So I was prescribed retina (tretinoin cream, just the generic stuff) at a 0.025% Strength. Used it for 2 or 3 months and then they upped my strength to 0.05, and I also began using Tetracycline for 3 months.
My skin was pretty clear, only a few breakouts, still was dealing with a lot of red marks and scarring. Anyways, I stopped using the antibiotics because I was only supposed to be on them for 3 months, and about a month or so later I started breaking out again. It's mostly confined to my chin, and jaw line but closer to the chin. It also coincided with a trip a took and was eating nothing but pizza, bar food, and fast food for about a week. So I don't know if this new on set of breakouts was caused by my diet (Mind you I've never been the kind of person to be able to pin point certain foods with breakouts) the fact that I stopped taking the antibiotics, or maybe shaving? Cause all my break outs are around where I shave and I have begun shaving more because my acne scars have made my hair grow in patches and it looks ridiculous.
I also haven't gone back to my derm because I moved cities a few months ago and would have to find a new one.
Any thoughts?
Should I find a new derm and try to get more antibiotics?
or see if I need a higher strength cream?
Just stick it out and see if my skin levels out again?
Time for accutane?
Hmm. I have heard that you are supposed to decrease your dosage of antibiotics and come off them slowly. Maybe that's the reason? If so, and if the antibiotics worked for you before, then it might be a good idea to start another course that is either longer, or still 3 months but ease off slowly rather than immediately stopping. And are you still using Retin-A now alone, without the antibiotics? I also heard you are supposed to do that to keep the acne under control and again, to give yourself less of a sudden change by stopping everything at once. If that didn't work then I would seriously consider Accutane if your acne is moderate-severe.
I know a lot of people don't agree with me on this, but I don't think diet really has *that* much to do with acne, at least from my personal experience. I think it's pretty much genetic but I guess different things work for different people. I've had acne for about 8 years and during one whole year, I decided to eat pretty close to 5 fruit and veg a day, drank absolutely nothing but water (no milk, juice, soda or alcohol. Nothing). I never went to fast food places at all, the closest thing to eating something unhealthy that year was a nut snack bar. And I'll tell you what, I saw very minimal change in my acne if anything for all that hard work. The only change I noticed was my skin was slightly less oily, but I still broke out just as often and was certainly never pimple-free. So I gave it up after a year and decided if I'm going to suffer from acne anyway, I may aswell enjoy delicious food while I'm at it. So I think it was the antibiotics rather than the bar food. I could be wrong though.
I'm not too sure what effect shaving has on acne, being female and all, but I can tell you that it's not necessarily shaving because I get 90% of my acne around the same area as you - all around the jawline but mainly closer to my chin. God, my chin really has taken a beating over the years. I get such huge pimples there that the scars look like there are chunks taken out of my skin. Which reminds me, can I ask, did you find Retin-A to help your scarring at all? I'm currently on Epiduo and want to switch to Retin-A because I heard it helps scarring.
I heard I was supposed to taper off the antibiotics, so I just kinda took it upon myself to start taking one a day as opposed to 2, for the last week or so. I never asked my derm how to do this so I'm not sure if I did it right or not. I was just kinda stumped cause I knew I could break out after the antibiotics stopped as I had read people get that reaction, but I didn't expect it to start almost a month after I stopped taking them (If that's the real cause)
I agree with you on diet, although I have never done a huge drastic diet change, I just never notice that big a difference. The only thing I think that does cause it for me is energy drinks and pre workout supplements, those I found made me break out in cysts.
I have been considering accutane as I feel like if I had just done it years ago I could have saved myself all this trouble, but I was/am so worried about the initial breakout, and all the side effects. I recently read it can cause hair loss which may or may not be permanent and that's very troubling.
I'm still using retina at night, and started using clyndamicin again in the morning on active pimples. (Didn't have to use Clynd. a few weeks ago before I started breaking out again). I actually found that since using retina my scars got worse, because I actually got more of them. I had some shallow scarring and when I started using retina I got a pretty bad IB, mostly cysts, that caused a lot more scarring, and now my scars look worse than ever. The red marks seem to go away VERY slowly but I heard that it's supposed to help with that. I just started using aloe vera gel straight from the plant, and I think that's been helping more with the scarring. It's just so hard to decide when and how to use what, cause I'm supposed to be using sun screen too for the scars, but there's so much stuff on my face as it is, and it makes my face WAY too oily. (I already have really bad naturally oily skin that I haven't been able to find out how to stop, another reason I've been considering accutane)