Acne.org Products
Day 19
I'm coming up on 3 weeks now and my skin is still pumping out oil. Honestly I was hoping to see at least a small reduction in oil by now, but then again, until a few days ago I was only taking one pill every 2 days. I think all of the gunk in my skin is being pushed to the surface because my nose looks and feels really bumpy and rough.
One thing I've noticed is that I bleed a lot more easily when I squeeze out the sebaceous filaments on my nose. In the past I could give a blemish a pretty good squeeze and only suffer from a bit of redness. Now it seems like almost every time I extract something from a pore, a gush of blood follows it.
Again! and Polyspast are you both doctors? even more dermatologists? NO?really?? oh... i thought u where..by seeing how you are teaching us to live.. and saying things you don`t know fully..or at all..
btw Martin Beaudry.. how did you manage the derm to prescribe you this in low dosages. and has he done that before?? just thinking about my visit
Are you a doctor? Nope. Hypocrite.
Day 23
My oil production finally seems to be slowing down. I first noticed this yesterday when I blotted the oil off my nose after 2 hours and the amount of oil on the blotting sheet was equal to what I usually see after just 1 hour. Same thing today.
I'm not getting too excited yet since I know that oil production tends to go up and down in the first few weeks before stabilizing, so things may worsen in the coming days.
Day 29
It's been just over 4 weeks now and my oil production has significantly reduced. To illustrate the difference, I'll show you two pictures I took of the oil-blotting paper that I use to blot my nose. The first picture (from December 19, 2010) shows how much oil I used to blot off my nose after 3 hours, and the second picture shows how much oil I blot off my nose now after the same amount of time.
You can see that I obviously produce far less oil now.
While I'm happy to see such striking results, it's revealed something to me that I hadn't realized before, namely that my nose is just shiny. It's always been obvious that the skin on my nose was more... reflective than the rest of my face, but in the past I always assumed it was due to the excess oil on my skin. Well, now the oil is disappearing but my nose is still shiny.
I think it's probably due to all of the exfoliating that my skin has endured over the years. I don't need to use exfoliating products anymore seeing as how I don't get acne, so I'm hoping that the shininess will go away over time by simply leaving my skin alone.
So I'm not exactly dancing around in the streets yet since my problem isn't quite fixed. The fact is that my nose is still shiny, but at least it's not as bad as it used to be.
Day 35
Now that my oil production has reduced, I'm cutting my dosage back down to one pill every 2 days. My ultimate goal is to see how little I can take while still enjoying the oil-free skin.
I'm very happy with the results so far. One of the best things is that the sebaceous filaments on my nose, which have been a permanent feature of my face for the past 6 years, are gone. In the past I used to wake up with at least one sebaceous filament every day. It's a great feeling not having to worry about that anymore.
In fact, it's a great feeling not having to worry about acne period anymore. I feel invincible. All those precautions I used to take like being careful not to touch my face, washing my face twice a day, applying acne medications, and being careful about what I eat are irrelevant now. It's extremely liberating, and a just little surreal, to drop a lifestyle that consumed my life for years.
Only possible side effect worth mentioning is that I think my cheeks are a little more red now. My cheeks have always been slightly rosy and prone to flushing in the hot or cold weather, but it seems slightly more pronounced now. It may be in my head though.
Wow, it does seem like it's making a difference already! I have questions though, and excuse me, I don't mean to hijack your thread but...
I'm planning on obtaining accutane also, and I noticed you purchased it online. How did you know exactly what dose/doses to take, and for how long? Hard to decipher without a doctor advising you, or maybe I haven't researched enough.
Wow, it does seem like it's making a difference already! I have questions though, and excuse me, I don't mean to hijack your thread but...
I'm planning on obtaining accutane also, and I noticed you purchased it online. How did you know exactly what dose/doses to take, and for how long? Hard to decipher without a doctor advising you, or maybe I haven't researched enough.
I saw a lot of people on Acne.org having success with taking one 10mg pill a day, so I thought that was a good starting place. I don't know yet how long I'm going to take it. I don't want to be on isotretinoin for a long time, but I'm not ready to declare a specific cutoff point.
Just to be clear, I am NOT endorsing buying isotretinoin online. I know that sounds hypocritical, but I went down this path as a last resort, and only after spending many hours weighing the pros and cons and doing research.
Try to get a prescription from your dermatologist. Tell him how much acne or oily skin is affecting your life, and that you only want to do a low-dose regimen. If he doesn't give you a prescription, go to another dermatologist. Just because one turns you down doesn't mean all of them will.
Just to be clear, I am NOT endorsing buying isotretinoin online. I know that sounds hypocritical, but I went down this path as a last resort, and only after spending many hours weighing the pros and cons and doing research.
Try to get a prescription from your dermatologist. Tell him how much acne or oily skin is affecting your life, and that you only want to do a low-dose regimen. If he doesn't give you a prescription, go to another dermatologist. Just because one turns you down doesn't mean all of them will.
Just be safe. Don't get stupid with Isotretinoin.
Just saying. Be smart about it and research. Day 39
Wow. It's only been 4 days since I cut my dosage down to 1 pill every 2 days, and my oiliness is already back with a vengeance. I'm going back to a once-a-day dosage right away.
