Home Remedies For Severe Acne Vulgaris

hello everybody, and welcome back to my channel. so today i've got a video that i promised a very very long time ago and this will be about my acne and my accutane treatment. i want to start this off by showing you my before-and-after. so this is how i looked about a year ago i think, this is how i looked in my early twenties and this is how i look today

without any makeup on. so as you can see i got rid of acne, well, quite effectively i'd say. this is obviously going to be a very long video, because my journey with acne was a very long one, it lasted seven years. so i suggest you grab a cup of tea before we continue and yeah - where do i even start? when i was in

high school, my acne wasn't that bad. i've had a couple of pimples, but it was nothing out of the ordinary and i remember it started getting bad and bit out of hand when i was about 19 and when i went to university. i started getting what i think was cystic acne around my jaw and my chin. well, it was all around my face, but it

was mainly in this area. i also had some on my chest and my back... and it was not what you call mild acne. bear with me, this is going to be nasty, but those were huge bumps that formed underneath my skin, sort of, for about two weeks, until they were finally out and then you could do nothing about them. they were huge, red and swollen forever and you couldn't pop them,

you know, you couldn't do anything at all. i didn't do much about it back then and obviously over-the-counter medication did not work, so i started googling and it turned out that it might be hormonal, due to the fact that it was around my chin and that's when i decided i should try some hormonal contraception, to try and get rid of it and it actually did

work. well, it was far from perfect, but it did work a lot, it changed a lot, and i also lost some weight when i went on the contraceptive patch... so i never took any blood tests, but i think that a lot of facts indicated that this might have been hormonal. so it stayed this way for a couple of years. i tried taking contraceptive pills and i tried taking the

nuvaring, but both of those didn't really work very well for me or for my acne. for the past seven years it was getting better then worse and better and worse. it was like this bumpy ride where you can't really expect what will happen next. i visited a couple of dermatologists along the way, but none of them really helped me. they were only giving me some

topical treatments that didn't really work for me... and i've tried everything and when i say i tried everything i really mean everything. i've tried over-the-counter products, i've tried many different diets and i've tried natural medicine... and none of that worked. it got really bad around autumn 2014, but fortunately, as if i predicted it somehow,

i've already had an appointment with a really really good dermatologist that was recommended to me by my friend. i had to wait... i think - five months to actually get an appointment... so that's how popular she is... and i was really hoping that would mean something and fortunately it did, because it turned out that she, that dermatologist, was my

savior. at the very beginning, she told me i might be up for accutane, but she wanted to try something milder first. i wasn't exactly on accutane because we don't have that in poland. my medicine was called izotek, but it's the very same thing, because it's isotretinoin. i went through two different types of antibiotics, by which i mean

pills and some topical treatment. i will leave all of the names in the description bar below. i started the treatment in october 2014 and i remember the first antibiotic was pretty good, it worked really well, but as soon as i went off of it, the acne came back. the second antibiotic

did not help at all. this is how many packages of medicine i had to go through to try and get rid of that shit, but it still did not work. yeah, pretty much. this is how i looked during summer 2015 after both antibiotics failed and right before i went on accutane. sometimes it was worse, sometimes it was better, but

this obviously is not what you call mild acne. i got back to my dermatologist and she decided it was time to put me on accutane... and i will be talking about that in a minute... but i started my treatment in october 2015 and it ended around february, mid-february 2016. ever since i have had no signs of acne, whatsoever. i do get an occasional pimple

maybe once a month, but it's usually very small and it goes away very quickly. so now i'd like to move onto my accutane journey and later on in the video, i would like to give you a couple of tips that i found quite useful and a couple of warnings that my dermatologist gave me and i'll talk about the beauty products that i've used during my

accutane treatment. as i've mentioned, i started taking antibiotics in october 2014 and then i started accutane in october 2015, so me and my dermatologist kept on trying something milder for a whole year before we decided to pull out the big guns. and now the isotretinoin treatment, step-by-step. before i went on

accutane, i had to do a couple of blood tests and i had to check my hormones cause my dermatologist told me that if my hormones were imbalanced, i could take all the acne medication in the world and it still wouldn't help me. so i did the blood tests and it turned out that everything was fine so we proceeded with the accutane treatment.

