How I Cleared Up My Acne in 2 Months
Within the last couple of years I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with my skin. In my teens and early twenties I never really paid much attention to my skin. I got occasional, mild breakouts while I was on my period, but other that I had no complaints—life was good. It’s only been in the last 2 years that I’ve seen a change in my skin and the types of breakouts I was noticing on my face. I started getting deep, cystic acne around my mouth and chin that would take up to a week to go away. Sounds cute, right?
My breakouts weren’t happening every day, but it was often enough to the point where I felt self-conscious when I wasn’t wearing makeup. When I looked in the mirror the first thing I would see were my pimples and that really bothered me. I tried so many different avenues to get rid of my acne. I tried eating less dessert and dairy (chocolate, cheese, ice cream…it was really hard 😩) to see if that would solve it, but no luck. I tried various facial cleansers and moisturizers to see if I was potentially irritated by an ingredient I was putting on my skin, but regardless of what I tried, I continued to get this cystic acne. I tried getting facials more regularly, and while that gave my skin a healthy glow, it only lasted for a short period of time before my acne was back. Throughout all of this trial and error, Freddy kept telling me to just go to the dermatologist and seek professional help, but I kept putting it off thinking that they wouldn’t really have a solution for me, which looking back was incredibly silly! In July I had an epiphany and was like, “I’m turning 29 in September and I’m so sick and tired of looking in the mirror and disliking my skin. I’m making an appointment!”
The dermatologist had a lot of great insight (naturally, because she is a medical professional and skin expert 😂) and as I described the type of acne/breakouts I was getting she immediately diagnosed it as hormonal acne. Meanwhile this whole time I was thinking it had something to do with diet or products or a combination of multiple things, and yet the answer was so simple all along! She prescribed me with a specific skincare regimen to try out and see how that improved my skin overall. First, I started taking spironolactone, a pill that is designed to target hormonal acne in women. I noticed an improvement within just a few days! Along with the pill I started using a prescription retinol cream (Aklief) and a prescription sulfate cleanser (Plexion). My skin definitely had to adjust to these products because they are incredibly drying and my skin was pretty flaky for the first couple of weeks. But once I built up a tolerance to them my skin hasn’t been as dry and it’s improved so much.
I documented how my skin changed throughout the first 2 months of this new regimen, and while my skin isn’t perfect (I don’t ever plan on having perfect skin!) I’m so happy with the results I’ve seen so far! The retinol cream is supposed to help prevent future breakouts and reduce the dark pigmentation I have from scarring, so I’m hoping the continued use will improve that over time. I just had my follow-up appointment yesterday and I’m going to slightly increase the dosage of the spironolactone to help further prevent breakouts (I’ve only had a handful since being on this regimen) to see if that will help. Now when I look in the mirror, I notice that my skin has a healthier glow than it has in a long time, and I’m more confident in my bare skin! I’m really excited to continue on this path and see continued improvement as time goes on!
