About to give up
When I was a teenager, I used adapalene + benzoyl peroxide and it worked really well for me. Now I’m 29, and about a year ago I completely lost control over my skin. I have combination skin, and I started getting pimples and comedones on my cheeks.
I got blood tests done — everything came back normal. I was on antibiotics for a few months, and my skin improved, but the acne returned after I stopped.
In mid-February, I started tretinoin (0.025), and about a month later I increased to 0.05. That’s when things got confusing: the comedones on my cheeks actually went away, but I started getting a lot of new comedones on my forehead — an area that was never a problem for me before.
Then, about three weeks ago, I began breaking out with pimples on my forehead too, which had never happened to me before. I also started to suspect that part of it could be due to friction — my hair constantly touching my forehead while my skin is irritated from tretinoin.
Because of that, I stopped applying tretinoin on my forehead. It didn’t feel right to keep using it there, especially since the comedones actually started after introducing it. Before my IPL session, I was using tretinoin every day, but since the laser treatment I’ve reduced it to every two days.
On top of that, I paused tretinoin briefly to get IPL treatment two weeks ago, and since then my skin has gotten worse again — more pimples overall, and the comedones on my cheeks came back.
At this point, I’m feeling pretty desesperated , and close to giving up and switching to Accutane.
Has anyone gone through something similar?
summarizing: using 0.05 every other day and not in my forehead
can’t use gel bc in my country is Not available
I use Toleriane fluide (La Roche) - Cerave Air Foam AM&PM