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: 

http://www.reddit.com/r/SkincareAddiction/comments/11wrxp/my_story_a_battle_with_seborrhea_and_possible/

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.