Beauty Tips For Body Care
Picures of before after: https://imgur.com/a/DfCHQUuHello everyone, I've been a long time lurker of this sub & I wanted to start by saying how grateful I am for this community. I am highlighting in every paragraph important element in case you don't feel like reading the whole post.Firstly, I am incredibly sorry if you’re reading this & find yourself relating. I know how frustrating it is to know something is wrong with your skin & not knowing how to help. Having doctors prescribe the pill, acutane, retinoids, spending thousands on acids, facials, only to realize you don’t even have acne, just a stubborn fungi living rent free on your face. & then having to ditch your beloved products, that work well on others, & spend yet again to buy FA safe products. Being paranoid about touching your face, having to switch pillowcases everyday to not reinfect, i know i know. & don’t even get me started on all the looks you get from family members & people you talk with, it is honestly depressing but just know it gets better. At least you are here, at least you know the source of it all & you can start on fixing it. Thankfully, it’s not a difficult thing to treat, it just requires care, patience & consistenceMy first flair up was over a year ago. I had a bunch of redness of my face the day before a wedding, & was given the advice of wearing an overnight castor oil mask (yikes). I woke up the next day & every single on of my pores was a white head... I popped them all & applied foundation, attended the wedding & my skin eventually healing a few weeks later.A few months later, I went to a L'Oréal sale where I bought a bottle of Garnier Ombrelle sunscreen. I also got a lash lift and was scared to damage my lashes so I started applying castor oil overnight. This was the beginning of my downfall. During my sleep, the oil would smear on my cheeks & the sunscreen broke me out daily. At first, it was a few pimples on my face. After popping them everyday, I would try to calm my skin down with any oil I had laying around (castor, almond, avocado, grape seed, etc.)Every time I would use the oil, the breakout would get worse, but instead of big pimples, it was dozens of tiny white heads. I eventually got really sick of it & went to my doctor. He prescribed Differin & warned me about the dryness, at the same time, I cut out every chemical skincare & resorted to natural products (including oils, lol). So i would apply a thick moisturizer every night & top it up an oil or vaseline. Since it's a retinoid, I also continued using (heavily) the Garnier suncreen... I waited over a month thinking I was just purging until I literally had a mental breakdown one night.I got really sick & tired of looking this bad, & realized my acne which i had been dealing with for years now (Not fungal at first) was tearing my confidence appart. What is the point of putting on makeup, jewelry, cute clothes & do my hair when my skin looked diseased? Doctors were no help, they put me on Differin & blamed all my pimples on the natural purging of Differin. My acne was keeping me up at night, sometimes it was itchy, the masks made it worse, I could not focus in class, was avoiding my (supportive) boyfriend, made no friends, etc. This is when I started heavily searching the subject. I found out I had Malassezia Follucilitis & Differin was doing absolutely nothing to help that.What I wish I knew:fungal acne does not look the same on everyone, which is a detail that kept me from addressing my own FA for months. The way people were describing it was not what I had exactly & picture never seemed to match. Mine manifested in:- dozens of clusters of tiny white heads in all my pores- redness all over my face once the whiteheads disapeared- It was really bad on my chin, cheeks & the middle of my forehead. It never spread all over my cheekbones & side of the forehead.-It was rarely itchy or dry.-It was also very cyclic (which I believe is because I did not use oils everyday & did not apply sunscreen when I had online school).- I also had dandruff in my eyebrows, which is an obvious sign of fungi, but I thought it was the dryness of Differin.- it was stubborn to every product, acide, retinol, retinoid, washes, masks, facials, you name it- you have the feeling it is NOT acne, seriously trust your instincts, you deal with your skin everyday you know more about it than any person (who is not a dermatologist)I then discovered Simple Skincare Science, my bible. I first used Nizoral & it worked pretty much instantly. I washed my face with it & the next day I woke up with a clear face for the first time in months. Although my face felt very dry, it was healthy at the moment, Nizoral will cause dryness that is normal.I later read the whole blog of simple science skincare, & realized my sunscreen, lash oil & day moisturizer were the culprit. I stopped using all three (which were garner ombrelle sunscreen, castor oil & The Ordinary moisturizer) & switched to coppertone gel sunscreen & eucerin healing ointment.For about a week of this, my skin stayed well behaved & I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Through this treatment, I kept using Differin & would sometimes wash with Panoxyl to make sure normal acne wouldn’t show up.Then… I fucked up. Firstly, the constant use of Nizoral was killing my moisture barrier, & i could tell but I was too stubborn to stop. Then, I committed the terrible mistake of wearing foundation for 2 hours, thinking if i washed it off immediately after, there’s no way it would have time to react. WRONG. I honestly believe I had my foundation on for like 1h30 minutes but i’ll say 2 for good measure. On top of that, I was wearing a mask which basically created a luxury buffet for the fungi to feed on. Upon removing my makeup, everything seemed alright, I washed with Nizoral again just to be safe (lol) & the next day, I woke up with a breakout that reminded me of my era before learning about FA. It was terrible. All over my face again, tiny whiteheads. That same day, I bought CeraVe Baby lotion because I was sick of the thickness of Eucerin & was longing for a normal light moisturizer. I tried to not panic when I woke up & simply did another Nizoral mask (lol again). As soon as I washed it off, my face was super red & tingling. I thought the dryness was causing it, so I applied the CeraVe moisturizer & proceeded to experience what I would describe as lava on my face. The burning was SO bad. The moisturizer is obviously not at fault here, my moisturize barrier was just officially fucked.So I stopped all treatments & repaired my moisture barrier. It took me a little less than a week which makes me think maybe it wasn't very damaged, thankfully. Despite, the fungal acne was still there. I booked an appointement with my doctor because no dermatologists are available in my city (little tip for you, call it a fungal INFECTION. Doctors who are not specialized in skin problems hear the word acne & immediately think BACTERIA. Keep the word acne out of your mouth & you'll get what you need). I was prescribed:- Nizoral in the form of a cream (doesn't dry like the shampoo), so basically Ketoconazole 2% cream- 50Mg of Fluconazole to take in the span of two weeks. He kept the dosage low because it can be damaging for my liver, I need a blood test when I am done with the pills.It took two days to completely clear my skin.My routine now:AM:-wash face with just cold water-ketoconazol 2% cream-Cerave Baby Lotion-Coppertone gel sunscreenPM:-wash with Panoxyl-apply Differin-take 50mg of Fluconazole-Eucerin healing ointmentI sometimes use 100% plant-derived squalane oil from The Ordinary to gua sha.what to take from this post:-if you're already in this sub, you're lucky-it gets better-you don't have acne-once it's clear, you are not out of the woods, keep an FA safe routine-if you can't access a dermatologist, you'll be fine
Girls Blog 2015
Submitted by Tooyoungforthisite
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