Short contact therapy: This is where you apply the product like a mask, and only leave it on for a short amount of time before rinsing it off. I decided to be even more cautious and apply it every third day and build up. The oil should also give a time-release effect, since the tretinoin has to diffuse through the oil layer before reaching the skin.Īlternate day application: Pretty self-explanatory – use it every second day at first. Using a lower concentration and building up: I was only prescribed 0.05% cream, so I decided to dilute it on my face by applying oil first. There are a few strategies that are commonly recommended for helping you build up to the full leave-on treatment for retinoids: I’ve also found that there’s a lag time of about two days between me using a retinoid product, and actually experiencing the irritation and flaking. This means instead of monitoring my skin and adjusting my routine as usual, I had to take extra care to pre-empt irritation. My skin’s quite sensitive to retinoids, and I had an unpleasant experience when I used too much 1% retinol and had a nasty cold at the same time which made my nose shed skin flakes for about a fortnight (I have a theory that it gave me broken capillaries around my nose), Time-released formulas are also gentler, but more expensive. Tretinoin comes in a range of concentrations from 0.01% to 0.1%, and lots of different formulations (time released, gel, creams etc.).Ĭream formulas are gentler than alcohol-based gels even though tretinoin seems to penetrate better from a cream (I would guess it’s because wet skin is more permeable than dehydrated skin, and the cream base acts as a built-in moisturiser). I was prescribed a 0.05% tretinoin cream. The two main ways to limit how purgey your skin gets is to introduce the product slowly, and look after your skin, so that’s the aim of my routine. Purging is worse when your skin’s irritated, so it’s best to add the tretinoin in slowly so your skin can adjust. Related post: Video: Is My Skin Purging or Breaking Out? Since retinoids increase skin turnover, they can also cause purging, which is when a product makes your skin worse before it gets better because they basically make your skin expel all the baby pimples that were there before much faster. In particular, tretinoin causes dryness and peeling. Tazarotene is more irritating, while adapalene (Differin), retinol and retinaldehyde are less. Tretinoin is one of the more irritating retinoids, but it’s also the one with the most studies to back up its benefits, so I decided to go for it anyway. This is worst in the first few weeks until your skin gets used to it, but for some people (around 15% of people) this doesn’t happen at all, and for others it can take 6 weeks to clear up. The main drawback to using tretinoin is that it’s quite irritating and often gives you dry, flaky skin that’s more prone to stinging and redness. Retinoids also increase several types of collagen in the skin, increase epidermal thickness, and make the stratum corneum more compact, which gives younger looking, plump, smooth skin. In terms of aging, retinoids help fade pigmentation by making pigmented cells shed faster, and they slow down melanin production and transfer as well. Retinoids are also anti-inflammatory as well, which is awesome since inflammation is one of the things that causes acne. Open pores also let more oxygen in – the C acnes bacteria that inhabit inflamed pimples can’t survive when they’re exposed to too much oxygen, so they’re less prolific. This means that for acne, it’s harder for comedones (clogged pores) to form, and any that you already have will be pushed out faster. They affect the way skin cells grow and develop, and increase how quickly skin cells are shed. Retinoids work in a bunch of different ways. Vitamin A derivatives (retinoids) are one of the most studied categories of skin actives, since they work really well to fix a range of things including acne, pigmentation and wrinkles. It’s sometimes called all-trans-retinoic acid to distinguish it from isotretinoin (13-cis-retinoic acid), which is the active ingredient in the highly effective oral acne medication Accutane. Tretinoin, also known as retinoic acid, is an active form of vitamin A.
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