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Wellness Wednesday for November 15, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Anyone have unusual advice for salvaging bad skin?

I have had terrible, borderline life-destroying bad skin since high school. I've fought it for over a decade with every treatment option under the sun (including copious amounts of SPF to block out the sun), and it's still awful, albeit in a more "beat up, scarred, leathery" way now than a "covered in pimples way" it used to be.

I think I'm totally fucked and just have to accept that. But might as well ask if anyone has any unusual or hail mary methods for improving skin texture/quality, fighting acne, reducing scarring, reducing redness, etc.

Just for the hell of it, here is a list of skin treatments I currently or have formerly used:

Niacinamide

Retinoids (Accutane and Tretinoin)

Azelaic Acid

Urea repair

Vitamin C (topical and oral)

SPF (million sunscreen variants, applied every day, applied every two hours outside)

Snail Mucin Power Essence

Oral collagen supplements

Fish oil supplements

Vitamin D supplements

Daily cleansers

Hyaluronic Acid

Ferulic Acid

Toothpaste (actually a pretty good short term pimple reducer)

Glycolic Acid (exfoliator)

Korean facial masks

Slugging (putting a layer of vaseline or a similar substance on at night to trap in moisture)

Eliminating hot showers

Silk pillowcases

Claritin (to reduce general inflamation)

Rhofade (weird, controversial short-term treatment for redness that restricts blood flow to the face)

Ivermectin (fight skin mites associated with rosacea)

No sugar consumption

No dairy consumption

Black head removal tape

Botox

Dysport (similar to Botox)

Microneedling

Radiofrequency microneedling

Fraxel non-ablative laser

And I'm sure there's a whole bunch of random smaller treatments from when I was young that I forgot

I have become something of an amateur expert on this shit, feel to ask anything if you're curious.

Can you provide more information about what, exactly, is bad with regards to your skin? Is it specifically bad acne of some kind?

Always bad acne (never quite sure about type, I think bog standard), rosacea, chronically sensitive, acne scarring, lots of smaller discolorations, rough textures (especially orange peel), big pores, very dry by default.