I tried using lemon juice and toothpaste to get rid of my acne

Last week, my family moved into a new house. Moving into a new house involves a lot of schlepping boxes back and forth from old house to new house, and a lot of schlepping involves a lot of sweat. Sweat – my dear enemy – produces my other, worst enemy: pimples.

Since I didn’t have time to go run to the store and buy any products to deal with my problem, I went for the do it yourself approach. Using an easy to make lemon juice remedy for one persistent pimple and toothpaste for another, I decided to see which one would work better for any future uses. Now that I have the results, I thought it was only fair to share.

Day One

So, on night one the two pimples I chose to subject to this were red and definitely visible, but not white heads, so definitely not at their worst. The first pimple was on my forehead, and that’s what I chose to use the lemon juice on. Using instructions I found here (number two on the list), I washed my face and applied some lemon juice to the pimple. Because I have sensitive skin, I added some water to the juice so it wouldn’t be as potent. I smelled like a car freshener and it was great.

The second pimple was actually on my chest, and you can see it on the bottom of the picture above. I subjected this lovely (not) one to toothpaste. I didn’t find the idea for toothpaste to dry up pimples from the internet, I actually got it from my dad. Since I was a kid he always put toothpaste on his pimples, swearing it would dry the suckers up. I was always curious if it worked, so what better time to test it than the present? Just so the toothpaste wouldn’t get everywhere during the night, I put a band-aid over the pimple.

With my pimples sufficiently taken care of, I headed off to bed, excited to see what the results would be in the morning.

 Day Two

The following morning, I got up for work and checked on my pimples. Following the instructions once more, I cleaned the lemon juice off my skin with some cold water. When I looked in the mirror, I was shocked to see that it worked! The pimple definitely wasn’t gone completely, but it was significantly smaller and less red.

On the other hand, when I removed the band-aid from my chest and got a look at the toothpaste pimple, I found that there wasn’t much of a difference at all. Now I just had dried toothpaste on my chest, and that plus acne is not a good look (and it’s surprisingly hard to clean off). Sorry, Dad, but it looks like when you dolloped toothpaste on your nose to dry your pimples, you were just making yourself look like a doofus.

For the sake of science, I followed my lemon juice and toothpaste regimen for two more nights. By the morning after Day Three, the forehead pimple was essentially gone! The lemon juice really did work; I even forgot to wash my face one night before putting it on and it didn’t seem to matter.

The chest pimple was also on its way to disappearing by the end of this journey, but I think it had more to do with the passage of time than the toothpaste. So, if you’re stuck with some acne and don’t have any acne cream/time to buy acne cream, using some lemon juice is a great way to quickly reduce their size and redness. Toothpaste, not so much.