Gone are the days of Lemon-up and Phisohex. In this high-tech postmodern culture of ours, we have the best opportunities, the finest options, and the greatest access to communications technologies, world wide information and personalized services. And we have the luxury of something our ancestors didn’t have: acne medicine.

The acne medicine of yore was sometimes dangerous, sometimes ineffectual with its best characteristic that it concealed blemishes temporarily. Sometimes worse, however, was the concealment of not only function but form.

Today, though, more knowledge and open-mindedness, more disclosure comes with the manufacture of acne medicine, medicine that is often as innovative as it is effective.

For instance, with the advent of Accutane (a capsule-form acne medicine used to treat severe—nodular—acne), came the serious warnings of multiple side effects. Especially for women patients, Accutane has been proven to cause everything from birth defects to mental disorder. So for as effectual as the medicine has shown to be the risks are as great and the warnings as honest.

Other manufacturers of acne medication are just as supportive of our need to become better self-informed before attempting to pursue a particular treatment. They will tell us what necessary precautions to take, what steps will be required to make the medication work best, and and how effective the product is--whether it will conceal, dim, or slowly make the appearance of acne change.

For example, with the intensely potent acne medicine, isotretinoin, we are told that because it is so powerful—working as Accutane does, when no other antibiotic or like treatments have worked—we must take it the “right” way: we must take it with food, must keep it refrigerated, must keep it out of the sun, and must keep it way from children at all times under all circumstances. In addition, we are warned against giving blood while using isotretinoin and should completely avoid undergoing any cosmetic surgeries or procedures…for at least six months after stopping usage.

It may seem daunting that acne medicine of today is fraught with so many negatives, but the very disclosure of modern professionals to contemporary users carries at least some positive, doesn’t it?