How I Fought Acne: Good and Bad Decisions
Remember, in the film "The Mysterious History of Benjamin Button" The voiceover explains why the chain of small minor events looped and caused the heroine Cate Blanchett to get under the wheels of a taxi? When four years ago I was sitting in the night, sobbing and looking at my face covered with inflammations in the mirror, I scrolled endlessly in my head a million little things that made me look that way.
The summer of 2010, the choice of university and entrance exams: everyone was waiting for me for a cool, momentous decision, I was nervous, I could not eat and I lost seven kilograms, which was quite critical with the initial 49. August 2011: a terribly painful parting with first love, moving to Moscow, caused by stress and ballet arthritis in 19 years atypical for this (you could be wary). Autumn 2011, Moscow: poor nutrition, irregular schedules, endless colds, flatmates both from gangster TV shows on the Russia channel and new relationships that were not completely cloudless. Just then, the first signs that I had to take care of my health began to appear on my face, but while they could be covered with foundation, I preferred not to think about them.
Winter 2011: I sob all night long, because no concealer is able to cover this nightmare. Because all the skin hurts, and I have already bought up all the pharmacy creams, lotions and masks, which only aggravated the situation. Because the young man with whom I was trying to build a relationship, said scornfully: "What are these blotches? Can you not wash yourself with something normal?" Because my friends do not stand up and ask: "What about you in general?" Because it is cold outside, but from cold everything gets worse and worse, and my heredity is bad in the sense of the skin and my stomach is weak. Fuf.
Skin problems are not considered a terrible disease - and this is logical, but only those who have passed through them can understand how psychologically difficult it is. You can be super-progressive and body-positive — and it all goes to dust when people seem to look at you with a mixture of disgust and bewilderment. A separate shit is that acne deprives you of something like a legal right to medical confidentiality: everyone knows that your health has deteriorated - from colleagues to sellers in the nearest supermarket, and this is terribly frustrating. Now, four years later, I look the same as before this nightmare, and the overall picture seems to me more objective - it was divided into bad and good ideas that came to my mind: if I had performed less unnecessary gestures, everything would have been solved faster and easier.
Bad ideas
At the very beginning, when I had an ordinary rash on my temples, cheeks and bridge of my nose, I thought: "Probably, I need to sleep more, and the water is too hard." Everything turned out to be much worse, and it’s impossible to understand for yourself exactly what acne is caused by: one thing, if the cream you are using does not suit you, and quite another if you have broken hormones. Tempting labels even on pharmaceutical cosmetics should not be taken seriously - what you put on your face will not solve problems with your stomach, thyroid or infections. In addition, severely injured skin can react aggressively to incorrectly selected products: if I had just been feeling bad before buying, say, Vichy micellar water from the Normaderm series, then a real atomic war began on my face. Therefore, you should not look for a solution in specialized public places or hope for another miraculous facial wash.
Glory to the Olympic gods, my hands did not reach the antibiotics and hormonal drugs, which are released for skin problems without a prescription, but I was one step away from this - thanks to my mother for intercepting me. This is a very popular type of reaction: you open Google, type in "acne how to cure" and read on the forum conditional Woman.ru (a terrible place) about how some serious oral contraceptives helped the five-seven-ten girls, different types of which are often prescribed with acne. It may seem to most readers that not a single normal person will buy such a drug without a doctor’s recommendation, but they don’t buy it, the pharmacy is always closer than a hospital. And this is not counting the masses of craftsmen who offer "advice on photos" (this is how to determine pregnancy by the color of the eyes). Better to go to the doctor, and most likely to several doctors, depending on the range of problems, have not yet come up with anything, and if you understand this promptly, you will do a great service.
A good proofreader can tell you for a couple of months that nothing terrible happens - and that is his absolute maximum. Any cosmetologist will say that the dense masking textures are the more contraindicated for inflamed skin, the more inflammation foci and the more serious they are. This is the main meanness - you cannot use dense tonal means during treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to divide by ten everything that beauty bloggers turn with their face: such make-up on an inflamed face is possible as a one-time measure to lift the mood, but you shouldn’t walk like this every day or even every other day if you want to advance in treatment. I was partly saved by the tinting cream that my cosmetologist was preparing, in combination with light hypoallergenic powder, but, to be honest, there was little use of this mixture, I had to endure. I have a thin, sensitive, very dry, allergic skin with enlarged pores (such is the jackpot), which I used to apply a lasting tone from a mass market for three hundred rubles in high school - and nothing. When I came to a beautician with acne, she threw out half of my cosmetic bag and scolded me rather strictly. Now I feel fine with BB cream, but I cannot use persistent foundation creams until now.
As is evident from my story, stress has become one of the main causes of acne in me. And experiences due to the state of the skin eventually turned into a series of nightmarish habits, as if from a psychology textbook for freshmen: for example, every five minutes I looked in my pocket mirror to see if it hadn't gotten worse (deterioration got stronger in a matter of hours ), and I began to curtain the right side of my face with my hair, because the right cheek and the skin on the forehead to the right along the hairline looked absolutely frightening. In short, it only aggravates the situation and adds complexes. At some point, I realized that I had serious health problems and there is nothing to be ashamed of. This is a disease, and it should be treated.
