Hi, any advice would be much appreciated.
I'm a 21 year old female and have been on the combined pill for about 5 years which alone has not been able to clear my acne. I've been using a salicylic acid wash and 5% benzoyl peroxide wash followed with cetaphil moisturiser consistently for a couple of months now and seen some improvement overall (less frequent breakouts and only small whiteheads in general). However the other day I thought I'd try applying my BP without following up with a moisturiser and by the next evening I had a huge breakout of red inflamed comedones on my forehead and red marks (but no heads) all over my cheeks, as well as dry skin around my nose and mouth (which I often have anyway).
Does anyone know if this is likely to be caused by attacking my skin with BP and not using moisturiser? I assume that I caused such a violent unbalancing of my skins oils that it overreacted and has now caused this massive breakout but I can't be sure as my period is also due in 2 weeks which I know is a common cause of breakouts - however I haven't had a reaction like this on my forehead since I was a teenager that I can recall!
BP will dry out your skin, eg. less oily skin. But when there's too little oil, the sebum will go into hyper-mode to replenish the depleted oil. Thus, it becomes a vicious cycle.
On top of that, you're also using a chemical peel, which increases the rate of exfoliation. So what you have done only made the oil gland more paranoid and crank out ever more oil than before because it now thinks that more oil is being used, when in fact that's not the case.
So definitely cut back on BP and the peels.