Shaving and acne
I personally think that this is a very important topic; an anonymous user posted the question on the last post about shaving. Here is my take on it, Happy New year to everyone as well!
To start, i'm only 15, which means I don't have a massive experience with shaving in my life, but I have had experience with shaving with severe acne. I have noticed that the less severe my acne has been, the better experience I have had with shaving; less bleeding, less after-math of inflammation and ingrown hairs, there is a whole list of things that shaving can cause.
As a point of reference I message Susanne Williams (My Dann© dermatologist) what she thought about shaving.
"It is not a good idea to grow a beard as this could cause folliculitis and the dead skin cells don't exfoliate. Best to shave, but not ever day as this will irritate the skin. I like to get patients on to the Alkaline wash as soon as possible if they normally shave everyday. Having the alkaline wash will kill the bacteria in the hair follicle. Also it will give the skin a few days with out having to shave."
I think that is great advice and I couldn't agree more. If I shave too often then I tend to get the odd spot where my sideburns tend to grow. Before I had my Dann© treatment, I would shave and have a break out the next day without a doubt breakout, I put this down to the products I was using (And I have used a lot of products in my time) a standerd Clearasil or Neutrogena cleanser didn't help at time; which was depressing *Sigh*.
Side note for new comers: The alkaline wash will remove the hair from the hair follicle, thus a much safer alternative to physical shaving.
Me and Susanne followed the same strategy mentioned in the quote; Alkaline wash, at the start of my treatment when I had very severe cystic acne I would not shave (I did before finding Dann©) until my skin got to a point where there was no more large inflamed pustules covering large amounts of the skin. This was around 2-3 months into my treatment I could begin to shave.
How to shave acne-prone skin:
1) Wash your face with lukewarm water, removing anything that's on your skin and preparing it for step 2.
2) Put a small amount of Dann© cleanser onto my palm, start to rub your hands together and after 10-20 seconds the cleanser becomes a lather, it should look white and feel more like soap(See photo below). This is perfect to use as shaving foam.
3) Cover the part of the face you intend to shave with the lather that you just made in step 2.
4) Begin shaving, I tend to go over the skin 3 times just so I get really smooth skin.
5) Rinse the razor blade every 10 seconds.
6) Once you have shaved your face to your ideal, again wash the face with the Dann© cleanser.
7) Apply your standerd products.
Side note: I tend to shave on the days when I am not using Retosin, this is just because I then have safety using all the other products which will help battle any spots that could be offset by shaving.(Which I will get to). I always wash before a shower, then use my hair products and once again use cleanser as the hair product may get onto my skin (Which will make acne worse).
Razor blades:
From my experience today, a 1 blade razor is not a good choice. It felt like it ripped the top layer of my skin off and I was sat for 15 minutes waiting for the blood to congeal on my face! (Everyone has been in this situation lol!).
From what i've heard using a 2 blade razor is the best for acne-prone skin, anything more is going to agitate the skin even more.
In conclusion; I will let you experiment, to be fair I cannot offer your great advice apart from the fact that I tend to use 2 blade and so do a lot of the Acne.org community.
Please post comments below if you have any further advice, any ideas of what I should next write about or to talk for advice.
Than you and as always take it easy. William x
*Moderator edit, URL removed - read the board rules*
