For as far back as I can remember, skincare has never been my thing because I’ve always had flawless skin with a routine as simple as a shower and slap of whatever lotion is available. I moved cities 5 months ago and my forehead started tweaking.
I started seeing these small non-itchy skin-colored pimples (for a lack of a better word) that has subtly but progressively become more prominent over the 5 months to the point that it’s become noticeable enough for me to decide to do something about it.
This was me in mid-July
I like to self-diagnose a lot because I can’t afford expert opinion and I honestly think they’re just going to ask and consider the same questions I find from my research anyways, so I did some digging into it and I’m going to tell you what I’ve found. I’m going to start with general education on acne, to sort of take you through my research so that you can eventually see how I narrowed things down and why I chose the product I landed on. I’m going to try to explain this in a very non-technical way because I believe this could be relevant to a lot of people who are dealing with or have had acne-related issues. So…
When a lot of people think of acne, the pronounced bumps on their faces is as far as their concern goes. They don’t try to understand the basic process that reveals the bump – oil and skin cell build up. You’ll see later how much that can inform your choice of what products to buy and what to focus on.
You can get acne for a number of reasons. The most common one is that your skin is just making too much extra oil, and when that oil is trapped underneath your skin and collects skin cells around your hair follicles that need shedding, guess what happens? That bump.
You’ll see different colored pumps in people with acne. The common ones I see are the ones with white tips called whiteheads, and others with darker coloration called blackheads. Whiteheads are what I described previously as what you see when the oil and skin cells are trapped beneath the skin and clog the pores (which is why they’re called closed comedones). Blackheads are similar – and usually start out as closed comedones - but they’re open (makes they’re called open comedones), so the oil and dead skin cells oxidise due to exposure to air, and turn black.
So if you look at my face from the first picture, you’ll see that I have many almost similar “rashes” the same color as my skin, with white tips at the edges. That’s a characteristic of closed comedones, so what that told me was that my skin was likely making too much oil right now which is trapped with dead skincells, and what I was seeing was just an inability to properly remove that excess oil and dead skin cells, as well as bacteria that that environment might’ve grown.
At my job, something we advise clients to do when a process is out of control is conduct a root cause analysis. So I took our advise, except I did a cause analysis and not really a root cause analysis because I didn’t trace far enough.
As I’ve already demonstrated with the two types of acne, there are maaaaaaany different types of acne, so it’s very important that rather than just looking for a product that treats “acne” I find one that solves the underlying issues that led to my acne in particular.
If I just buy an acne clearing product, new bumps will just keep popping up once the old ones are cleared, so that’s not really sustainable.
So since I’m interested in cutting the oil build up, I need to change the lotion I’m currently using (Nivea Cocoa Butter) – which ironically literally has “Dry Skin” on the front label. I don’t know what my oily-skinned ass was doing using that lotion for close to 10 years now, but AYE don’t change the system if it works I suppose(?)
I looked for and found this Cerave AM Facial Moisturizing Lotion. It’s oil free and has sunscreen combined cos if you look at that photo of me up there, my forehead seems a bit sun-burned (maybe I’m just in denial of how dark my forehead has gotten, but it is what it is), so that sunscreen bit was a very important factor in my decision.
What I’ve described so far is the preventive action I’ve put in place to first reduce the number of new bumps I get before I even begin attempting to clear the ones currently on my face, which would be my corrective action.
So for the specific acne product, I bought Adaferin Adapalene 0.1%. How it works is that it opens up your pores (rash) and prevents new dead skincells from building in and clogging up again (new rash).
That Cerave lotion I bought, I look like a ghost when I walk out with that thing on my face. And before you say I’m applying too much like my co-workers, I’m not. I apply one pea size over my entire face, and 4 pea-size 4 dots for my forehead, left and right cheek, and my chin. I honestly wish I knew this before buying it because the white cast is not cool.
Also, I’ve been using both products for exactly 5 days now and yeah, you should expect skin dryness and peeling (something like skin flaking off). To be fair, I did find a decent amount of people who have used it talking about this, and some even advising that you start applying it 2-3 nights a week, and increase the frequency if you don’t see any irritation. And even though skin peeling is normal with adapalene, it’s something I thought to give you a disclaimer about so you go into it with your eyes open. By the way, multiple people also suggested getting a cleanser, and I feel like a cleanser is not that different from just washing my face with soap and water, so I ignored that.🙂
I’ll make an update post 2–3 months into using these products to see if they’re working or not. Until then stay tuned for the next post I’ll be sharing :)
I don’t have a natural picture of me from the past few weeks, but this was me yesterday. The picture was taken with snapchat though, so there’s a light filter on my face which might not give an accurate reflection of what my forehead actually looks like right now. I was also directly facing the sun, so….
