Adult Acne and some newbie questions
I had perfect skin right up to age 23 (actually used to be a model
from age 18 to 22)...never more than a tiny zit once a month or so and
then . I had my third child, got my tubes tied, and my face and
neck just gradually went bananas...by 26 or so I was wearing
foundation makeup again after years of not having to...just to hide
the ugly little buggers.. The chinline and neck was a constant
mess...I am 31 now- and sometimes I feel so disgusted with my
appearance I want to crawl in a hole. My face is blotchy and uneven
toned, rough surfaced and scarring pretty bad for the acne... I could
never have imagined a little thing like your skin could make such a
difference in life - but my self esteem has taken a real battering and
I hate the way I look now. I keep thinking that there has to be
SOMETHING I can do to fix all this.
Anyone have experience with adult acne? The doctors have not pinned
down one thing - they say it is a combo of contributing factors -
aging, hormones, stress...all the over the counter stuff in the world
did NOTHING but make it all worse...now I am on 1000mg of
tetracycline, Yasmin BCP for hormone balance and retinA Micro gel
(which is drying my face to high heaven but working)...We are going to
stop the Tetracyclene next month as long as all goes well because of
the threat of liver damage and other side effects of long term use...
Questions...
How do you get rid of those terrible flakey skin days when taking
retin-A? I tried my doc's suggestion to skip days and use moisturizer,
but that does not help and my skin breaks out in between use days...I
am wanting to try home acid peel stuff - the lactic acid is supposed
to be good for blotchiness and scarring...or home dermabrasion...Any
suggestions or warnings for me before I go trying to solve this
problem?
What works on blotchiness and rough skin texture, scarring, etc?
Does anything help with broken blood vessels beneath the skin surface?
I have a patch on my chest that looks AWFUL...and I am not sure what
to do about it...
-It sounds like you may have rosacea as well. Acne treatments generally
don't work well with rosacea and I've found that many actually make it
worse.
I found that eating the right foods and not eating the wrong foods really
helped my skin. I need to stay away from refined sugars, nuts, and anything
with B12 in it.
-I'm a vegetarian raw foodist myself. All I can suggest is to cut back on
the soy. Soy can be rather difficult for many people. I can't eat it at
all as I used to be severely allergic to it. It also is a thyroid inhibitor
and can cause thyroid problems, if you are so inclined towards them. There
are a few websites on the web that talk about the dangers of too much soy
consumption. I would definitely cut back for a month or so and see if your
skin looks better. Then you would know if that was the problem or not.
Nuts also bother skin in certain people.
Yes, there are varying degrees of rosacea. However, none of us here can
diagnose your problem. I would suggest seeing another doctor for a second
opinion. The pictures you will see on the internet are generally worst case
scenarios and not representative of the general public.
You may want to try using aloe vera gel on your skin? That seems to help
mine a lot.