Well I personally always noticed improvement very fast like in first week, but I've tried only lymecycline and doxycycline, alas minocycline should work even better. To be honest I advise to stop oral antibiotic, they cause more harm than good, but if you want you can wait another week or two. 50mg twice a day is low-medium dosage I would say, it's stronger than other cycline antibiotics, besides it's possible that antibiotics deal with acne not by killing bacteria bu lessen inflammation. I woud advise to try BP and some topical retinoid, and try to stop oral antibiotic as fast as you can. Topical clindamicyn is hit and miss, only topical that worked for me was BP. Hell, even toothpaste was better than topical antibiotics its possible that your skin bacteria is resistant. As far as I know bacteria can't be resistant to BP or at least it happens very rarely. If antiobiotcs don't work it's [possible that your acne is different, maybe in reality it's food allergy etc. If you can do a elimination diet. I mean start with something plain like rice and chicken breasts and then add another things. Don't drink milk. Change pillow sheets as often as you can. If you start using BP and topical retinoid don't be scared if in firsts weeks you get breakouts.

4 hours ago, Umas said:

Well I personally always noticed improvement very fast like in first week, but I've tried only lymecycline and doxycycline, alas minocycline should work even better. To be honest I advise to stop oral antibiotic, they cause more harm than good, but if you want you can wait another week or two. 50mg twice a day is low-medium dosage I would say, it's stronger than other cycline antibiotics, besides it's possible that antibiotics deal with acne not by killing bacteria bu lessen inflammation. I woud advise to try BP and some topical retinoid, and try to stop oral antibiotic as fast as you can. Topical clindamicyn is hit and miss, only topical that worked for me was BP. Hell, even toothpaste was better than topical antibiotics its possible that your skin bacteria is resistant. As far as I know bacteria can't be resistant to BP or at least it happens very rarely. If antiobiotcs don't work it's [possible that your acne is different, maybe in reality it's food allergy etc. If you can do a elimination diet. I mean start with something plain like rice and chicken breasts and then add another things. Don't drink milk. Change pillow sheets as often as you can. If you start using BP and topical retinoid don't be scared if in firsts weeks you get breakouts.

Thank you for the response. I have two topical creams; differin (adapalene 0.1%) and clindoxyl (clindamycin 1% & benzoyl peroxide 5%). However, I used clindoxyl for 3 weeks and had no change or improvement. I used differin for two weeks straight about a month ago and ended up with eczema, red, dry, painful skin from it so I stopped using it and my skin healed from that pretty quickly after stopping. This is why I'm giving up on the topicals right now and going to try just using the minocycline antibiotic and water only / leaving my skin alone method to hopefully heal and balance itself.

I have a feeling my skin is in the state it's in because of birth control. Before I ever started using birth control in my life, I had clear skin. Once I started using birth control, which I recently found out all contained the same type of androgen containing hormone progestin, which is known to cause acne and it did. I'm getting my progestin containing iud removed in February, so hopefully my skin will clear up when it is removed.

In the mean time though, the minocycline will have to due and I'm going to stick with taking that every 12 hours, twice a day, and just going to stop over working my skin and hopefully it will heal up like that guy's skin did in the YouTube video discussing the water only / leaving it alone method. It seems like the minocycline isn't helping much, but who knows, maybe it is but since I'm impatient I just don't see the subtle improvements..

What dosage of which antibiotic were you on when you noticed improvement within a week?

It seems then that antibiotics will not help you too much...
I don't remember dosage, because I started using antibiotics over 10 years ago, and last course was 5 years ago. But lymecycline it was 150 mg or 300 mg, I'm not sure. Just remember that minocycline is stronger. My acne was always inflammed type, and oral antibiotics just worked always from the start

I've been taking Minocycline for 2 months (April and May, gave up after 2 months because of almost none improvement.) I'd say 100mg of minocycline is already a pretty high dosage. My derm didn't even let me take 100mg of Minocycline for more than 2 and a half weeks. In these 2 and a half weeks my skin was under control, but after I had to switch to 50mg a day it was a disaster. Like I wasn't taking it. It basically did nothing, I saw only a little bit of improvement when taking 100mg a day.

Unfortunately the thing with these antibiotics is that it only works while you're taking it. So after you stop taking it, your skin will most likely go back to how it was before. For example Doxycyline cleared my skin completely, to the point I had baby skin again. Unfortunately a month after stopping Doxycyline my skin got worse.