Self 30% Glycolic Acid Peel

Have you ever deep cleaned your closet or your pantry and half way through the process, you look around the room and it looks a thousand times worse than when you started?

That's the stage I seem to be at with the peels. If I run a fingernail over my skin, all sorts of gross little sandy beads or hardened sebum are coming up from my skin, and I am having a mild break out on my forehead (which almost NEVER gets acne). I am pretty sure this is the purge I have heard so much about. My skin looks worse in that the layer of crud on top of my pores is mostly gone, and the stuff INSIDE the pores is mostly gone, so instead of a dull, clogged pore I have a wide open, slightly red pore- I can tell I'm heading in the right direction but man, it's not a fun stage in the trip.

My wife complained that she missed some of my freckles that had gone away after three rounds of glycolic acid. Nope. Those were just really deep pores with crap in them.

At least my acne issues weren't as obvious as I thought, I guess? A lot of them really did look like pigmentation, though- dry, brittle skin + lack of skincare = deep, grungy pores.

I did a 50% lactic acid peel for for 5 minutes tonight (I'd worked up to 3 min with Glycolic, which is a much stronger acid), mostly because while my skin is heading in the right direction I have a bunch of mild acne and redness showing up. Next week I will probably do a salycilic peel to just get everything out of my pores and really deep clean my nose and chin (which are much improved but still have the standard nose and chin blackheads that I'd like to eliminate).

After that rotation, I'll be back to Glycolic Acid, 30%.

One thing I've started doing that has helped with the flakiness a lot is going to the steam room at my gym. My skin LOVES a little steam room action, and even my body skin that I have not been treating is looking better.

I did a second peel last night, a little over a week after the first one. I forgot to wipe my skin with acetone first and the peel was less even than the first one. My skin feels softer, although there's not a lot of visible change yet. I look slightly sunburned.

I peeled my face, neck, decollete, right arm, and shoulders/back where I have sun damage. Next week I'm probably going to also get the skin on my legs because it's ashy and flaky, and the shin I did last week the skin is much nicer than the one I didn't do.

I'm going to keep upping the time week by week till I hit 10 minutes, then I'm going to up the strength of the peels.

The skin on my body has bounced back 100%, and if this is the result I'm thrilled. It's soft, lovely, and some of the crepey texture is gone.

My face is a bit flakey, and little bits of skin are sloughing off. It's slightly itchy, like healing from a sunburn. Nothing else to really report.