TMI Thursday Part 2

So the more observant among you may have noticed that I promised to do a weekly feature on skincare for acne, did one post, and then nothing happened for a whole month. Sorry about that: what happened was, I started off all gung ho, then had a bit of a setback that's taken a month to recover from. That doesn't mean there hasn't been any progress at all; quite the opposite, in fact. It's just been a bit slower and more complicated than I originally planned >.<

Anyway, on to the update.

Remember these?

Here you see Quinoderm cream (blue tube in the front right) and a selection of salicylic acid containing products including a facial scrub, two types of face mask, moisturiser, cleansing liquid and an on-the-spot treatment gel.

Original Plan of Action: 

Morning: Facial scrub, Quinoderm, Moisturiser
Evening: Cleanser, Quinoderm, Moisturiser
On the spot gel: as and when needed
Facial Mask: two or three times a week

I also had this scary looking piece of kit; it's basically a set of tools for extracting blackheads and whiteheads. I intended to use this whenever I got one of those real nasty breakouts; the ones that just have to be dealt with physically.

What Actually Happened:

Week one: I followed the plan above. Then I discovered that when your skin is as sore and irritated as mine was (before shots HERE), using this many products all at once is a Very Bad Idea. After about 5 days of this, I looked like I'd been scrubbing my skin with a mixture of sand and battery acid.  Sooo... I spent the next week leaving my skin alone completely and waiting for it to calm down. 

In week three, I regrouped and came up with a new plan. It seemed like the biggest offenders in irritating my still-healing acne were the facial scrub and the two masks, so I put them aside, along with the on the spot treatment gel. I'll still use them, but not until my skin has had chance to heal up some! 

New plan of action (while skin calms down):

Morning: Cleanser, Moisturiser

Evening: Cleanser, Quinoderm, Moisturiser

As and when needed: use extraction kit.

I've been following this plan for a week and a half now. Even though it hasn't been very long yet, I'm pleased to announce there has been definite progress: update images HERE.

The acne on my jawline is looking a lot better already. It's pretty much just blackheads there now. My forehead, always the worst affected, still looks quite bad, maybe even worse! But it doesn't feel so bad. the type of lesion has definitely changed. I haven't had any of the really big, painful, deep cystic spots I was really prone to before. There's been a couple of smaller cysts, but the Quinoderm seems to be stopping them from getting out of control like they used to, and  I've been able to deal with them with the extraction kit quite easily. Other than that, there's just been a few whiteheads (also easy to deal with). As for the blackheads, well they haven't vanished but I wasn't expecting them to. What HAS happened, though, is they've become slightly more prominent, like they're starting to come to the surface somehow? And they've also become easier to remove. It's like the Quinoderm and Clean and Clear have made them looser and I can see that when I do get back to using a scrub on them, they'll start to come away  :)

All in all, considering the setback I had and the fact it's really only been about a week and a half since I started doing this properly, I'm quite encouraged. Next week, I'll be increasing the Quinoderm to twice a day, which is what the instructions suggest you're supposed to do. I just kept it down to once a day because my skin was so angry with me and Quinoderm is very strong.

I'm going to put up reviews for the products I've been using so far as separate posts - watch this space!