Me and my acne: Week 35 update.

So, not much has changed since last week. My skin is a lot more sore due to slightly overdosing on the Retin-A and using my Clarisonic Mia. I really should pay attention when the medication leaflet tells me not to exfoliate when using it, I have pretty much got no skin left and it's absolute agony! My face is covered in redness and the only thing I can wear on it without any stinging whatsoever is Aquaphor. It's a good job that I don't have any plans to go out dressed up anywhere in the next week because my face is like a tomato!

I'm still getting quite a few pimples showing up, which is disheartening, although it's nowhere near as bad as it has been. Ah well, lets see what the next week brings!

The lighting is quite soft in the photo so you can't really see it, I think I need to start taking these photos in harsher light so you can see it better!

Me and my acne: Week 34 update.

I know this is late. But only a day late, and I didn't want to leave it for another week because that would definitely be bad and I don't want to become lazy with my blog.

So, I think my skin has improved on last week. I'm using my Retin-A religiously at the moment and it's doing wonders at sloughing away all my dead skin and drying out my spots. My forehead is clearing up, but my spots seem to have emigrated to my cheeks, which is weird. The area of spots under my neck is still proving to be a pain in the bottom, but after continuously putting on Retin-A for the past four nights (I have been peeling like hell), the spots have calmed down, leaving nasty redness behind.
Oral medication wise, I still have a month and three weeks to go. Even though I think there has been a small positive change in my skin, my mum has said she can't see a difference in my acne and she says I seem very 'down', which if I think about it, is right really. I do feel a bit pants about how slowly this new medication seems to be working, but have not really wanted to make a big deal about it and have just soldiered on. She has encouraged me to go back to the doctor, and in fact, she felt so strongly about the fact that she has gone and booked an appointment for me to see the doctor! I'm not sure how I feel about this, since I do feel my skin is improving slightly despite what she says!

I have made changes to my diet in the last month, the main one is to try and eat oily fish 5/6 days of the week. I never ate unhealthily in the first place: I'm a student dietitian so it would be hard for me to eat unhealthily, but I know I never used to eat as much oily fish as I should, so now I'm on the other end of the scale and completely OD'ing (I'm probably dying from mercury poisoning...).
I think this is really making a difference, although right now the thought of smoked salmon makes me want to heave, and I'm noticing my boyfriend doesn't want to be near me anymore...I jest. I definitely think eating more oily fish has made a difference not only in slightly reducing the amount of acne, but I can see in the other areas of my skin looks a lot more radiant, less red and angry, a lot more hydrated and more plump. I'm definitely keeping this fishy habit up, because when my active acne finally decides it's had enough, it should help with the redness and scarring left behind!
I definitely think diet has some sort of effect on my skin, because for the entire week I was eating smoked salmon every day and apart from the odd homemade brownie, I had nothing artificial/preservativ-y and my skin seemed to be getting better. Then, on Saturday my boyfriend took me over to the dark side and we had garlic doughballs and onion rings, and voila - today I have two pimples on my head! Although this might be coincidence, it's giving me total 100% motivation to really watch what I eat and consider it's effect on my acne.

So overall, I'm bummed out that my medication hasn't had a huge effect, smoked salmon helps but makes me feel sick, onion rings and garlic doughballs don't help, and I'm going back to the doctor in a week!

Anyone who suffers with acne - do you think diet has an effect on acne? Have you made any changes to your diet which have helped?

Me and my acne; Week 1 update.

So I've been off my antibiotics for about a week now.

I am fairly reluctant to draw any conclusion as of yet, because last time I came off my antibiotics it took about a month for the spots to come back in their full (horrid) glory, so a week really isn't much time for my skin to get used to not having the antibiotics. But hopefully they won't come back like they did last time (you can read aaallll about it here).

I did decide to come off them at a stupid time, cause it was that time of the month. Now, for me, this means horrid spots even on my antibiotics, so a fair few have popped up over the past week, but they are nothing to really cry over. I can cope with one or two spots, but when it reaches ten...that's when I start to feel a bit shit.
However, my saving grace this week has really got to be my topical retinoid, Retin-A. It is frankly the best thing ever to come into contact with my skin. If you need more information just Google it, there is loads of stuff online about it!

So yeah, overall, there hasn't been much change in my skin, apart from a few small spots due to my period.
Hopefully it will stay that way, but I'll do another post next week to let you know how it's all going!