u/habasis

Buffering didn’t help. More moisturizer didn’t help.

This did:

1. Cleanse, wait 30 min - damp skin = more irritation for me
2. Pea-size tret - avoid mouth (until strong barrier and if necessary)/eyes
3. Wait 20 min - stops pilling
4. Press in a balm: key ingredients - zinc oxide + colloidal oatmeal + shea butter

Lotions would pill or vanish. This combo calmed redness + sealed everything in. No more snowstorm pillow. No stinging. Could finally use tret 3x/week.

Flaking? Try this:
If your night product pills on your hand, it’s probably messing with your barrier.
If you wake up tight, your seal isn’t strong enough.

Zinc + oat + shea worked for me. 

Month 3 of 0.05%. Cheeks: fine. Mouth/chin: raw, peeling, wanted to quit.

Derm said “it’s the perioral triangle — thinner skin + high TEWL.”

What failed: Vaseline, Cicaplast, sandwich method. All burned or pilled.

What worked: Treating it like a wound.

Night routine:

1. Tret on forehead/cheeks only
2. Wait 30 min
3. Pea-size colloidal oatmeal + zinc oxide + shea balm pressed into nose corners, mouth, chin

Result: Barrier caught up by week 6. Now 2-3x/week maintenance.

If your triangle flares, you’ll stop tret. Save the zone first.

What’s your perioral triangle survival tip? Or are you still fighting it?

Month 3 of 0.05%. Cheeks: fine. Mouth/chin: raw, peeling, wanted to quit.

Derm said “it’s the perioral triangle — thinner skin + high TEWL.”

What failed: Vaseline, Cicaplast, sandwich method. All burned or pilled.

What worked: Treating it like a wound.

Night routine:

1. Tret on forehead/cheeks only
2. Wait 30 min
3. Pea-size colloidal oatmeal + zinc oxide + shea balm pressed into nose corners, mouth, chin

Result: Barrier caught up by week 6. Now 2-3x/week maintenance.

If your triangle flares, you’ll stop tret. Save the zone first.

What’s your perioral triangle survival tip? Or are you still fighting it?

I feel like I finally figured out why my skin was struggling so much on heavier tret use. Not because tret was "bad" for me, but because my barrier was just constantly pissed off.

The two things that seem to help most are colloidal oatmeal and glycerin. Oatmeal seems to calm the angry, stingy, irritated part, and glycerin helps with that dry tight leaky feeling. Once I started paying more attention to barrier support, tret felt way more manageable.

I am not saying I have cracked some revolutionary code haha, but it made me realize a lot of tret problems are maybe just barrier problems.

Curious if anyone else has specific ingredients that made tret easier for them to tolerate? Like not tret itself, but the sidekick ingredients that saved your face a bit haha

I saw a post earlier (and now can’t find it again) from someone saying they’ve been on 0.025% tret for months, have good results, but still deal with ongoing dryness and peeling no matter what they try, like the sandwich method, slugging, thick moisturisers, and taking breaks when their skin feels irritated.

They were basically wondering if this is something some people just experience long-term on tret, or if it eventually settles. They also mentioned considering switching to retinal because of the irritation.

I’ve actually experienced something similar myself. Even with a consistent barrier routine, tret improved my skin overall but still left it feeling dry and reactive. From what I’ve learned, this can be due to ongoing transepidermal water loss and increased skin turnover from retinoids, where the skin is constantly renewing and not fully stabilising between applications in some people.

Would be interested to hear other people’s experiences with this!