First off, I am a long time lurker here and found that reading peoples personal experience with various acne treatments has been very helpful/comforting for me.

So this post is basically a way for me to keep track of my progress while at the same time hopefully allowing other curious lurkers to maybe find some relief.

My background with acne is as follows.(its loooong. My B5 regimen is at the bottom if you want to skip ahead! Lol).

So I started getting pimples around age 13, and it was just a few white heads here and there. I guess typically puberty teenager stuff. By the age of 15 it had gotten worse which prompted my mom to take to our general doctor for some advice. Over the next year or so, he had me on various creams and started me on birth control. Nothing worked topically and the BC only worked marginally (but, now thinking back, I had no idea that messing with hormones could affect my acne, so I would purposely skip pills in order to get my period when it was convenient for meooops.) Anyways, after nothing was working and me messing up my hormones with my inconsistent BC, I was finally sent to an actual dermatologist who immediately put me on accutane. At this point I was 17.

Being on accutane was okthe worst things I experienced were dry lips, eyes, and my skin just overall looked really bad. Like, I had no color and I felt as though I looked ill a lot. I also was unable to tan my face for about a year after taking accutane (not tanning beds, just being outside naturallyid have tan body and white face, lol).

Anyways, accutane took a long time to actually get rid of my acne. My derm kept upping my dosage to the point where I was taking what he said was the equivalent of what he gives his male 180 lb patients. I was this little, 51 girl weighing around 107 at the time. I was even on it for an extra 3 months. I really didnt see any improvement in acne at all till the 3^rd to last month. Then my skin was great! I kept taking BC and was given Minocycline to maintain clear skin.

Fast forward 2 years. Acne was back. Not severe just very stubborn and persistent. I was still randomly messing up my BC pills so im sure that was to blame and I was still unaware that skipping around on pills was messing up my face. (lack of education on my part). I was still on Mino (yes, I know thats bad for being on an antibiotic for that long, but again, lack of education and I had no idea Mino was actually a antibiotic. Just knew it helped my skin.) I started developing side effects to the Mino. I developed a skin condition called paniculitus (sp?) which went away as soon as I stopped Mino. So I was switched to Tetracycline. Acne came back. Back on accutane. Same story as before. This time, my skin stayed clear for about 5 years with the Mino/BC combo. Now this time, my side effects from the long term Mino were a little worse. Persistent head ache, vertigo symptoms, paniculitus came back.but I ignored this not knowing it was all related to Mino, I know the paniculitus was, but didnt care.

So there were still periods of time when I was skipping around on my BC pills and had bad months but once I got consistent, my skin cleared up again rather quick.

So BC and Mino were my regimen for about 5+ years and my skin felt under control.

About 9 months ago I got a new job, so was without any insurance for about a month so was unable to refill my prescriptions during that time. I freaked out knowing that going off and on BC can mess up your face pretty bad. To my surprise, the month without BC or Mino was good. I felt like my skin looked better! Well, insurance kicked in and I went back on BC for actual BC reasons (I finally learned to be consistant with the pills now lol). And I didnt take the Mino anymore because I finally educated myself on the bad effects of long term antibiotic usage. My face felt ok, but I had a bit of a scare before starting my BC again so I took the morning after pill. After looking back on the timeline of when my acne got worse I feel pretty confident tracing it back to when I took the morning after pill.

Dont get me wrong, Id rather deal with acne than an unplanned baby, but still.acne sucks.

I recently did research and found out that lots of girls get bad bad bad breakouts from the morning after pill. With such a high dose of hormones entering your body all at once. Well, at the time of my breakout, I had no idea it was linked to the morning after pill. So I went back on BC and my skin was still bad, so I went off BC, had another scare and took another morning after pill, and skin got worse! I decided it was much cheaper and less stressful to just stay on regular BC pills, and hoping it would even out my skin again so about 2 months ago I began regularly taking BC pills again.

NOW..we are caught up with my current state of skin. I literally spend my nights before falling asleep searching for acne relief and have tried all kinds of stuff. Cod liver oil, which I actually still take because it helped my kertosis pilaris (sp?) on my legs even though it did nothing for my face. I tried apple cider vinegar pills, I tried using an Epsom salt mask which kind of helped existing acne but didnt prevent new ones from forming.

So as I was reading about apple cider vinegar, I read someones very simple comment saying ACV doesnt work, all you need is B5. Thats all it said. I was interested so I did my research on B5 and oh my!!!! From reviews on amazon, to reviews here, to other product reviews on various websites.i could not believe the success rate. So I decided to try.

And now, my current log begins! (sorry for the loooong back story)

I started B5 a little over a week ago.

B5

I also do an Epsom salt mask at night, half Epsom salt half water. I just have a huge bottle prepared and use a cotton ball to apply.

6/11: started with 8g a day

6/12: upped to 9g a day with 3 l-carnitine tablets a day

6/13: 10g a day, 3 l-car tablets a day.

Buy this time, I began to notice no new acne was forming and the older bumps were slightly going down.

This was my routine for a week. I wasnt really eating all that healthy and not really exercising. But my skin was looking good and I felt positive.

Day 8 came around, and I woke up with my skin from a week ago. 3- 5new pimples, little cyst like ones.

I thought this was because I didnt do the Epsom salt mask the night before, or because I had run out of my probiotic, or I was drinking white wine the night before I also was taking this yeast control supplement the previous 2 days called Azo, and I read it can cause some acne. So maybe thats what happened. I have no idea, but I was pretty bummed out because I felt like my skin was improving a lot!

I ended up picking at the new acne (bad bad, I know) I also added b-complex once a day and l-cysteine in place of one of my l-carnitine tablets a day.

So right now this is everything I takeI feel like a total pill popper, but plan on reducing it eventually:

• 9g of B5 (18 pills @ 500mg each) spaced out (6-4-3-6) I reduced from 10g because the b complex I take included 1 gram of B5 already.
• 1g (2 pills @ 500mg each ) of l-carnitine
• 1 b-complex
• 500mg (1 pill) l-cysteine
• I havent seen anything new pop up when I woke up today, just the disastrous effects from me picking and popping the previous night.

I am going to buy more probiotic today and add that back in as well.

Side note: after starting this whole B5 regimen, I noticed I am not as hungry and lost about 3-5 pounds. Which I am not complaining! i had gained about 15 lbs over the last 2 years so getting down to my usual weight is ideal for me, and if this routine helps then that is great!

I am going to update whenever I see any improvements/downfalls.

Please feel free to comment if you have questions. I know its only been a little over a week, but I hope to see some real results by the end of July.