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Here's the backstory: I've had little to no acne before high school, but during my junior year, I started developing big, lingering zits that would leave brown marks. And so I started taking zinc, and have been taking it for about 3 years. It eventually improved my face into an almost perfect state, even when my lazy habits get the best of me. While it has been effective, I figured it would do me no good to take it long term, and so I started reducing my intake and I eventually quit about 9 months ago. My skin remained exceptionally clear until I decided to take daily ACV shots. During this time, I started getting a big cysts around my TOM (which I never did previously before starting ACV), and about two months ago, I had developed a clump of stubborn white heads, thus I stopped ACV.
While quitting the ACV, I also started incorporating zinc again about 5 weeks ago to counter the lingering acne. I guess you can say the tiny whiteheads subsided, but the process involved some of them becoming crazy inflamed and then finally dying down which left pigmentation. During the first week, I thought it was really helping, as the zits healed impressively quick. However, fast-forwarding through the month, I was breaking out quite frequently. I was growing weary, but assumed it was just the so-called purging phase. And even if so, this was quite surprising, as I have NEVER had an initial breakout from past experiences with zinc. And for 5 weeks?! My acne wasn't even that bad to start with! This is discerning, and I can certainly say my skin is looking much worse from before I started the zinc again. I am going to come off of it starting today to see if my assumptions are correct. Will update.
Meanwhile, I was wondering if any of you have experienced a worsening in your acne upon supplementing zinc.
Other details:
-I have taken the same brand and type of zinc all throughout the years.
-I have also been taking fish oil (omega 3s) consistently for many years, and it has never affected my acne. In fact, it probably helped.
-skincare routine has remained the same throughout the years as well
This would be the second day of being off zinc and wow..my skin looks and feels much calmer now. I realized that before then, I would have this slight 'bubbling up' feeling in my skin..I guess it's too early to draw conclusions, but I should add that my TMI should be coming around soon. If the zinc has been causing the acne, I would suspect it's due to a change in my hormones over the past year, as I'm 19.
I have also experienced breaking out from zinc! I have been searching frantically trying to figure out if i should continue? I am up to my 4th week of taking zinc but I don't know how much more i can take. I have big red pimples all around my chin and it is driving me nuts! What happened when you went off zinc, did your skin clear? My skin was also not that bad when I began so I'm starting to wonder if i made the right choice. Do you think it could be the purging stage?