unfortunately, my lovely, very hairy german ancestors passed their hairy genes to me. so i've been shaving(very gently) my mustache. but i have adult acne that never really goes away, so now it's on my upper lip too. when i just left it alone, i never had acne there.

anyone have success preventing acne there?

are you sure it isn't ingrown hair(s) from shaving? that sucks.

i guess it could be an ingrown hair. sometimes there's just a bump that i can feel, but others can't see. it's not red, or anything today. sometimes painful, like when a zit is swollen. just really annoying.

It sounds like ingrown hairs. I recommend waxing instead. If you must shave, make sure to use shaving cream and shave with the grain rather than against it.

looking up the symptoms, it doesn't sound like ingrown hair. neither eye brows or lip is ever course, or shaved often. always done with the grain, and we're talking rarely, like once a month, maybe less. there's no 'stubble' it's all grown out when i notice it again. no razor bumps. i've had those, but not on my face.

I had issues with both acne and facial hair in my 20s (well, since puberty, but my 20s is when I decided to really deal with them). I swear by 2 things - electrolysis for the hair, and liberally applied 2.5% benzoyl peroxide for the acne.

I tweezed instead of shaving, but yeah, it caused little bumps. They weren't ingrowns, either, they were irritation bumps called pseudofolliculitis. I just thought it was bad acne, but they completely cleared up when I stopped plucking and started electrolysis.

For the rest of my face that had actual acne, the 2.5% BP cream was like a miracle. I use a thick layer every morning, let it dry before my moisturizer, and since I started doing this 6+ years ago my face is clear. Very occasionally I get a pimple related to TOM, but I would say only a couple times a year.

2.5% BP is harder to find than the 10% stuff in Oxy or Clearasil, but worth it. I buy it online at danielkern.com.

HTH!

the acne creams you're talking about don't seem to be that effective for me. what does work, is using an aspirin paste. lately though i used it too long and it dried my face out. so i stopped using it for awhile. thanks for trying to help thoguh. i guess i need to be more consistent.

Consistency does make a hige difference for me. I know that if I miss a day for some reason, a pimple WILL show up. How weird is that?

Good luck!