michael i was just referring to squeezing. just leave squeezing alone/out.

Tim

It's not Tim's fault that he's perfect!

lol corey if only!

Tim

michael, i will tie ur hands onto a bed post. so u can't touch ur face.

my face is very oily today and whilst the breakout is over, i have noticed the appearance of a lot of tiny clogged pores on my forehead

it's weird - I think my face us suffering my first true breakout post tane and I'm trying not to touch . My forehead is breaking out in small clogged pores and my cheeks have some too as well as Pre spot bumps . Resisting the squeeze urge - cut the acid and trying to cut the toner - back to basics ! I think the acid us purging my pores but I'll pass on it ! Will wait a few days after I get back to diet and workout to see if it clears up a bit - still way better than any Pre take skin issue though ... Touch wood ! I find working out is great fir my skin and beating oil - guess you sweat it out heh

Don't stress. If you're oily, use Neutrogena Deep Clean!

I went back to it, despite the fact that the sulfate used is supposed to be irritating (meh). It's the one cleanser I've used on/off for YEARS and have always liked using.

I've been using that for a few days now and my chin bump is almost gone and everything else is clear! Pores are big but they haven't been small since, um, I was 10? (My first post in this thread was something like..."I don't really get acne, but my pores are HUGE").

im gladddd things are clearing up for you torri.

My face is very iffy, i think it was the mandelic acid purging the pores, but im coming off it and going back to what was already working just fine, i hope my skin doesnt hate me forever now. ILOVEUSKINDONTHATEME

still getting plenty of little clogged pores that are almost whiteheads here and there.

Looks like this one could be a losing battle. Trying to do the right things for it. But nothing seems to work, i guess my skin just wants to break out but accutanes effects are telling it not to.

Not sure if i should throw the towel in and try Benzoyl Peroxide again. It's certainly not fun for me having these bumps and tiny pimples. I hate my face.

I am going to give it another fortnight and then i'll re-evalute what i need to do for my face. But whatevers up right now im getting a new clogged pore or two a day. It's worrying, and i HAVE had a couple of whiteheads.

what the hell is a clogged pore? can you take a picture? is it a whitehead/blackhead, or just redness?

I'm not doing well in the shaving department. I bought some Tend Skin, so that should even things out... My skin looks okay otherwise, but those chin bumps are still annoying me (idk if they're acne or razor bumps -- probably both) and they don't react to any topical. I think tea tree oil reduces the size temporarily but worsens things in the long-run.

Outside of my chin bumps, I have one "whitehead" that's too big to pop. Anyway, I also came back home realizing my face was all red, to the point that it looked like my natural skintone is TOMATO with the exception of my eye area.

Needless to say, I think this is the Neutrogena Deep Clean (the one that was actually clearing my skin up...ugh) because I don't clean my eye area (so that's probably why that part wasn't red).

Anyway, my Purity sample is gone (and it didn't make me feel clean enough anyway), bar soap and I aren't getting along, and the redness causing Neutrogena isn't going to work. I guess I'm back to MenScience.

Its basically usually a tiny raised bump, like a pore full of crap, without becoming "white" or red. you can feel it, you can hardly see it, but it is there.


Im a bit stuck for my options right now.

so am i

should i try BLASTING these bumps with 10% benzoyl peroxide? 2.5% doesn't do shit. my face is already red so what do i have to lose

I dunno, I cant give advice since it seems im in the throngs of my own breakout. I hope its just a case of the poor diet from the last two weeks being to blame.

Libs is never in the right place with her catchphrases.

I have no idea what my next move should be. Im afraid to run off to products again, as it didnt really help matters get any better before.

I was considering a Dermatologica clay cleanser, but that shit is redonikulously expensive for what is, essentially, a trial.

So yeah, my face is OILY as FUCK right now, and it seems that by moisturizing ive actually helped kill some of the oil bizarrely. I need to be working out again as that always helped strip oil from my face, sweating it out perse.

I kind of want to find a sulphur soap. I hate how with skincare there are so many contradictorary people. One camp says alcohol, the other no. One says get an antibacterial drying soap, the other says drying soaps make things worse. One camp says go on ahead and do a regime, the other says avoid products and let your skin do its natural thing.

It's so difficult to know what to do. All i know is proactiv remains the only effective topical ive ever used, and i miss having an effective skincare regime.

The oil i suffer right now is shitty because its very sticky and grody, and in addition my skin texture is very shitty, like i have lots of bumps under there somewhere. Touching it proves there are none, but it doesnt LOOK that way.

Oil is back about 3 hours at most after washing. Still getting clogged pores and mini-spots. Think its time i spoke to a derm again about wtf i should be doing.

hey Michael,

Dermalogica kinda blows. If you're talking about the Dermal Clay Cleanser, I've always been curious about that but my past experience says "ROSS: NO." My mom bought me the Special Cleansing Gel in HS and it felt great for about a week and then my face only became more oily. I've tried some of the other stuff in their line (Active Moist -- which I used for years, The Clean Bar, Daily Microfoliant, and the Clearing Mattifier) and it's never been worth the cost. Some of their sunscreens also notably lack UVA protection...DDF and Peter Thomas Roth are far better "doctor-oriented" lines if that's what you're into.