I'm conflicted because I like the oil-free skin, but I'm worried that the isotretinoin is causing my face to become more red. I definitely blush more intensely than I used to. Part of me is hoping that my cheeks are just slightly sunburned since I have to walk outside sometimes at my job. I'll start wearing sunscreen and see if the redness calms down at all.
Day 48
I FINALLY got my first blood test results back. I've been trying to get an appointment for the past 3 weeks but the office kept telling me to call back next week. Anyway, my doctor says everything looks very good. Kidney, liver, cholesterol, blood sugar---it all checked out. He had nothing negative to say except that he thought my LDL levels could be slightly better. So that definitely puts my mind at ease.
Believe it or not, my oil production still hasn't reduced to what it was a couple of weeks ago. I can't believe that cutting the dosage in half for just 4 days caused such a drastic regression. My oiliness is slowly decreasing again, but lowering the dosage clearly set me back by a week or two.
As for the redness on my face, I'm positive now that it's caused by the isotretinoin. It's not that I'm always red, but that my face flushes much more easily and strongly than it used to. This is particularly noticeable after I take a hot shower and my cheeks glow bright red for 2-3 hours afterward.
Day 58
My oil levels have finally subsided to what they were 3 weeks ago. My advice to someone who has just started taking 10mg a day like me is DON'T try lowering the dosage, at least not in the first month.
I mentioned a while ago that I'm still dealing with shiny skin on my nose, despite the fact that my oiliness has decreased. I found a temporary fix for this by using Monistat Chafing Gel, which has some ingredient that reduces shine. Many women use it as a makeup primer. I couldn't use it in the past because my nose would pump out oil and push off the gel, so it only gave me about an hour of shine-free skin before the oil ruined everything.
Now that I don't get as oily, I can use the gel and significantly reduce the shine on my skin for a few hours. I don't go anywhere without putting it on first.
Great to hear your oil has reduced again. It's more than a bit suprising at what a difference lowering the dose for a few days made, live and learn i guess.
Have you seen any initial breakout by the way? I recall you saying spots aren't you primary problem so I'm wondering if you've suffered or not.
Great to hear your oil has reduced again. It's more than a bit suprising at what a difference lowering the dose for a few days made, live and learn i guess.
Have you seen any initial breakout by the way? I recall you saying spots aren't you primary problem so I'm wondering if you've suffered or not.
Before I took isotretinoin I was mainly dealing with sebaceous filaments (these things: http://tinyurl.com/3eomm6c ) and the occasional pustule, so my initial breakout just consisted of more of those two things. From what I've read, it sounds like the initial breakout people experience is typically a more severe version of the type of acne they already get.
Day 74
Pretty much since the onset of my acne 6 years ago, my nose has had a splotchy redness to it, particularly in the creases on the sides. In the past I always assumed it was due to squeezing acne blemishes and using a bunch of products on my skin. But the absence of oil and acne that I've been enjoying for the past 2 months has brought something interesting to my attention: my nose is red for non-acne related reasons.
After doing a bit of research online, I think I may actually have seborrheic dermatitis or rosacea. I definitely displayed some of the symptoms: redness, oily skin, pustules, rough skin texture. The oily skin and pustules are gone now thanks to the isotretinoin, but I'm still dealing with the other two. Now I just have to figure out whether I have seborrheic dermatitis or rosacea, if I have either one. I can't believe I may have been trying to treat the wrong thing (acne) all this time.
As a side note, I'm going to start experimenting with lowering my dosage again, but this time I'm going to take it much more slowly. I'm going to start by skipping a pill every 6 days. If everything still looks good after a couple of weeks, I'll try skipping every 5 days, then every 4 days, and so on until I find my threshold.
Jofo, thanks for the update, I've taken a leaf out of your book - i'm dividing (with some mild difficulty!) a 20mg cap of Iso into 3, so i'm getting 6-7mg a day. No change whatsoever yet though, however i only started 11 days ago.
If i'm not mistaken a low dose of Iso usually sorts out, at least temporarily, rosacea, there's dedicated forums to it and i'm sure i've seen people saying they're taking 1 or 2mg a day and getting good results, so i'm not sure it's that.
Yeah, don't get discouraged if you're not seeing results after just 11 days. It took me 3 weeks to start seeing a reduction in oil, and I was taking more than you are. By the way, how exactly are you dividing a 20mg cap into 3 parts?
With regard to rosacea, low-dose isotretinoin seems to be hit or miss. I've seen people say a low dose helped their rosacea, but I've seen more people say it exacerbated their rosacea. Of course, it doesn't really matter what other people say since I have seen for myself how isotretinoin has made my flushing worse. I'm sure it does help some people in that regard, just not me.
Dividing it into 3 is a very rough science, I heard accutane can degrade with contact with oxygen (no idea how true or by how much) which is why in capsual form it is suspended in oil. I read, most likely on one of those rosacea forums how people used a small sewing pin to pierce the cap and squeeze out a little. It's definatley not great because the first day you obviously get a fair bit of oil with only a little active ingredient, compared with the third day where i finish the cap off and after cutting one open to see i suspect i'm taking about 12mg of the 20 in there on the third day. Perhaps their active ingredient is blended better in than mine though.
Is there a reason you don't just take one 20mg pill every 3 days? I've seen people have success with taking one pill every few days. You probably don't have to physically split up the pill. You might be delaying results by creating exposure to oxygen, not to mention I've heard the stuff inside the pill can irritate the esophagus.