My Acne Journey: 4 Weeks Results!

It’s been quite a journey! I honestly can’t believe it’s the 4th week! Time just flew by! After 3 weeks, my skin is nearly clear! I’m only dealing with some odd pimples here there. Nothing major like cystic acne. Now I’m just battling tiny pimples, blackheads/sebaceous filaments, acne marks, and this darn oily skin! My skin looks pretty soft and smooth overall! Everything is going well so far! Just need to kick some of the other issues out of the way or at least keep them at bay! After 4 weeks, I’ve made more changes! Here are my thoughts and my experience!

My 4th Week Experience

The 4th week was a breeze since I’ve decreased my use of tret. I didn’t experience red, irritating, burning skin this week. All went pretty well. I said I was going to use tret 2-3 times a week, but it turns out that I could use it every other day. My moisture barrier is healthy. It’s not burning or red. It looks really good! So! Tret has helped my acne by a ton, but I decided to add a couple of exfoliants in my routine. They are The Ordinary Lactic Acid 10% + HA and a glycolic acid product. I haven’t talked much about this glycolic acid product, but I will soon.

I chose The Ordinary Lactic Acid 10% + HA because lactic acid is one of my favorite alpha hydroxy acids. It’s gentle and has worked for me before in the past. I once had a lactic acid serum that was super elegant in texture and delivered results. Too bad it’s been discontinued. 😔 Since I’m using other The Ordinary skin care products that are working on my skin, I thought I would try The Ordinary’s lactic acid product (again, lol) too. I planned on using it 2 times a week, but my skin is tolerating it much better than I thought! What I’m doing is using it every other day along with tret. Now more on this lactic acid product that I’m speaking of!

Here’s my experience using The Ordinary Lactic Acid 10% + HA!

I didn’t know I wasn’t going to start using a lactic acid product. It just popped up out of the blue that I wanted to add one in. It’s because I’m not using tret every single day anymore, and my skin felt, looked really oily on the days off. My skin started to get clogged during those days off due to the amount of moisturizers I use plus how oily my skin is. I had to do something about it. With the lactic acid serum, I don’t apply it directly to my skin. Just not yet. I apply it after I apply my heaviest moisturizer. I know that’s sort of weird, but the lactic acid serum does a great job at absorbing excess oil from my skin and tames the shininess from the moisturizer I’m using. This also helps to prevent any skin irritation and breakouts from the excess oil. Amazingly this worked! I woke up the next morning with skin peeling off of my face in my acne-prone areas. I also had some new blemishes due to the exfoliation, but it’s doing exactly what tret does! I didn’t get any breakouts from the product itself either! Awesome!

The other product I’m using is RoC Retinol Correxion Deep Wrinkle Night Cream.

This product contains retinol, zinc gluconate, copper gluconate, shea butter, glycolic acid, ascorbic acid, and a bunch of other anti-aging ingredients. I’m only using this product 1-2 times a week. I tried using it separately from the lactic acid, but it didn’t yield good results. The product feels a little heavy on the skin and makes my skin appear oily. It’s a bit too moisturizing when applied to the skin on my particular skin type. It’s a little too much on my skin that’s all. That’s when I decided to use it in combination with lactic acid. Lactic acid is already gentle. My skin didn’t dry out from layering these two products together. I’m getting the benefits from the RoC Retinol Correxion Deep Wrinkle Night Cream and getting the exfoliation from the lactic acid at the same time. RoC Retinol Correxion Deep Wrinkle Night Cream helps to soften the skin. It exfoliates (sort of, haha) and makes my skin appear softer and smoother the next day. Honestly, I feel that it’s more moisturizing than exfoliating.

How about tret?

I’m still using it. Just not every single day (as I mentioned earlier). I don’t need to use it every day. I feel like using it every day doesn’t give me the results I like. It dries my skin out, leaves my skin feeling like it’s burning, and my skin feels and looks like it thins out when used too often. I prefer it when my skin appears more fuller and healthy rather than thin and gaunt. It’s really difficult to explain but more of tret doesn’t mean better or faster results. I’m just going to take tret for what it is right now. Maybe that’ll change in the next couple of weeks! But I’m really happy that I started to incorporate other products into my routine, especially lactic acid. It has done wonders for my skin in combination with tret within a single week. I could even say it’s helping a lot more with my acne than tret at the moment. My skin looks clearer and smoother after a day of using it! I’m really happy with the results so far! I can’t wait to see how much my skin will transform after the 5th week! SO EXCITED!! 🥳

Coming up! Week 5! 😃

If you missed out on my new acne/tret experience…

My Acne Journey: 1 Week In…

My Acne Journey: 2 WEEKS!! 🙌🏻

My Acne Journey: 3 Weeks Results!

