If your skin used to be bad but isn’t anymore, what worked?

[Spaggybollynese]

I don’t have acne or a serious enough issue for prescription medication, but ongoing breakouts, dry/oily, uneven skin tone, sometimes angry flare ups or blotchy patches, looking a bit meh

If you used to have low grade bad skin, what did you change that actually worked?

I think the menopause has really helped my skin

All my life I had an oil slick as a face, huge pores but thankfully only the odd blackhead, never spots.

Then I developed Seborrheic Dermatitis , made worse with temp extremes - and guess who worked as a chef :)

Peri - menopause my skin was night marecentral, dry, greasy, splitting, sore, inflamed - a mess. Everything and anything upset it

This past year my skin has finally cleared. Yes Ive a few fine lines around the mouth and eyes but other then that, my skin is lovely, best its ever been

I have made huge dietry changes as well, no white bread/pasta, cut the dairy ( no butter, small amounts of cheese , very little milk, upped the veg and fruit and go very easy on the chocolate and sweet stuff

I cant be bothered with too much of a regime and as for SPF, unless its in a product I use already, so not happening ( we have so little sun here anyways , I just make do with the Sunnies ) .

Skin care right now and is doing enough for me is Superdrug's naturally radiant foaming cleanser, followed by Hyraluaronic acid ( just one I picked up from TK, and Lidl Q10 day and the night one with retinol/collagen serum ( TK again, think its Korean )

Skin is soft, plump and radiant , Im happy :)

Dermatica absolutely changed my skin. I am one of those who is sold by any product and spent years and hundreds of pounds trying new products that never did what they promised! I even used retinol without any change. Tret is the magic ingredient! Only Skin and Me and Dermatica prescribe it in the UK. Skin and Me made my skin red and irritated. They also prescribe much lower doses to start with so it takes much longer to see a difference. I switched to Dermatica and the difference has been amazing. My skin is smoother, brighter, less oily and glows all the time. I was apprehensive about anything having the impact it had because of all my previous experiences with much more expensive higher end products.

You fill in a survey and take photos of your skin, they review it and prescribe a cream tailored to your skin for best results. You pay a monthly subscription and they post it to you each month. I use it every other night so pause or delay each months delivery to when I need it. Although I pay monthly it works out much cheaper for me than buying multiple things to try each month and always giving up using them because they don’t work!

I also only have to use a very simple cheap cleanser and moisturiser with it. They sell their own cleansers, serums and moisturisers but you don’t have to buy them, any will do alongside the treatment they prescribe.

I have a discount code if anybody is thinking of signing up, it works out cheaper to use this. For full transparency and honesty it also gives me a discount off a month’s payment.

5EW47R

Thats the code if you want to use it at checkout.

It’s worth it I promise but on the off chance if you find you don’t like it you can easily just cancel immediately online. You can also have a consultation with their prescribers and discuss your treatment and they will change it according to what you are looking to achieve.

Eating better, for me a mostly vegan diet really helped. Cutting down UPF definitely helped.

Drinking lots of liquid helped
Cutting out alcohol really helped
Buying only fragrance free skincare really helped
Giving up fancy formulas and harsh skincare (eg things like skin and me etc) really helped

Meant to also add drinking more water helps a lot

Also cutting back on refined sugar, particularly chocolate. I always get a breakout if I've had too much chocolate. I use La Roche Posay Effaclar face wash in a morning, micellar water in an evening, moisturise in the morning and every other day use BHA serum on my tzone and chin at night.

@Greenbriar I tend to mix up the probiotics I use, so wouldn’t recommend a particular one. I tend to switch between the lacto ones and bifida ( soil based). The ones I’m using at the moment are symbiotic 150 billion cfs, which I got from Amazon.

CeraVe Resurfacing Retinol - I use the whole package of their face wash, retinol, sunscreen and night cream - had acne until I was 45, but not after I started this!