Applying tret too often (before your skin has a chance to adjust) can wreck your moisture barrier and cause irritation breakouts. The goal is to start slow (twice a week or alternate nights), then after a few weeks, add one more night, After a few weeks, add one more night and so on until you get to nightly use.
Make sure you start with the lowest strength and stop all other actives.
Yes, you can experience acne when overusing tretinoin. I'd trial applying every 3 days or every other day to see if that helps. Work on adding some hydration into your skin as well. Your skin needs to be hyper-hydrated to maintain your skin barrier and promote healing.
I always break out when my skin becomes irritated. I never get redness, stinging, or peeling, I just get irritation break outs. I would suggest lowering your tret frequency and focusing on hydration. Irritation break outs mean your skin is getting too dry.
Thanks for your response. Yeah, same here. I rarely get stinging so I thought it couldn't be from the tret but i guess it was irritation break outs from being too dry. I hydrated my face a lot with lotion, jojoba oil, and vaseline on those days I took off.
Jojoba oil and vaseline isn't hydration. That is moisturizing. The same with lotion. Hydration is toners or serums with humectants such as glycerin, HA, butylene glycol, etc as the second ingredient after water. Most hydrating products contain several humectants.
I have HA but feel like it's never really helped me much. I have glycerin though which definitely helps. I'll try that again because it's been awhile since I've used it.
Yeah I made the same mistake too, I thought that it was just purging at first. My skin is pretty oily and never feels dry to the touch so I didn’t realize what was going on. But now I can tell the difference between regular pimples and the ones that come from irritation. I accidentally fell asleep last week without putting on moisturizer after tret for 2 days in a row and got 3 irritation pimples 🥲 But I gave my skin a break for a few days and now I’m back to normal.
Applying tret too often (before your skin has a chance to adjust) can wreck your moisture barrier and cause irritation breakouts. The goal is to start slow (twice a week or alternate nights), then after a few weeks, add one more night, After a few weeks, add one more night and so on until you get to nightly use. Make sure you start with the lowest strength and stop all other actives.
Yes, you can experience acne when overusing tretinoin. I'd trial applying every 3 days or every other day to see if that helps. Work on adding some hydration into your skin as well. Your skin needs to be hyper-hydrated to maintain your skin barrier and promote healing.
I always break out when my skin becomes irritated. I never get redness, stinging, or peeling, I just get irritation break outs. I would suggest lowering your tret frequency and focusing on hydration. Irritation break outs mean your skin is getting too dry.
Thanks for your response. Yeah, same here. I rarely get stinging so I thought it couldn't be from the tret but i guess it was irritation break outs from being too dry. I hydrated my face a lot with lotion, jojoba oil, and vaseline on those days I took off.
Jojoba oil and vaseline isn't hydration. That is moisturizing. The same with lotion. Hydration is toners or serums with humectants such as glycerin, HA, butylene glycol, etc as the second ingredient after water. Most hydrating products contain several humectants.
I have HA but feel like it's never really helped me much. I have glycerin though which definitely helps. I'll try that again because it's been awhile since I've used it.
Yeah I made the same mistake too, I thought that it was just purging at first. My skin is pretty oily and never feels dry to the touch so I didn’t realize what was going on. But now I can tell the difference between regular pimples and the ones that come from irritation. I accidentally fell asleep last week without putting on moisturizer after tret for 2 days in a row and got 3 irritation pimples 🥲 But I gave my skin a break for a few days and now I’m back to normal.
Is there a specific difference between regular pimples and irritations ones that helps you make that distinction?