Perhaps start off with a chemical peel of some sort, maybe mild to moderate strength.

You can you your BP in the day with a sunscreen. And ONLY at night Retin-A, and do not manually exfoliate because that will aggravate your skin, since Retin-A sensitizes the skin.

Start with health and shave your beard and shave at least every 3-4 days.to effectively treat your skin you need right conditions.

Please See a derm, I do not know that retin-a is the right treatment for you. It looks like you have blackheads all over your pores. you need something to dissolve this. Have you tried Salicylic Acid peels. you can also post your pictures on realself.com and see what the doctors say for free.

On 7/31/2017 at 9:13 PM, beautifulambition said:

Please See a derm, I do not know that retin-a is the right treatment for you. It looks like you have blackheads all over your pores. you need something to dissolve this. Have you tried Salicylic Acid peels.you can also post your pictures on realself.com and see what the doctors say for free.

I have an appointment with the derm in late August. If your referencing the black specs on my upper cheek, that is beard stubble. I exfoliate my face with a salicylic every other day. I have been using retin-a on and off for a couple years but I'm still dealing with textural issues and some minor scarring. I want to do a peel, but I haven't looked into in much yet.

You have quite a lot of smaller ice picks and enlarged pores/scarred pore then.tca peels at high strength will help reduce them and their appearance.

Instructions for TCA peels and TCA cross are in the faq - top post of the acne scar sub, goto the tca section, then the all things peel link. I would get the acne under control first or you could make things worse.

Retin-a is perfectly good for blackheads. Those are not ice pick scars, and I really don't think you should be doing TCA Cross on those. Those are classic blackheads. A TCA peel would be more appropriate than TCA Cross.

https://www.realself.com/question/retin-a-removes-blackheads-white-heads-extraction

But those aren't black heads! The only oxidization I have is on my nose. What you see on my cheeks is my hair folicols. My facial hair grows thick and full all the way up to my eyes haha. My pores are large though and there is some scarring on my cheeks. I will wait and see what my dermatologist suggests.

If you got some type of scar,taking mobile phone pics shows scars as small blotchs and i saw some,i know as i take pics of my face so understand how smaller boxcar,enlarged or scarred pores appear on a photo,so yes you have more likely scarred or ice pick type scars.they show up as a kinda brownish darky color.