Did Ann Landers help clear up your skin?

November 23, 2007 8:41 AM

Anyone had success with the egg-yolk-on-face treatment for acne discussed by Ann Landers several years ago?

Years and years ago, I know there was an Ann Landers column in which someone said that applying egg yolk to their face helped clear up their skin. I found the column here. Sounds like good advice. I've also seen mention of similar solutions here and in this previous AskMetafilter answer.

My questions are:
1. Have you had success with applying egg yolk to treat acne? If so, how, specifically, did you use it (how long, how often, etc.)
2. Is it more useful for big red acne cysts, or can it generally help red spots from previous cysts or pimples go away? I'm certainly interested in both.

posted by midatlanticwanderer to health & fitness (4 comments total)

My sister tried a million home remedies for her acne, including this one. None of them worked at all, including this one. See a dermatologist and get actual treatment. Acne is a medical condition, and there are medical treatments that can help clear it up, particularly, when you're dealing with cystic acne that has caused scarring in the past. Don't screw around with home treatment when you're risking scars on your face.
posted by decathecting at 9:21 AM on November 23, 2007

There's sulphur* in egg yolk - that's why eggs tarnish silver - and sulphur can be used in topical acne preparations. You can either use sulphur soap, which is relatively cheap when you can find it, or go to a derm and get what I did - nasty, sticky, expensive sulphur and urea soaked pads to use on my skin.

* sulphur, sulphur dioxide, among other things, of course.
posted by cobaltnine at 10:17 AM on November 23, 2007

I've done this before at the tender acne-ridden age of 14 and let me just start off by saying the results were not pretty. It seemed like something easy enough to do. The way it was suggested to me like in the column that I should beat an egg yolk and apply it to the face, then leave it on like a masque and rinse off with warm water.

I think I did it everyday for about two or three weeks and had to stop because the skin on my face had dried out so much it had had gotten excruciatingly tight. And I don't mean like my skin was slightly flaking and dull and dry, I mean it had an unnatural sheen to it as if the skin had been processed and pulled tight across my face and I was tight and smooth, no pun intended, as the surface of a peeled, boiled egg wrapped tightly in plastic wrap. And around the time I quit it kind of started to hurt to put the yolk on my face. Though my skin felt incredibly shiny and slippery like a plastic surface, the acne hadn't really gone away if I remember correctly. I think it just felt like the acne was just under the surface so maybe it kind of worked? I just remember how damn uncomfortable it was and I was actually pretty scared because it got to the point of hurting to make any sort of extreme expression and I thought I'd done some hideous irreparable damage to my face and would have to live the rest of my life with tight-skinned face like the Joker.

Who knows, maybe it would've worked if I'd stuck through with the regimen or maybe it was the fault of the eggs, I have no idea. I just remember feeling like a character in a Stephen King novel who had managed to anger a egg gypsy and got a curse placed on them.
posted by kkokkodalk at 8:55 PM on November 23, 2007

Oh, oh, when I was 12, I did the egg WHITE treatment. I kinda liked the way it made my face feel, but I don't know if it helped with anything or not. Report back?
posted by salvia at 1:09 AM on November 24, 2007