My Acne Journey: 5.5 Months Results!
My results for 5.5 Months is here! Wow, I’m moving on to 6 months soon. 😲
I tried my best to use tret every day this week. I skipped 2 days to rest because I ran out of my hydrating tinted mineral sunscreen. I didn’t realize this product was doing all of the heavy lifting when it comes to moisturizing my skin. I ran out of the product and noticed that my skin was more dull and more dry. Who knew. Gotta make sure I never run out of it! Especially when I don’t have a nighttime moisturizer. I still can’t find one. Lol, I’m not even trying to find one anymore. I don’t want to spend my money on something that I don’t need or won’t work out. It might ruin my skin again. So what else happened this week? I started using bha again. I noticed my blackheads coming back. Also, sebaceous filaments were getting worse. Once I added bha back into my routine, I noticed a purge. Geez, not this again. But, I’m going to keep using bha. Trying to stick to 1-2 times a week and see what happens. Hopefully my skin doesn’t dry out from it.
My current facial cleanser is Olay Regenerist Hyaluronic + Peptide 24 Revitalizing Facial Cleanser. It worked well when I was using a moisturizer. Since I don’t have a moisturizer anymore, it’s drying out my skin a little bit. It could be the change in weather plus this facial cleanser. All I know is that it’s not as moisturizing anymore. It is gentle on the skin, but it feels like it’s stripping my skin. Not as bad as many other cleansers I have tried. I think I need new facial cleanser after finishing this one. I think I need a new one anyways since I don’t want to pay for a face wash monthly, lol. So what cleanser should I try next?? This is a difficult decision…
When I ran out of my CeraVe Hydrating Mineral Face Sheer Tint, I found Skinfood Mushroom Multi Care BB Cream SPF 20 PA+ in my product bag. I needed a product to replace CeraVe for a short period of time (2 days) before getting my hands on a new bottle of CeraVe. Fortunately, this bb cream has not expired. It doesn’t expire until next year (later on the year next year). So I used it. My experience with this bb cream again was horrid. At first I sort of liked it. The bb cream felt soft and was super concentrated. I loved using it around my eyes for some reason because it’s so soothing and blends into the skin around the eyes nicely. I liked the way it felt on my skin. But, the bb cream was drying and made my skin look like plastic. It was wax-like. It felt heavy on the skin. I didn’t like the way it felt on my skin at all. It was kind of gross. Even though it has arbutin in it, it didn’t do anything to brighten my complexion. It made my skin appear duller. Haha, the sun protection is laughable too. It’s only SPF 20 PA+. I wonder why I even liked this bb cream in the past. It used to be good, I guess. This bb cream does have fragrance. It’s nauseating. I’m glad I didn’t have to use this product for more than 2 days. After I picked up another bottle of CeraVe, I stopped using it on my face. I’ll finish the rest up as a concealer to use it up. Every drop cannot go to waste!
That’s my 5.5 Months update! 🙂
Catch up on my acne journey right here:
My Acne Journey: 3 Weeks Results!
My Acne Journey: 4 Weeks Results!
My Acne Journey: 6 Weeks Results…
My Acne Journey: 7 Weeks Results
My Acne Journey: 2 Months + 1 Week Results!
My Acne Journey: 2 Months + 2 Weeks!
My Acne Journey: 2 Months + 3 Weeks Results!
My Acne Journey: 3 Months + 1 Week Results
My Acne Journey: 3 Months + 2 Weeks Results
My Acne Journey: 3 Months + 3 Week Results
My Acne Journey: 4 Months + 1 Week Results.
My Acne Journey: 4.5 Months + Clear Skin!!
My Acne Journey: 4 Months + 3 Weeks! What I’m Doing to Maintain My Clear Skin. 🙂
My Acne Journey: 5 Months + 1 Week Results
5.5 Months, 5.5 Months Experience, 5.5 Months Results, Acne, Acne Journey, Acne Marks, Acne Prone Skin, Acne Scars, Acne Skin, Anti-Aging, Anti-Wrinkle, BB Cream, Beauty, Blemishes, CeraVe, CeraVe Hydrating Mineral Face Sheer Tint, Clear Skin, Dark Spots, Experience, Hyaluronic Acid, Lifestyle, My Acne Journey, Olay, Olay Regenerist, Olay Regenerist Hyaluronic + Peptide 24 Revitalizing Facial Cleanser, Pimples, Results, Review, Skin Care, Skincare, Skinfood, Skinfood Mushroom Multi Care BB Cream SPF 20 PA+, Wrinkles
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: 3 Weeks Results!
