i have a decent amount of acne after starting T. I wash my face every night with a cleanser scrub thing but still get lots of blackheads and pimples. Any tips at how to minimize this?
Are you moisturizing after the cleanser? Skin sometimes reacts to being dried out by over-producing oil, and it’s already producing extra oil because of your hormonal changes. It’s also possible the scrub is causing abrasions in your skin where bacteria can gather and form pimples. Chemical exfoliation (aha and bha are common terms to look for) is generally recommended over physical exfoliation (like St Ives apricot scrub).
Fresh pillow cases every night can help, same with an elimination diet to see if any food is a trigger for acne.
I shave my face for the peach fuzz every couple of days but I cleanse it beforehand. Ive been eating a bunch of sugar which probably isnt helping
Stop shaving for a bit or use a hair trimmer to keep the fuzz in check.
Your skin could be reacting to the shaving.
Stop for a week or so and see if the acne improves.
If so, it’s probably the shaving
Welcome to teenage boyhood. Other than what you are doing, the advice I was given growing up was that I’d eventually grow out of it. And luckily I did. If it’s really bad, talk to a dermatologist. Hopefully other people have more in depth advice.
teenage boyhood.
This has nothing to do with being a boy.
The evaluation of acne severity showed that “mild acne” was the most frequent form in all subgroups (92% in adult females, 82% in adult males, 89% in teenage females, and 77% in teenage males, respectively). Additionally, the least frequent form was “severe acne” (1% in adult females, 3% in adult males, 1% in teenage females, and 1% in teenage males). Finally, “moderate acne” was observed homogeneously in all subgroups, though both male groups showed a little higher prevalence of such in comparison with the female groups (15% in adult males and 22% in teenage males versus 7% in adult females and 10% in teenage females) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5788264/
Still somewhat more of a boy thing, but it’s less of a difference than I thought. Also since OP is transmasc, I was hoping framing this as a boy thing would be comforting.
Try cutting out sugar for a bit just to test. Sebum (the wax like stuff that accumulates from your pores) is stimulated by insulin (also a hormone). So cutting out things like pop or chocolate helps with oily skin.
deleted by creator
i don’t really care about the way it looks. Main thing is it’s occasionally painful which I don’t like
After chemical exfoliation(foaming clenser) I tend to use moisturizers with vitamin C during the night and ones with SPF during the day (I also apply an SPF 60+ spray on top)
I find that washing my face occassionally throughout the day also helps keep acne down more than acne specific chemicals like retinol.
- I’ve used retinol, clindamycin/benzoyl peroxide, retin-a/tretinoin gel and none of these prescriptions really helped, not sure if I have bad luck or if these are just pharma-scams but these are also some other options. I’d like to reiterate what @duckythescientist@sh.itjust.works advised; I’d also like to recommend consulting with a dematologist as they’ll be able to figure out what’ll be best for you and your skin🤗
deleted by creator
That’s good advice
deleted by creator
i didn’t interpert it that way
deleted by creator
Zinc is the only thing that ever helped me with the sebaceous cysts. You can even use Head 'N Shoulders, if that’s still a thing.
is a lot to do with sugar for me, so u could try that!
