores afterwards. Clay masks are good on their own, but even better if you mix herbal powders in to contribute anti-inflammatory activity. Echinacea and turmeric aren’t well-known for it, but they’re actually both fantastic herbs for acne – the trick is to apply them topically, not just ingest them.

So even if you already take herbs for acne by tea or tincture, or as supplements – and those can help in a lot of cases – don’t neglect the topicals!

Herbs discussed include: chamomile, yarrow, thyme, lavender, rose, echinacea, turmeric.
Our Integumentary Health course covers acne, naturally, but also a wide range of other skin troubles – whether we call it eczema, psoriasis, or just “that troublesome patch of skin”. Topical applications for common herbs play a big role in this work, and we also dig into the effective herbs you can take orally to see results on the skin. Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with Ryn & Katja.

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You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!