Professor of Clinical Dermatology Department of Dermatology Timothy Berger, MD explains why not removing your make-up can cause acne.

Dr. Tim Berger: Yes, so, in the 1960s, the research group at the University of Pennsylvania, which was led by Dr. Clidman and Dr. Layden looked at the formulations of cosmetics and they did find that some of the ingredients that were put in cosmetics actually worsened acne or could cause plugging of the hair follicles and so what happen is the cosmetic industry has basically eliminated most of those products and even labeled cosmetics now has non-comedogenic.

So, cosmetic acne is not so common except in one group and that is in people who use hair products that are oily and then get those hair products on their forehead, usually African-Americans are people with more tightly napped hair and that causes them an acne called pomade acne from the pomade that is used in the hair, but other than that, cosmetic acne is less common.

That being said, there is a combined irritancy effect. So, if you take patient’s with acne who are washing a lot because they feels that their acne is worsened by not being clean and are applying viscous stringent and bad product, if you tell them simply to stop putting everything on, their acne will often improve 40 or 50 percent and that is because there is follicular plugging, but all of these irritations, sort of blows all of those pimples up and they are a lot worse and just leaving the face alone, actually can go a long way in keeping the acne under control.