Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Week one complete!

I am going to condense each week into one post to avoid anyone having to click through loads of links to read everything.

Last week was a roller coaster! I was already close to giving up just a few days in, but have since strengthened my reserve. I will definitely be giving this at least two months. If it truly clears me up, I will continue for the recommended three which will likely involve reordering. It looks like the "one month" treatment package will likely last me two. That makes my bank account a tad bit happier!

I started using the treatment on Sunday February 1st. Yeah, I am a little late with this post, but what can you do. The first two days were business as usual, I was in the thick of a break out. I had a good 4 or 5 pimples on my face, angry red and dry skin, and my right eye was completely bloodshot and felt like it had something in it.

Then Wednesday came. In doing my research I knew I should expect a pretty intense break out during the first week as all of the adult mites die off. It would be an indication that the treatment is working and that I did in fact have a demodex problem. However, all of my reading did NOT prepare me for what I woke up to Wednesday morning. My skin was fire engine red. My eyes were crusted shut and goopy and bloodshot to hell. By far, the worst part though, was that I had more pustules on my face than I could count. Every inch of my forehead and chin were covered in pustules and pimples to the point that I just couldn't see healthy skin. Any my nose... my nose was not only covered in pustules and pimples, but it was terribly swollen. I would touch my nose and think "this doesn't even feel like human skin!" My loving boyfriend who has always been sweet enough to never comment on the state of my skin no matter how bad it gets actually told me that I should go to the doctor because it looked like I had suffered a chemical burn. I had to miss work and hide away from the world.

The next day my skin looked even worse. I almost started crying when I looked in the mirror that morning. Did I really spend $140 to have the worst skin I've ever had in my life?

Thankfully after two days of hell, things started getting better. I got fewer and fewer active breakouts, and my face started to slowly heal up. By Sunday my skin was was in better condition than it was before I started the treatment. Thank god!

This wraps up week one. Let's hope next week is better!


Some supplemental information.

I wanted to be sure to share the rest of my daily routine and any additional steps outside of the Demodex Solutions treatment that I am following to help my skin in case anyone is curious.

My daily routine:

AM 
  • Rinse with cold water
  • Apply xin fumanling cream 
  • *Wait 20 minutes*
  • Moisturize with Cerave PM (love this stuff!)
  • Makeup
PM
  • OCM with a mix of jojoba, mineral, neem, and (just a few drops) tea tree oil 
  • Cleanse with Paula's Choice Skin Recovery Cleanser
  • Pocketderm formula (4% Azelaic Acid, 1% Clindamycin, 4% Niacinamide)
  • *Wait 10 minutes*
  • Apply ZZ ointment
  • *Wait 20 minutes*
  • Moisturize with Cerave PM
  • Lock in moisturizer with a layer of aquaphor
I am continuing with my Pocketderm formula during this treatment because I did see considerable improvement after several weeks of using it. I would not recommend continuing Pocketderm while using the Demodex Solutions treatment if your formula contains tretinoin. In fact, I would definitely suggest evaluating your routine and removing any potentially irritating components. This treatment is irritating on its own and the healthier and less angry your skin is, the faster it will heal.

I do a one/twice weekly mask of raw honey and turmeric and leave it on for as long as I possibly can. It helps SO much with the flaking and helps to tone down some of the redness. The ZZ ointment especially can be very drying and irritating, and this seems to be helping to combat that a bit. Note: yellow staining will likely be left behind from the turmeric, use a cotton pad with an oil that agrees with your skin to avoid looking like you have jaundice!

Now THIS part might make me sound a little insane, but I've read from several different sources that while treating demodex on the face, they can migrate to other parts of the body and cause issues. To address this, I take a bath every other night with one cup of Epsom Salt and one cup of Borax. While in the bath I wash my hair with tea tree shampoo with a few drops of concentrated tea tree oil added in and leave it in for about 10-15 minutes before rinsing. I immediately follow my bath with my PM routine.

It is also extremely important to wash/replace your pillow case DAILY (I bought a bulk pack of large white tee shirts and use them as pillow cases, more convenient and cost effective). I also wash all of my bedding every other day in hot water and add a cup of borax.

That is about the extent of it. Please feel free to comment if you have any questions! I will do my best to respond to them quickly :)

Monday, March 9, 2015

A Back Story

A little info to get us started:

I am 27 years old and up until recently, have never really taken care of my skin. I made all of the common mistakes as a teen: used toothpaste to dry pimples, didn't use moisturizer because I thought it would break me out, used abrasive scrubs on my face. More often than not though, I did nothing. I didn't get breakouts very often in my teens and early twenties aside from the occasional hormonal break out around that time of the month. At 17 I was diagnosed with psoriasis shortly after being an irresponsible kid during senior prom--half of a bottle of wine led me to wake up with roughly 20-30 plaques ALL over my body. I thought I had suffered some horrible allergic reaction, but a dermatologist confirmed that my mother had just decided to pass one of her less favorable attributes down to me. I got lucky though, a month later I went on vacation and after two weeks of sun and clean eating, it completely went away and only reared its ugly head when I slipped on my diet or indulged in a drink or four.

