I was having such bad breakouts all summer.
My acne has decided to take over my life.
All summer long, my skin was just...
it was mad at me.
Makes you wanna go hide.
Right? Like, I just wanted to hide.
I didn't want to do anything.
I didn't want anyone to see me.
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Acne can feel like a nightmare.
One that you're not sure you're ever going to wake up from.
That's definitely how I felt last year.
And, well, this is the routine
that I finally figured out that helped clear up my skin.
In today's video, I'm going to be breaking down the lifestyle changes I made,
the medication I started using,
and my entire morning and evening skincare routine.
Just be ready to get it all here.
First up, let's start with the morning routine with a shower.
First up, towels.
So I have a dedicated face towel.
In fact, I make sure that it's a completely different color
than my hand towel, so I never get it mixed up.
And it's also separate from my body towel.
Towels can carry a lot of bacteria and things that cause acne.
So I like to change out my face towel on a regular basis and keep it extra clean.
Next up, water.
So recently, I installed water filters
that filter out stuff like chlorine and other chemicals and irritants
that can be in the tap water that can actually affect your skin.
So really, water is a skin care product.
And whatever you put on your face, well,
it gets absorbed into your skin.
That is why I really love my water filter, both in my shower and in my tap.
I have definitely seen a lowering of irritation.
My skin, it gets a lot less red since I installed them.
Next up, washing.
I really love Peach and Lily's Power Calm Hydrating Gel Cleanser
because it is super, super gentle on my sensitive skin.
I also love this one by Purito, Defence Barrier pH Cleanser.
It's slightly harsher, so I only use it once a day if I use it.
Basically something I never appreciated is that being rough on my skin
causes irritation.
Irritation causes inflammation and inflammation causes acne.
So I've really changed my products to be very gentle and very hydrating,
to give my skin refreshment instead of irritation.
Because I have super oily skin.
I like to keep my skincare routine in the morning pretty simple, making sure
I give my skin enough hydration that it doesn't become more oily
and also making sure I don't give it so much, that it just clogs my pores.
So I like to start with a watery essence.
Today, I'm using Beauty of Joseon’s Ginseng Essence Water.
I absolutely love essences.
Basically, they’re watery,
nutrient filled goodness for your face.
I don't know how else to say that.
Then I use Maelove’s The Plush Cream.
I've talked about this moisturizer a few different times, on my channel,
and I still love it.
It's my go to morning moisturizer.
It's super lightweight, but incredibly hydrating.
I have been searching for the perfect morning moisturizer for years.
In fact, my entire life.
And it was not until I met Maelove’s The Plush Cream that I felt
like I finally found it.
Next up is the
incredibly, incredibly important step
for all of skincare and acne care, which is sunscreen.
I'm using Beauty of Joseon’s Relief Sun:
Rice + Probiotics and SPF 50.
This thing went viral on the Internet probably in the past year.
I would say maybe last summer.
And it is the best, I have to say.
But sun damage can seriously irritate and inflame your skin, which adds to the acne.
So definitely using a good sunscreen is important.
However, I've gone through so many sunscreens that made me break out.
This one doesn't.
I love a lot of Korean sunscreens because of that.
They're super moisturizing and hydrating
and they don't burn or irritate my super sensitive skin.
And they're just great.
For makeup, I try to keep things super light.
For example, I use IT Cosmetics CC+cream Oil-free Matte.
And something else I really love to do is go on a website called COSDNA.com
and you can actually copy and paste all the ingredients of whatever
makeup products you're looking at into this website
and it will tell you if it has very acne causing ingredients.
Especially for anything like a foundation, a blush, something
that's going to be covering a large amount of my skin, like a highlighter.
I always check its ingredients through COSDNA.
Because I don't want to be putting pore clogging stuff on my skin.
Another favorite product is acne patches and dots.
So I love the ones from Hero
and also these ones from Peach Slices are pretty good.
Basically, when you have an active breakout, these are great to put on it.
It helps draw out the white
gunky stuff honestly and helps it heal.
They are a lifesaver and I love these extra huge ones
from Hero too.
Next up, let's talk about makeup brushes.
So I used to use makeup brushes and when you are using
makeup brushes, it's so important to clean them.
Because just like towels, they can harbor bacteria, a bunch of dead
skin cells, basically a bunch of stuff that can clog your pores and drive acne.
Now, honestly,
I've pretty much stopped using any makeup brushes outside of my eyeshadow brushes.
I use liquid blush and I just apply my CC cream with my hands
because honestly, I can wash my hands every single time
and I don't have to worry about if it might be causing some breakouts.
Since we're just on
a roll talking about things we need to keep clean.
Pillowcases.
Changing out your pillowcase for a fresh one on a regular
basis can be incredibly helpful because again, your face
is smashed up against it all night, every night.
Something else that my face was smashed
up against a lot last year and the year before was face masks.
I tried to be eco conscious and use reusable face masks
that I would faithfully wash, but guess what?
They still caused breakouts eventually when I just gave up
and switched over to individually wrapped disposable masks.
Wow, did I see a major improvement in my skin.
Now let's talk about diet.
