I'm so over my stubborn skin...
Does anyone else get deep nodules that appear, then go dormant, then flare up two or three times before actually going for good?
It's not my diet, I have a relatively healthy diet, I avoid dairy and too much sugar and gluten. When I do eat badly, I barely dents my skin.
It's not hormonal because my skin hardly relates with my hormones at times of the month, however I do get the nodules on my cheeks, jawline and the sides of my chin.
It's hardly bacterial because Duac and BP 5% doesn't make a mark on the nodules, it only gets rid of the few white heads I get on my forehead.
It's not oil because my skin is hardly oily, in fact it's most oily on my nose, where I barely get any spots.
It's unlikely to be genetic because my parents and wider family all had/have fine skin.
The only thing I can get to is poor skin cell turnover, although my skin is not dry, it is flaky sometimes, however salicylic acid (a BHA or AHA or whatever it is) gives me horrible open-lesion acne where I don't even normally get it and has no other effect on the rest of my skin. It seems that nothing fits together!
I have a prescription for Retin A from a couple months ago that I was hesitant to get, would it be likely to help my kind of acne?
ABSOLUTELY ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED.
Birth control is what eventually helped me, but you have to give it time. I don't think it really kicked in until the end of the third/beginning of the fourth month I was on them. You have to give your body time to adapt to the hormones. It kinda felt like it started working over night, suddenly I had clear skin(of acne, still had a lot of red marks) after struggling for the longest time. I have now been on birth control for 5 month, and the acne is showing no sign of returning, though I'm scared of what will happen if I go off birth control. I am all for treating the root of the problem, topicals and stuff doesn't really get to the root of why you have acne. Also I had minimal side affects. I had hormonal acne, but birth control don't work that well on cystic acne. When do you tend to flare up? If it is around the same time you have your period, it is very likely hormonal. Hope this helped 