Sessions “I am myself a beautician” from time to time arrange everything for themselves, but squeezing a lonely pimple on my forehead and touching acne are two big differences. At some point, my analytical skills became more active, and I noticed that the more I touch and pick my face, the worse it gets. A separate spectrum of problems was the fact that at the peak stage I had very painful large subcutaneous bumps that had been going on for months in the hairline on my forehead, temples, nose bridge and chin - I could not stand it and touched them too. The only thing I have achieved in this way is that I now have a scar on the bridge of my nose, which can only be removed with a laser or a series of chemical peels. It is not striking, it is visible only under a certain light and in the photo, but every time I see it, I remember my own short-sightedness.
On the tanned skin, inflammation and redness are, indeed, less noticeable, so the entire ill-fated winter of 2011 I went to the solarium. And the whole summer of 2011, I went with impaired pigmentation: first, after such persistent attempts to tan the marks from acne go several times longer. Secondly, anti-inflammatory drugs often exacerbate the effects of ultraviolet radiation, which returns us to a violation of pigmentation. So the only thing that is possible is a hypoallergenic cream with a strong SPF-filter, which the cosmetologist will select for you.
Good ideas
In my case - a series of hikes. In mid-February of 2011, I came to a cosmetologist - and she said that she would not even touch my face in such a state, because my problem is far from cosmetological in nature. So for the first time it dawned on me that skin treatment begins with a queue to not the most obvious doctors. My mother, who loves all informal medicine at once, persuaded me to bioresonance diagnostics (about why this is 80% profanation, you can read here). But there was a certain point in this: the program that is used in this type of diagnostics really brings together well the data of all the analyzes that you have already passed. All the results of the examination were confirmed later by specialized specialists: from acute gastritis and liver problems to uncured teeth. Therefore, I still do not know what kind of doctor helped me solve skin problems.
For half a year I sat on a Spartan diet that relieves the liver and stomach: I did not eat apples and oranges, fried, salty and spicy, sweet and fat, did not eat shop-sauces and powdered yogurts, did not drink alcohol, packaged juices and lemonades. It was hard and tasteless, but tolerable. Just in case, I cured all my teeth, because tooth decay is the same sure way of getting an infection in the body, like any other damage. After six months I went to the gynecologist and passed all the basic tests, the same gynecologist prescribed oral contraceptives for me. In my case, these were the popular pills "Jess" - they are often prescribed to young girls without children, the content of active substances in them is sparing, and they normalize the hormonal background if something is wrong with it. "Jess" I drank a year and threw it only because my chest and hips began to grow (I was uncomfortable with new volumes). The stomach is still healing.
The second time I went to him only after the gynecologist, when the most terrible inflammation had already passed. As I have already said, half of my cosmetic bags went to the trash: all persistent tonal creams and dense bases, all creams of mass-market marks and many pharmaceutical preparations. Because of the very dry skin, the famous talker with salicylic acid did not suit me, and I was just prescribed ichthyol ointment - it smells terrible, and it leaves traces for several hours, but its pulling properties are beyond competition.
Instead of cleansing products, I began to wash with tar soap - again, because of the dryness of the skin, this was not very comfortable, but effective. Instead of moisturizing cream, I still use the super-ointment "Panthenol", which is generally lubricated with burns - it perfectly moisturizes the dried face, I have no allergies to it and it does not clog pores. From the procedures I did a single cleaning and stopped. First, even my sensitive skin reacted to it in such a way that it came off in two weeks' layers (painlessly, but very unaesthetic). Secondly, the need has already disappeared: the first cleaning saved me from the most severe inflammations, but the new ones did not appear. I applied “Baziron AC” to small inflammations, which is sold at any pharmacy and was also prescribed to me by a cosmetologist.
As is probably understandable, my relationship with the caring, and with makeup was not very smooth. If I had reached the beautician earlier, perhaps the problems would disappear more quickly - she advised me to switch to Holy Land care products. I used a universal cleansing tonic twice a day, a point menthol tonic once or twice a week and a sulfur dot mask (also once or twice, but on other days). Not without the help of the same beautician, I paid attention to Clarins BB creams - for me it was a huge plus that, unlike other brands, my skin did not react with rebellion. I will not advise anything here, the only recommendation is to not listen to any advice and trust only your dermatologist or cosmetologist. What suits me or anyone else can hurt you very much.
It sounds in the spirit of trainings "Know your inner goddess", but, in general, you really have to love yourself even with acne all over your face - otherwise you can go crazy. It is now I understand that overly curious friends did not want to offend me with their questions about my appearance, and the man who hits weak points is not something that I or anyone else needs, but in 2011 I was spending a monstrous amount forces and nerves to such situations. Calm down, everything will pass with time, and in no case should you be ashamed of health problems, if only because you are not guilty of them and they do not make you worse than you were before.
Once again, I emphasize that my method of treatment is far from being a reference, which is why I wrote down all the errors in such detail. But by old memory I am still in groups and public places for people for whom acne is not a clothing brand. I see desperate girls and boys who are crookedly advised on photos, and I know what it is like to hate your own reflection in the mirror. Now I can walk without foundation, although my skin is still far from perfect (and it is unlikely to be perfect). In the winter, occasional exacerbations occur, and if I eat for a week at McDonald's, then I go for two weeks with a nightmare on my face. But now I at least know how to solve these problems and how to avoid them. And that means that they do not spoil my life anymore, and this, in my opinion, is the most important thing.
Photo:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 via Shutterstock