There's a lot of mixed information
on whether there are specific foods that you should avoid if you have acne.
However, I've discovered for me personally, I have a few triggers.
One major one is a whey protein.
So, for example, whey protein bars.
Whey protein drinks. Yeah.
They make a very specific part of my face breakout.
It's kind of weird.
Next up, let's talk about habits. So
I feel like the whole pandemic, people are like, “Stop touching your face.”
But you know how hard it is to stop touching your face?
It's really, really hard.
But I do know that me touching my chin
all the time, whenever I am thoughtful,
definitely contributes to my breakouts on the lower half of my face.
So I am working very hard to well,
touch my face less.
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Welcome back to the bathroom.
It is time for the evening routine now.
First up, getting all of the makeup
and sunscreen, everything else off by double cleansing.
First with an oil.
I really love Peach and Lily's Ginger Melt Oil Cleanser
for getting all the impurities off of my face.
But first, I must put on my cat headband.
So I went to the gym today.
It was very interesting.
There was this one couple
that was cracking me up because the guy did not want to work out.
He just wanted to hug her.
Literally, the whole time, she'd be like on a machine trying to work out.
And he'd go, he’d like, do a different machine a little bit.
But then he'd like... you can tell he didn't really want to be there.
And he'd like, go back over to her and just,
like, hug her from behind while she's doing her machine.
And I'm like, “Is this a new way of working out?
“Like, what is this?” Anyway,
that is my story of going to the gym, but let's take off the makeup and stuff.
So I just gently massage my face with the oil cleanser.
Oil cleansers are good at cleaning oil, which is of course
a major contributing factor to acne.
There we go.
Next up, I'm going to be using Peach and Lily's
Power Calm Hydrating Gel cleanser.
Like I mentioned before, I use filtered water when I wash my face,
and the one in my sink is by a company called FilterBaby.
Now they design their water filters specifically for skincare
to filter out the things that might irritate your skin.
And I have definitely seen
a reduction in the irritation of my skin and the redness.
I used to have a lot of redness, especially around my chin
that has really gone away since I started using it.
And they have actually given me a discount code for
you guys that I will link to below if you want to check them out.
And then back in with an essence,
this one is the Peach and Lily Wild Dew Treatment Essence.
This is my favorite essence.
It looks just like water.
If you think I have a slight Peach and Lily obsession, you are correct
because then I also use the Glass Skin Refining Serum by them.
I have to say, this
routine and my morning routine is my safe routine.
Like these are all of the products I know will not break me out.
That are super gentle and very hydrating on my skin.
Whenever I try to introduce new products, this is the base I work off of.
And if something
irritates it, I know it's the new products and I can go right back to my safe base.
And I would definitely suggest doing that.
Find what is your safe base skincare routine,
before trying to add in like a bunch of other random stuff.
Okay, then we have my acne cream.
So this is my actual medication.
Years ago, when I had acne, adult acne for the first time,
I tried to do it all natural.
I was like, “I don't use medication.”
Do you want to know how much trouble that brought me?
But then last year I started using Apostrophe.
So Apostrophe is an online dermatology option.
I pretty much get to have a video conference with a dermatologist,
I think it's like every three months, and they prescribe me a custom serum.
And this has Tretinoin in it, which is a prescription grade retinol.
It's a lot more powerful than anything you can get over the counter.
But I absolutely love Apostrophe.
It dramatically helped clear up my skin
and it caused a lot less irritation
than the last acne medication I had tried.
So I really love their stuff. Okay.
And then for my moisturizer I use Peach and Lily’s Matcha Pudding
Antioxidant Cream.
This is a lot heavier of a moisturizer than the one I use in the morning.
Also,
it's green.
I don't know why I love the fact that it's green so much, but I do.
I'm just loving the green.
Okay.
And it smells really good.
Like it smells like green.
But again, it's the right level
of moisturization without being too much for my oily skin.
And then I use Maelove's Eye Enhancer Ultimate Gel Cream
For my eye cream.
Anyway, that is my daily skincare routine.
I will use an exfoliator about once a week in addition to that.
So I use either Maelove’s The Exfoliator
or Innisfree’s Pore Clearing Clay Mask 2x with Super Volcanic Clusters.
These are the two I use and I only use one of them a week
because my skin is so sensitive.
However, if I just go weeks and weeks without exfoliating,
then I will get some buildup that will cause some breakouts. But
over exfoliating will cause breakouts way quicker.
So I just use one of these depending on like
what I'm feeling at the time once a week.
But overall, this is my base routine that's really helped me clear up my acne
and as you can see, I still get like a little zit here and a little bit here.
I know both of these are because I did eat a whey protein bar recently
because, you know, sometimes I can get away with it.
This week was not one of them.
However, I will also occasionally get pimples down here when,
you know, the hormones decide that's the thing.
But it's still infinitely, infinitely, infinitely
better than before, which I think is important to remember with acne.
Like they're still going to be some breakouts sometimes, but getting less
and less and making them not as horrible as before
is definite, definite progress.
Anyway, let me know in the comments down below.
Have you struggle with acne?
What have you found that helps you personally?
And as always, keep being awesome because
you're awesome. Bye.
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