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AHA Mishap

MemberMember
5
(@tristabass89)

Posted : 01/11/2020 8:35 am

Hi Everyone!

I ran into a huge issue this week and wanted to share my experience about it so that just maybe other people (especially new people) can avoid it as well. I have been on the regimen 8 years but started to get acne about 8 months ago at my time of the month and realized I had been slacking on the regimen for YEARS. I guess my hormones made a change again and what I was doing wasn't enough to combat the hormonal acne anymore. I was on this board a long time ago, when I first started, and I had fairly severe acne. Took me about 7 months to clear and have my skin looking good again. I never really added AHA into my regimen, just for spot treatment only. Long story short, after I realized how bad I was slacking I decided I needed to get back on course because going so long without any acne and then having breakouts was really rough on my self esteem. I had myself at one pump BP in the AM and 2 pumps BP in the PM, but it took me months to get over the dryness. In fact, just this week I was feeling on top of the world, besides the fact that I was apparently not doing a good job rubbing in the BP - I literally have been letting it sit on my face to dry for years with no recourse. Worked for me, but didn't work for my lotion in the morning. I was walking around with clumps and did research to figure out why.

I was feeling good, looking good, skin much less red and flaky after months of dealing with it, so I decided its time to incorporate AHA. I put it on for maybe 2 hours before my evening shower, just because I didn't want it sitting on my skin too long. I went ahead and squirted out maybe the amount in the size of a quarter. HUGE MISTAKE. After I got out of the shower that night my face was lobster red. I figured it would be gone in the morning. Wake up the next morning, the night before didn't even cover lobster red. The my face starts drying out, so much so that I got some advice from the acne.org people and they told me to stop using BP until it heals. I know I should, but I just cant let all that hard work go out the window. Instead I decided to take the weekend off of BP and hydrate the crap out of my face, and trust me, I am piling globs of lotion on my face every 15-20 minutes because its THAT DRY. Its been so dry that its waking me up in the middle of the night, multiple times, to put lotion on it because its waking me up. Last night was better, maybe because I had no BP on my face and probably 60 drops of jojoba oil, and I took 2.5 Benadryl pills so that I was knocked out all night.

This morning, I get woken up by my husband who is going out to hunt at 5:30am and of course I had to lotion my face. But, I was able to fall back asleep for a couple hours still. Once I get up for the day I head to the bathroom and notice that some of the spots on my cheeks that were super red yesterday are starting to turn more yellow/tan. And I have a massive amount of dead skin on my face. I am thinking right now that this is good news because I read that after lighter chemical peels, it takes between 3-5 days for the skin to start peeling. I am hoping that it continues down this path today as I moisturize it like crazy and skip BP all day. I just hope when I go back to my BP, after a few days off, that my skin hasn't forgotten its tolerance to it.

I will keep adding to this thread with updates. I just wanted to share this HUGE mistake I made that has seriously cost me. When first using BP - go SMALL. SO SO SMALL. Just because your skin is adjusted or adjusting to BP doesn't mean it can take on a big load of AHA.

Eric98 liked
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MemberMember
5
(@tristabass89)

Posted : 01/14/2020 11:11 am

Just an update for anyone that might be interested....

I started using BP again after taking 48 hours off. Its been 48 hours back on and my skin has been a little wonky. I am only using 1 pump BP in the am and 1 pump plus a pea sized amount in the pm. The first round I woke up and my nose was full of tiny red bumps and still is getting worse. I am also having some small acne pop up along my cheeks, a bit under my eyes where I don't put BP. I also have lots of little tiny bumps coming out on my forehead. Its all manageable. I am sure this is stuff that the BP couldn't kill that sat for a few days. They say acne forms from weeks ago, but considering I hadn't had a zit in about 2 months before I screwed everything up and now do, it doesn't make sense. My skin gets red from BP no matter what, and just now it is starting to get a bit red again, but nothing like it was. I am sure it will take time for my skin to adjust again only because I used the AHA wrong. Even though my face is not dry (at all), I think it will become dry in the next few days, so I have been reapplying my CeraVe daily moisturizer every 2 hours or so, just to try and combat what may come. I am hopeful that my skin is still adjusted to the BP even though I gave myself the burn and took a couple days off, but only time will tell. I plan to use this amount of BP for maybe 2 weeks and see where I am at. I was using 1 pump in the am and 2 pumps in the pm before this all happened and was not breaking out at all anymore and I also wasn't rubbing the BP in. I have started to rub it in and am wondering if rubbing it in is an equivalent to the 2 pumps I left on my skin to soak in/dry. If I am continuing to break out I will SLOWLY start to increase my BP at night only. I used to have moderately severe acne and though it has been many years, I can deal with mild acne for a time to experiment. I wouldn't be experimenting at all if I were a new user, but considering the amount of time I have been on the regimen I feel fine to move stuff around and change stuff slowly to figure out what will work with me. I also know that my hormones are a big part of my issue and I am slowly working on that as well. I broke out in bad acne when I got off birth control at around 20 and I am now 31, but acne is genetic in my family so even if my hormones get settled I will still battle acne. I just hope that I can get away with using a little less BP. I will keep posting to this just in case it helps anyone.

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