Ironically, you might want to set your oil with jojoba oil. It'll actually make you less oily.

But in general...keep it simple, stupid! If I were you, I'd try a regimen where you use 1) a basic gentle cleanser, 2) spot treat any existing spots with benzoyl peroxide at 2.5 or 5%, 3) moisturize with jojoba oil and sunscreen. Maybe you can use a toner in place of a cleanser at night (I'm partial to Baxter's Mint Toner, btw)

I had a doctor's appointment today and my doctor was like "i'm surprised your acne hasn't scarred. you have so little of it, but it's persistently around your cheeks and jaw. do you want to try accutane." That's one place I won't go. I don't think he knows much about acne but he prescribed me Retin-A (sigh) and Duac (5% BP + Clindamycin or w/e). I have no idea how I'll mix these into a regimen.

I always forget how amazing Tend Skin is. You need to be careful with it, but the shit (basically pure alcohol -- IT'S FLAMMABLE -- and acetylsalicylic acid aka aspirin) works wonders on razor bumps/burn/and sometimes acne!

oh and I tested bar soaps like crazy last night, trying to find the right one.

I think I decided my favorites would be:

1) Cuticura Antibacterial Bar for Blemish/Acne-Prone skin (!)


2) Dermalogica The Bar
3) Neutrogena Classic Bar
4) Cetaphil Antibac Bar

And Michael, you might like Menscience Face Wash. I have about 70-80% of a bottle left. Though I imagine it'd cost a fortune to ship it to the UK.

It's 3% glycolic and 1% salicylic, + no extra weird extracts of anything

im not allowed to be near glycolic post-accutane, i think, for a few months; but that was a kind offer!
I feel maybe picking up a Salcylic cleanser might be a plan, but SA never helped me in past, i think it actually made things worse once. I need a cleanser that will take away the oil without overdrying. Right now the dead-sea and acne.org cleansers are just not cutting it. Within 3 hours im getting oily again.

I dunno if my diet might be the problem as im still consuming a helluva lot of fizzy drinks without even noticing.

BTW i tried duac and retin-a.

DUAC worked great for a couple of weeks for me but then it lost the battle - my skin was pretty fucking bad about this time though

RETIN-A did shit all for me, unfortunately, and i was so hopeful because it looked like it'd be a great maintainence product.

Duac is once daily btw, so use it at night and retin-a in mornings.

The reason i went on accutane was to stop pumelling my skin with products and having to worry about breakouts, guess that was for nothing heh. I cant say that, im lucky because my skin has improved a great deal since accutane, but its already on a downward slope in a number of ways since i stopped. I dont think my course was long or strong enough, but the side effects were bad regardless.

You can't use retin-a in the morning because it's not photostable...

I've used retinol (at 0.5%) and the retin-a cream. Both work as long as you keep up your usage during the breakouts, since both exacerbate underlying acne. I'm just not fond of the redness. The gel version of retin-a doesn't have isopropyl palmitate, which is pore-clogging. So I'm hoping for better luck this time...and I'm going to try and do it very carefully...

Are there any beauty shops that sell Dermalogica near you? You can usually sweet talk them into giving you a sample. I was able to get a sample of that Purity (about an ounce, too!) just by talking to one of the annoying reps for a minute.

The Special Cleansing gel, btw, will probably be far more gentle than the Dermal Clay thing. From reviews, that sounds like washing your face with a mask every day. Eek. It's unfortunate their products never work for me because as a male, I'm definitely attracted to the "clean" looking bottles (esp. more than Purity, with its long quotes about magic and whatnot). I think that's why I used Kiehl's products for so long, too.

My face has cleared up substantially, to the point that people are complementing my skin (which, tbh, was never that bad before!)

I think it's all thanks to the tretinoin gel.

I'm expecting the dreaded tretinoin IB in a few weeks, so I'll keep the Duac nearby...

My regimen consists of a few products now. I think the "keep it simple, stupid" ideology is working

Cleanser - Dove Soap (the Yellow one!)
Scrub - ClarinsMen Active Face Scrub (only before shaving)
Moisturizer - Olay Complete "Ageless" SPF 20 or CeraVe (which is for the body but I guess works for the face too!)
Shave - Urth Shave Cream
Razor Bump stuff - Tend Skin
Shampoo - Dove
Styling - Sumowax

great! its a testament to the power of tretinoin i guess.

I had iffy skin in edinburgh, but no new major spots for a long time, mainly clogged pores ive squeezed to make worse. Im leaving my skin well alone now and things are getting better. Red marks take a while to fade after tane though.

i use Fudge products, and only Fudge products for my hair.

i use standard Nivea Moisturiser.

L'oreal cream for my eyes.

you can just use moisturizer on your eyes; there is no ingredient proven to improve dark circles

well the L'Oreal stuff is basically moisturiser.