these are the tests that i was supposed to take. i'm not sure that it's everything i had to do... but i also had to check my thyroid. before i continue, here's an extremely important disclaimer. my body can take a lot. my body is very healthy, very strong, i never get sick. i took antibiotics only once in my life, before that acne treatment, and that was

when i was eight months old. also, my skin gets irritated or red very rarely. accutane is a very strong drug. i don't know if i was just lucky or if it has to... something to do with what i've just said about my very healthy and strong body, but i did not get any severe side effects. i kept logging in during those four

months of treatment on to snapchat and i think that lot of girls that followed me there can confirm i did not have any severe side effects. although i have to mention i was taking a rather high daily dosage of the medication. throughout the first two months, i kept taking 40 milligrams a day... and i will comment on that later because i know that some of

you might think that it's a lot to start with. my first side effect showed up after a week and that was: dry lips. obviously. everybody gets dry lips on accutane, there are no exceptions whatsoever. but, you know, some people have it worse, some people have it better. i think i must have been lucky once again because i did get very dry

lips, it was annoying, i have to admit, but my lips did not crack nor bleed. my acne stopped after about a week of taking medication and it's not like it completely stopped, but the breakouts were not as sever as they used to be. i also did not get the initial purge and i know that a lot of people go through that, but i didn't, so it's not a rule,

you don't have to be scared of that in advance. after about two weeks, my skin became very delicate. it wasn't red, but it was very very delicate. i had to stop using clarisonic, i had to stop using luna foreo, because both of these were just too harsh for my skin, i had to use my bare hands. still my skin was not extra dry,

and it was not cracking or flaky or anything like that. but to my surprise, it was not that oily anymore, which was a very nice side effect. my dermatologist ordered me to take blood tests every two months to check if everything was alright, and to check my cholesterol levels. and i'm going to be completely honest here, i did drink alcohol when i

was on accutane. obviously, i didn't drink all the time, i'm not that irresponsible. still my liver was like brand new. however, you are not supposed to drink alcohol, any alcohol whatsoever, when you are on accutane, so please don't do that, because you might not be as lucky as me. and please, keep in mind my very strong and healthy body once again.

oh, my cholesterol levels went up. after two months, i started taking 60 milligrams a day and i kept on doing that for the next two months, till the very end of my treatment. that's when a couple more side effects started kicking in. and i remember that after about three months, since i've started the treatment, my

skin got flaky around my nose, around my mouth and around... in between my eyebrows, but it was nothing serious, once again. no cracking, no extra dry, painful stuff, definitely. i also started getting back pain after three months. (as well). that was a very specific, lower back pain and i remember i always got it after i finished cleaning up my

apartment which involved... well, a couple of hours of pretty intensive workout. somewhere along the way, my hands got really dry, but once again, nothing terrible. i did have to use a ton of hand cream, but there was no cracking and no blood involved. the last side effect was my eyesight. i got very sensitive to sunlight and i think... i'm not really sure

about that, but i think i didn't see as well when it was very very dark. although, i'm... as i've said, i'm not very sure about that one. i think i read a little bit too much about the side effects on the internet, because the truth is that i am supposed to wear glasses. i'm completely blind without them and i'm supposed to wear them all the time,

ever since i was a little baby, so that's probably it, not the accutane. that's it, it was over after four months and 10 days, and after that i kept on using loacid, i think that's how you pronounce it. so basically it's just tretinoin, but it's topical. i keep on using it all the time, because it's good for fine lines and i'm very

very old, so i have to use that. i went off of accutane and my side effects were gone after about two to three weeks and i have no side effects whatsoever to this day and i remember that when i was on accutane my hair and my nails got a lot stronger than they normally were, which is not really something you'd expect, is it. i remember the day when i went off of

accutane was the last day that i got any real breakouts. it's been 10 months and i've had no acne whatsoever. i had my last dermatologist appointment about two months ago, because i was told to check in after the summer, because the acne likes to come back during the summer, and everything was perfect. i got rid of most of the hyperpigmentation by then and

that was definitely the end. now, i can officially say this was one of the best decisions i've ever made and if my acne ever came back, and the truth is you can relapse, even after accutane, i wouldn't think twice. i'd go on accutane once again, in a blink of an eye. i used to be very self-conscious and very insecure, i was

not able to look people in the eye when we were having a conversation and i would never leave my apartment without my makeup on... and now i don't even wear it on a daily basis. i wear it like once or twice during a month, if i film or if i go out on a special occasion. the feeling is so liberating, it's hard to describe it with words. i think that if

you did not go through it, if you didn't experience it yourself, you just won't understand that. it changes everything. however, you have to remember that, as i've mentioned before, accutane is a very very very strong drug. you have to make sure you have a very good dermatologist and you have to make sure you've tried everything else

before you go on accutane. you need to keep checking your blood on a regular basis and if anything, anything at all goes wrong or feels wrong, or you don't feel well, you have to stop the medication and you have to go and see your doctor. also, there are a lot of side effects that i did not have, but a lot of people

actually do experience, so i suggest you just google all of that, because i don't have the time to talk about it in this video. so before you decide, as i've mentioned, go google it. i don't know... watch a couple of videos on youtube, because experiences may vary. but don't let anyone scare you. people were trying to scare me off and as you can see, my

treatment was not that bad. so remember you can always stop the medication. about my dosage - i know that a lot of you might think that 40 milligrams are a lot to start with and 60 milligrams are completely out of the ordinary, especially for my height and my weight. i'm not a very big human being. but, as i've said, i've had no severe side

effects and i think it all depends on how your body reacts. however, if you dig deeper into the internet, you will find that people who took a higher dosage over a shortened period of time, very rarely relapse and those who kept on taking lower dosage for an extended period of time, like nine months or even

