Forms of Acne

 
It has long been held in military strategy that knowing your enemy is essential to defeating your enemy and that is a principle that can be taken from war and transposed to the battle against acne.  While all forms of acne have one main underlying cause, the symptoms as well as the ideal treatments are different depending on the type of acne involved.  All forms of acne can be divided into two major classes based on whether there is inflammation along with the acne or not.
 

Inflammatory Acne

Acne that has inflammation as one of the major symptoms is known as inflammatory acne.  There are four major groups within the inflammatory category into which acne problems can be further divided.  Conglobata is one of the rarer forms of acne inflammation and can be differentiated from the others through the presence of a large infection through bacteria.  Papule acne is arguably the most prevalent and in some cases can be so mild that it is almost unnoticeable, but most of the time manifests itself through barely felt bumps or slight pinkish discolorations.  Nodules are the larger acne types that have pus come out of them and can be quite painful, although overall they tend to be rarer than Papules.  Finally, the last form of inflammation acne is the Pustule which is a smaller and more colourful version of a nodule.
 

Non-inflammation acne

Non-inflammation acne is not quite as diverse as its inflammatory counterpart.  Non-inflammation acne is divided into two major types and they are names that almost everyone is familiar with, even if they have never had acne before.  Blackheads result when there is a push of material out of the skin from under the skin with excess melanin, while whiteheads come about because of the same push, but a lack of actual penetration above the skin’s surface.
 
Those are the basics of how different types of acne can be divided up into the different groups.  The reason this type of understanding is important is that different acne treatments will be more suited to a particular type of acne and this information is sometimes even given on the box of the treatment.  Knowing what type of acne you have can therefore help you make more intelligent treatment decisions.