4 Weeks, 4 Weeks Experience, 4 Weeks Results, Acne, Acne Journey, Acne Marks, Acne Prone Skin, Acne Scars, Acne Skin, Anti-Aging, Anti-Wrinkle, Beauty, Blemishes, Clear Skin, Dark Spots, Experience, Horse Oil, Lactic Acid, Lifestyle, My Acne Journey, Oily Skin, Pimples, Results, Review, Shea Butter, Skin Care, Skincare, Week 4 Results, Wrinkles
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!*
3 Weeks, 3 Weeks Experience, 3 Weeks Results, Acne, Acne Journey, Acne Marks, Acne Prone Skin, Acne Scars, Acne Skin, Anti-Aging, Anti-Wrinkle, Beauty, Blemishes, Clear Skin, Dark Spots, Experience, Horse Oil, Lifestyle, My Acne Journey, Pimples, Results, Review, Shea Butter, Skin Care, Skincare, Week 3 Results, Wrinkles
My Acne Journey: 2 WEEKS!! 🙌🏻
It’s been 2 weeks of using tret to treat my acne. My skin did very well the first week. More than I expected. Go here to read more about it: My Acne Journey: 1 Week In…
Here’s my experience for the second week!
The second week went pretty well. I had to switch up the way I used tret. I decided to push through the process as I mentioned in Week 1. That’s what I did this week. I just pushed through it. How I managed to do it was sandwiching tret when my skin feels more vulnerable and sensitive than usual. This means that I would apply my moisturizers first. After that, apply tret. Lastly, apply my moisturizers. This actually worked. I woke up the next morning with better looking skin. My skin also had a chance to heal without stopping my use of tret. It’s weird, but it worked out fine. I was able to continue to use tret without major issues. I was going to do this method a few times a week only, but it turns out that my skin gets dry and the flakes tend to get stuck on my skin (more difficult to remove too) when I apply tret directly to my skin. I couldn’t put up with that on a daily basis. It irritates my skin and makes my skin look more awful. So, after noticing positive results from sandwiching tret, I continued to move forward with the sandwich method. My skin doesn’t feel too dry. My skin isn’t hurting. I’m still flaking, but the dead skin comes off much easier. I like what I’m seeing. 🙂 I did get some new breakouts this week but nothing major. No cystic acne. Just little, small bumps that disappeared as the days went on. I left most of them alone besides a few. I treated the others that bothered me with benzoyl peroxide. They healed right up the next morning. But, I have to be careful with this because I noticed that using benzoyl peroxide leaves a mark behind on my skin. More on this later. So there’s that! There are other things I changed too. I stopped using some products, started using some products. Yeah, obviously. hah. I tend to switch up my skin care often to make my skin happy. I (my skin) can’t seem to make up its mind either! But, it is what it is!
What products am I using??
I started using products that I gave up on my skin for a few days, but I hated them so much. Here are the products I’m talking about!
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!
It was just too much for my skin. It helped heal my skin, but it was just too heavy. I also tried using oils again (rosehip oil, squalane, horse oil). I ended up with a few pimples from using the oils. I applied some benzoyl peroxide on those spots. Amazingly those pimples disappeared the next morning! Since I developed breakouts from using oils, I stopped using them. My skin went back to normal. No new zits. So! I stopped using these products because I don’t care for them anymore. I feel like they’re too excessive. They didn’t do much for my skin. I’m really just trying to use them up. Ugh! There’s just so many of them. If I wasn’t too impulsive when it comes to buying skin care, this wouldn’t be happening, haha. Out of the bunch, the only product that I liked was the Purito Galacto Niacin 97 Power Essence. This essence feels very lightweight on the skin and helps to tame the oils on my facial skin. I’m starting to like this essence. Not sure if I’m going to purchase it again. Maybe use it while I have it. Who knows. But, love how it helps to improve my oily skin. I haven’t had any issues with it whatsoever, but I think it’s pretty redundant using this product, since it contains galactomyces and niacinamide. I have other products that contain these ingredients that I use on my face. I just like the texture of the essence. It sinks into my skin like no other. 🙂
I also tried slugging with CeraVe Healing Ointment. It does help to heal and retain moisture in the skin, but I couldn’t sleep with it on my face at night. The stickiness of the product just got everywhere even though I used a thin layer of the product. It would get in my hair. I woke up the next morning with it seeping into my eyes. Ouch! I’ll just use it to apply on spots if my skin gets burned or itchy or something. I’m done slugging. I’ve tried slugging before with the same experience. I just wanted to try it again. Once again, it’s a no. It’s not for me even though it did leave my skin feeling and looking nice the next morning. It’s too much of a hassle to put up with.
My results after 2 weeks!
After 2 weeks of using tret, my skin did improve. I had skin peeling from my face, especially my acne-prone areas, such as around my mouth and between my brows. I had acne that was underneath the surface of my skin coming out. Finally! There was a spot on my face that had a bump underneath. It’s finally gone! Tret helped to remove the dead skin cells and push it up the surface. It healed and I’m very happy that it’s gone, lol. It was so stubborn! My overall complexion looks very nice. It’s more even-toned and clearer. Acne marks are becoming lighter too due to the skin peeling every day this week. Even though my skin looks pretty good, I’m not sure if I’m going to stick to the sandwich method for next week. It seems like there’s too much moisturizing going on some days of the week. My skin is getting really oily. I think I might have to change things up again and apply tret directly to my skin. We’ll see what happens. I’ll just play it by ear, but I want to get to the point of being able to apply tret without having to buffer. Everything is going well so far. I’m excited to see what next week brings!
