The most important thing is not to get them; once you get them, it’s hard to get rid of them.

1. Keep your fingers off your face. Don’t touch. There’s nothing as oily as your skin that will cause a zit, even more than anything you might eat.

2. Consider staying away from tuna fish except for freshly cooked tuna fish. It has iodine which makes my face break out, even good quality tunafish salad in a restaurant does this. Salmon from the can is not the same as tuna fish from the can. I don’t know why except maybe that it doesn’t have iodine.

3. Wash your face a lot with facial scrubs, not the bars of soap normally kept in a bathroom. Do this after eating; don’t let the oils from meals just sit all over your face.  I use a benzoyl peroxide scrub and topical solution two times a day, after lunch and at bedtime.

4. Get a facial with a drying mask twice a year. It gets rid of things that build up such as blackheads and some zits that just never seem to go away; it is good for the skin and is overall a relaxing way to spend an hour.

5. Take a shower before bed. That way your skin is really clean when you go to sleep and you have a topical solution on your face during the night. Otherwise you sleep with skin that has not really been cleansed of its oils from what you did during the day.

6. Use a good shampoo that’s good for you. I have a lot of dandruff; I was using Denorex for years but I got something from the Supercuts haircut chain that works even better and is probably not as strong on my scalp and yet keeps the flake away and makes me feel less oily as the day progresses than I used to feel.

7. Get a good night’s sleep. I get zits when I don’t sleep well and I find that things that come up will often go away with 2 good nights of sleep in a row.

8. If you have something that is truly a problem, you should go to a dermatologist to have it removed instead of trying to do it yourself. You may just create a bigger problem in the long run by trying to get rid of something that has become impacted.

9. I had a moderate case of acne for years. The drug Acutane has side effects during the few months that you take it, such as drying out your lips and nose (Blistex helps for the lips), but it had a profound effect on drying out my skin and it definitely made a difference in helping make acne more manageable, even years after I stopped using it.

10. Get haircuts every 2-3 weeks and have your hair cut short and thin to reduce oil buildup on the scalp, which leads to increased acne on the face and forehead.

11. Repeat: Stop touching your face. That’s the most important rule. It’s also wise; the most common way to get infected is to touch your mouth, nose or eyes.