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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2314 thread views

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:

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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.

I didn't do it for skin problems, but a few things really helped my Rosacea:

  • High carb, low fat (less than 20g fat), low protein (less than 50g protein). Think Kempner Rice diet,
  • Supplement Stearoylethanolamide
  • Supplement Glycine.

Interesting, my current diet is 150* grams of protein per day, mostly for working out, but there is some evidence that heavy animal protein diets are better for skin due to collagen consumption. Plus heavy meat is generally better for combatting inflamation, which is linked to rosacea. What mechanism would make high protein worse for rosacea?

Collagen is good, and one reason why I supplement glycine. But most protein sources are high in branch chain amino acids, which seem to cause insulin resistance in the metabolically unhealthy. Insulin resistance increases infIamation. I am trying to reduce BCAAs to 8g a day, at least temporarily. I'm not trying to reduce other amino acids, but as a consequence my overall protein is pretty low for this experiment.

I checked Amazon and saw glycine is 10 cents per pill, but then I checked my collagen supplement and I see there's already glycine in there. But thank you for the tip.

I take about 5g a day with Bulk Supplement's Glycine Powder. It's pretty cheap stuff, but I can tell the difference in how smooth my skin gets.

I recommend checking out /r/SaturatedFat for some unorthodox health advice. They are pretty interested in eliminating inflammation, reductive stress, and insulin resistance and I think they are finally onto something.

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