Coming up, my skin care routine! I haven’t made an update on what I’m using in a while. 🙂
If you missed out on my first week experience, here’s the link again.
2 Weeks, 2 Weeks Experience, 2 Weeks Results, Acne, Acne Journey, Acne Marks, Acne Prone Skin, Acne Scars, Acne Skin, Anti-Aging, Anti-Wrinkle, Beauty, Blemishes, Clear Skin, Dark Spots, Experience, Lifestyle, My Acne Journey, Pimples, Results, Review, Skin Care, Skincare, Wrinkles
2 Weeks Tret Experience! Is It Working?? What I’m Doing Now!
Here’s my experience after 2 weeks of using tret! It’s been a whirlwind. I’m glad I’m back on it. All of my other acne treatments weren’t giving me the results that I wanted. I just wasn’t seeing results visually in my skin. I also lost that soft, silky, smooth texture that tret gives my skin. Moisturizing doesn’t give the same effect. It’s the tret that makes the skin look soft and supple! So, during the second week, I had to bump up to a higher strength. Yep, I’m back to where I started, lol. The lower strength of tret just wasn’t cutting it. It helped to reduce the sebum in my skin, but it didn’t help much with acne even though it made my skin peel a little bit. I didn’t see a positive effect in my acne, and I’m pretty much acne-prone. I needed something much stronger to fight against acne and prevent it from appearing. Well, at least diminish them quick. I also noticed more blackheads too when I was on the lower strength. It was just so weird. It wasn’t working for me that’s all.
Now back to what I’m using now, which is the higher strength (0.05). I used it 5 times a week with at least 1-2 rest days in between (or when my skin doesn’t sting or burn). If it burns, I don’t use it. I just listen to my skin to prevent any skin irritations or red skin. That seems to work best for me. Also, I make sure to use heavier moisturizers too when my moisture barrier is trying to heal from tret during rest periods. So after using tret 2 days in a row during the second week, my skin started to get flaky and peel off. I noticed a layer of dead skin sitting on top of my face. I tried not to mess with it and let it peel off by itself. At night, I used RoC Line Smoothing Daily Cleansing Pads to help exfoliate the dead skin off. For some reason, I tried using facial scrubs to remove the dead skin, but I always ended up with dead skin still stuck on my face. The RoC Line Smoothing Daily Cleansing Pads worked like charm! They’re amazing at removing dead skin from the facial skin! Love them! I highly recommended them! They’re pretty awesome!
During this week, every time my skin peeled, I would get some random breakouts. Sometimes blackheads too. Maybe I’m over-moisturizing my skin. It’s like I need moisture, but at the same time, I have to see if I’m over-moisturizing to prevent my skin from breaking out. I really need to re-evaluate my moisturizing routine. I started off using very little products when I first started my tret journey. Next thing ya know it, I’m using a bunch of products! I don’t think I need that many products anymore, and I’m thinking about cutting down on my skin care products. Not just because of the risk of over-moisturizing my skin but also time constraints. I simply don’t have the time to apply that many products on my face anymore. It’s just too time consuming. I have other obligations and responsibilities to take care of. Also, I don’t want to have to bring that many products with me when traveling either. It’s just way too much! hah!
So! I feel like I’m in a complete never-ending cycle with tret. It works then it doesn’t work. I’m trying to make it work, since I love the way it makes my skin look. It actually does help with my acne. I can see the difference in my skin when I was without it. My skin looks great so far with it. Everything seems to be going well. I’m not even a month into re-starting tret, so I have hope that it may work this time around! Stay tuned for my next update! So far, so good! 🙂
⭐ If you missed out on my previous experience with tret…
My experience with tret the first week…
After 1 Month on Tret + Skin Care Routine. Here are My Results.
2 Months on Tret. My results. 🙂
Back to tret! 1 Week Results & My Skin Care Routine. Did it work? 🤔
A break from Tret & What I’m Doing Now
Surprise! Back on tret + Other Acne Treatments for Clear Skin. 🙂
2 Month Tret Update. Is It Working??!! + Other Products I’m Using 🙂
Almost 3 Months On Tret. I’m Done With It! Here’s My Experience!
I’m Using Tret Again. Look What Happened!
2 Week Update, 2 Weeks, 2 Weeks Results, Acne, Acne Skin, Acne Skin Care, Anti-Aging, Beauty, Blemishes, Breakouts, Brighter, Clear Skin, Experience, Journey, Lifestyle, Pimples, Results, Review, Skin Care, Skin Care Products, Skin Care Routine, Skin Care Update, Skincare, Tret, Update, Wrinkles