However, SOMETHING changed dramatically around the time I turned 24. I don't even really remember noticing it creep up, I feel like I just woke up one day and my skin had gone to hell and never relented.

My once fairly even skin tone became red and blotchy. Dry and inflamed. My cheeks, chin, nose, and forehead became extremely scaly. This wasn’t your run of the mill dry skin. The scales appeared in patterns similar to psoriasis patches, but not quite, and would always appear in areas that breakouts had recently healed.

This is a close up of my cheek from Jan of this year.  
 
And oh, the breakouts. My cheeks, chin, and forehead were the most problematic areas and were often covered with painful cystic acne and lots of tiny zits. 

This is my skin in the midst of its particularly bad cycle. I wish the picture did it better justice. Sorry for the monster face, I don't look pretty upon waking.

Back in November of 2014, I stumbled upon the wonderful subreddit r/skincareaddiction. Seriously, check this place out. It is filled with highly knowledgeable people and tons of useful information on how to properly take care of your skin. The community is so supportive and willing to answer any questions you could possibly have. I had been suffering from my lovely skin problems for about 3 years at this point, so finding this subreddit truly gave me hope that I could finally have clear skin again.

That's when I found this post: 


It's long, but I suggest you read it and the linked information at the bottom for some context. From this point on I will write with the assumption that you understand what demodex mites are and the problems they potentially cause. I am only taking the time to document my experience in hopes that it will help someone else.

Anyway, upon initially reading this post and doing a little research of my own, my thought was “meh, this seems a little far fetched.”  For every study that suggested that demodex mites can be linked to countless skin conditions, I would find five articles that argued that the whole thing was just hippy dippy nonsense. What REALLY turned me off from the whole thing was that it seemed like there was only ONE website (demodexsolutions.com) that offered a promising solution to this “problem.” The website looks like it was created in the 90s through Angelfire or Geocities, is mostly in broken English, and VERY FEW of the testimonials include before and after pictures. Not to mention, ONE MONTH of treatment came to close to $140 after shipping.

I promptly said “screw that!” and embarked on a more conventional routine. I joined Pocketderm, got a great moisturizer, found the perfect face wash. Six weeks later I woke up and looked in the mirror and almost cried. I didn’t have a single blemish on my face. My skin was still rough in places, but good lord did it look better than it had in years! I was nearly ready to post the sacred “before and after” pictures thanking all of r/skincareaddiction for guiding me to better skin. But of course, my excitement came too soon. I woke up a couple of days later to that familiar red, inflamed, dry mess and had at least five pimples that had appeared over night.

It wasn't fair! I had seen the promise land and it was promptly taken away from me!

It was then that I was finally forced to revisit the potential of demodex mites being the cause of my issues. When I seriously evaluated my situation I really couldn’t ignore the signs anymore.

 I realized that my skin always seemed to clear up about two days before it was at its worst. I then went through my endless skin progress pictures on my phone, and noticed another pattern:  my skin seemed to be on a cycle that recurred every 10-14 days. I would have approximately two days of clear skin, a horrible break out of pimples and dry/red skin, that lasted about a week, and then my skin would improve slightly each day until the whole thing repeated itself.  Demodex mites are said to have a life cycle of about 10-14 days. It is suggested that the breakouts are caused at the end of their life cycle when they collectively die off and expel waste (yum!) all over your mug.
I also noticed that breakouts were always in the same exact place. For example, I had a dry rough red patch about the size of a nickel above my right eyebrow for YEARS. Another one to the left of my mouth. The only changing element of these patches was that 50% of the time, zits would crop up in these places.

I also had recurring eye irritation and got frequent styes that got worse when my skin was broken out. If I woke up to a red face, I woke up to red and irritated eyes. My right eye was far worse than the left one.  I had read that demodex mites especially love hair follicles, eyelashes and eyebrows being their favorite stomping grounds. On top of that, my face was always far more red and inflamed in the morning than any other day part. Demodex mites are most active in the dark, and feast upon your sebum while you are sleeping.

There were enough coincidences that I was convinced it was worth at least trying the treatment from demodexsolutions.com. I was tired of hating my skin and was willing to try anything. So I ordered ONE month of treatment which included two containers of both the fumanling cream and the ZZ ointment. Despite the website saying it could take two weeks to ship, it arrived in 4 days. They didn't provide tracking information though, which made even the short wait a little nerve wracking.

My subsequent posts will document my time using this treatment. This could be what fixes something that has crushed my self esteem and mental well being, or it could leave my face even more of a disaster. We will see. Also, I promise my future posts will not be walls of text like this one.

I also recommend checking out THIS blog, written by a woman who suffered from rosacea and acne caused by demodex mites that had tremendous success with using tea tree oil as a means to kill them. I chose not to go this route simply because even when diluted, tea tree oil irritates my skin terribly.