12 months, and they kept on taking about 10 or 20 milligrams a day, they relapse a bit more often. now, i'm not saying that this is the truth, that this is how it works. it's definitely your body that should decide what you can go through and it's definitely your dermatologist that should be the one who

decides about your dosage. all i'm saying is: google it and see for yourself how things work. next up: skincare products that i used. this was my face cream and you can get it all around the world and it's hands-down the best product you can get while on accutane. i'm pretty sure that this was why my skin was not going crazy, it was not extra dry or

flaky or cracking or anything like that. and you can also use it on other parts of the body where you feel your skin is too dry. this was my makeup remover, very nice, very gentle and it worked really really well with eyeliner and some heavy makeup. this was my face and body wash, unfortunately i think it's available

only in poland. it's extremely cheap, but don't let that deceive you, it's a very very good product that works very well for dry skin. this was my shampoo. i started using it because, at the very beginning it was recommended to me by one of my viewers, and yeah, that was a good idea because it completely prevented any flaky, weird

things going on on my scalp. and for my body balm, i used whatever i had at hand, because my body was not any drier than it usually is. don't even try to use any face or body scrubs, because your skin will not forgive you. a lot of people also ask me about my acne scars, and i didn't really do anything about them, i still have them.

i still have those tiny holes in my skin, but you can only see them when you look close up. when it comes to hyperpigmentation, i just let it fade away naturally over the past year. i tried to speed up the process a bit using almond peel, but you have to remember that you can use that only when you finish accutane. and you also can't

sunbathe for at least six months after you finish your treatment. last but not least, a couple of tips that might help you tame your acne a little bit. number one: my dermatologist told me i have a lifelong ban on sun bathing, which i haven't really been listening to, as you can clearly tell, but i think the main idea here is not to sunbathe for 5 hours a

day, because she told me that if i sunbathe too much, if i spend too much time in the sun, the acne might come back. number two: you probably heard that diet can affect acne. my dermatologist told me that it's connected to glycemic index and by that i mean that products with high gi will cause breakouts and products with low gi should not cause as

many breakouts. another thing you've probably heard is dairy. a lot of people say that dairy can cause acne. i don't know if that's true, because as i've said, i've tried many different diets, i didn't try a vegan diet but, i did ditch almost all dairy products and it didn't really work for me. however, i haven't been eating any animal

products whatsoever for five months now, and i think it might be contributing to the fact that my skin is still very clear and it might be helping with sustaining that effect. number three: change your pillowcases as often as you can. now... i really mean it. i mean, you don't wear the same lingerie every day. and i still change my pillowcases every four

days, i use only one side of the pillowe... i use one side of the pillow only twice. call me crazy, but look at my skin. number four: go to the dermatologist and if the first one doesn't help you, go to another one, if the second one doesn't help you, go to a third one. i've been through, i think... five or six people, until i reached

the right one. number five: if your acne is severe, stop using over-the-counter products, because they are just drying out your skin. and last but not least: this is one of the most important tips that i think i can give you, and that is moisturize! i know that a lot of you may think that if you dry out your skin, the acne will go away, but the truth is

exactly the opposite. if you dry out your skin, if you keep on drying it out, it goes completely crazy and it wants to produce a lot more sebum to moisturize, and it will produce even more pimples. so moisturize! moisturize heavily, especially during the night. yeah, that shloud be it. so remember... wooo, got a bit oily... remember there's always a way

out of this. you will probably be struggling for quite some time. i've struggled for seven years, as i've said. but yes, there is always a way out. don't give up, definitely don't give up. and please please, don't be scared of medicine. i know that people say a lot of very terrible things about antibiotics, about accutane, in particular, but as you

can see, it's not that bad, medicine is here to help us, not to kill us. i promise you... you have to trust it. if there's anything else you'd like to know, feel free to ask. i will answer all of the questions in the comment section below. and that's it, thank you so much for watching, i hope you will get through your acne, and as always, you can support me

by donating, by pledging on patreon, or for my polish people, to make it easier for you, you can pledge on patronite. once again, thank you very much and i hope i'll see you in my next video, which will be about living with acne. i guess i'll see you very soon. bye!

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