My Acne Journey: 3 Weeks Results!

It’s been 3 weeks on this acne journey! Remember to catch up on WEEK 1 and WEEK 2 if you haven’t yet! Now here’s my experience during the 3rd week!

What’s going on?? My results after 3 weeks!!

During the 3rd week, I had to change things up again. Using the sandwich method wasn’t yielding results like it did before. I started noticing some new breakouts (not from the medication unclogging my pores). They were new breakouts, since it seemed like tret stopped working due to having too much moisture in my skin or using too many moisturizers. My skin did appear more oily than usual too. *sigh* All of that moisture I needed to protect my skin from irritation, such as redness, dryness, stinging, and tons of peeling. Tret just wasn’t as strong compared to applying it directly to the skin anymore. I went on and started applying tret directly on my skin. This was my experience doing this…

It worked! The acne I developed disappeared. My skin peeled once again. My skin looked smoother and brighter. I loved the results, but it came along with other skin problems, such as dryness, irritation, redness, burning. I tried buffering the next day after a night of using tret directly on my skin. That went OK. I did that for two days but decided not to anymore. Using tret (buffered) wasn’t making any changes in my skin. I needed to use tret directly (unbuffered) on my skin to see results. SO! I went the rest of the week not using tret. I didn’t think I needed it. My skin was peeling, and I wanted my skin to heal. I also got really tired of having dead skin peeling/falling off of my face when talking to people. It was just embarrassing. The dryness made my skin look more aged too even when I’m moisturizing my skin a ton!

After giving my skin a break, my skin peeled and flakes disappeared. My skin actually looks healthy again. It’s so soft and smooth. I still have some problem areas, but my overall complexion looks pretty good. Much better than I expected (this time around of using tret). I also noticed that some of the clogged pores are unclogging while I just moisturize at night (skipping tret). Hmmm! Since this is working for me, I think I’m going to only use tret 2-3 times a week. Maybe just 2 times a week. I don’t think I need to peel my skin any more than that. My main goal isn’t anti-aging. It’ll be nice if it works for that too. But my goal is actually to maintain a clear complexion. I’m using tret mainly for my acne. So far, after 3 weeks, so good!

Since I’m applying tret directly to my skin 2-3 times a week now, this is what I’m doing.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Moisturize a ton! 💦

Remember the skin care products I discontinued? If not, here they are again…

Skin Care Products I Stopped Using

Continued: Skin Care Products I Stopped Using

My Review on Coxir Ultra Hyaluronic Acid Cleansing Oil + More Skin Care Products I Stopped Using!

I started applying them to my neck area and along my jawline, which are the areas that are prone to irritation from tret. Tret seems to migrate down to my neck area and cause major irritation, since that area of my skin tend to be more sensitive. Take note, I don’t even apply tret on those areas either. As I mentioned, tret just migrates down. To solve this issue, I heavily apply moisturizers to my neck and jawline first before I apply tret. I make sure I cover those areas evenly and thoroughly. Irritation from tret is so annoying. I can’t stand the itchiness. It’s possibly one of the worst feelings when it comes to using tret. I can deal with some sensitivity but when my skin gets super itchy and develops a rash…it’s annoying. I have to baby those areas a lot more to prevent myself from scratching them. I have to keep my nails short too to prevent scratching/itching my skin at night.

Other moisturizers that I picked up on using are…

Horse oil (it’s back! lol) and shea butter. Sometimes I use horse oil on my face, especially when my face is more sensitive than usual. I don’t use shea butter on my face but my neck area. It helps to seal in moisture and heal the skin. I don’t use horse oil that often. It’s oily (of course) and greasy. It’s a once a week type of thing. Any more than that, I’ll most likely breakout in acne. CeraVe Moisturizing Cream has helped too. I use the cream on my neck to prevent my skin from drying out and itchiness. Honestly, I just apply whatever moisturizers I have, lol. Anything and everything that moisturizes works. It’s a good thing that I know that I’m not wasting them but using them for something good!

There are other areas of my face I have to worry about too, such as my eye area and ears. Those are also sensitive areas of the face. I make sure I moisturize those sections of my face before applying tret as well.

That’s a wrap up for my 3 weeks experience and results! I hope this was helpful! Stay tuned for my 4 WEEKS experience! Coming up soon!

*If you missed out on the first two weeks, here they are once again!*

My Acne Journey: 1 Week In…

My Acne Journey: 2 WEEKS!! 🙌🏻