Roaccutane | Drink Up & Oil Up!

In my pervious blog about my Roaccutane journey, I promised a follow up with information on the products I’ve used to help curb some of the side effects. When I was first researching Roaccutane, there wasn’t much in the way of recommended products so hopefully this will help someone.

I was using some of these products in isolation before I was on Roaccutane but have found that the combination has kept the dryness under control on a day-to-day basis. If I skip a day, the dryness is back. This is just the reality of Roaccutane! You must think about the moisturising.

To clarify, this is my personal routine and some of this may not work for you. I am all about experimenting so don’t take the below as gospel!

Morning Routine

Let’s start with morning moisturising with Ultrabase! This was a recommendation from good friend of mine who suggested I use a more “medicated” moisturiser because of my skins propensity to react badly to perfumed skin products. I usually don’t wash my face in the morning because it’s so dry and I don’t want to end up with a flaky face throughout the day. I literally wake up, dab my face with a cold wet towel and then put the Ultrabase all over my face and neck, let it dry a little and then put my make up on.

Things I love about Ultrabase are; it absorbs well, it’s not greasy, it doesn’t have too much of a weird medicated smell and it’s super cheap! You can get it over the counter at your pharmacist for about £12 for a 500g pump or get a prescription from your GP.

I also use the Ultrabase for my body. It is gentle enough for your face, but also strong enough for your body.

Daily and Hourly Lip Saviour

Now, if you are taking, or thinking of taking, Roaccutane, your lips are going to die daily. They will be so dry that you won’t be able to keep up with them. To help with the dryness I have been using another product recommended to me by a friend, Blistex Daily Lip Conditioner. Even if you aren’t taking Roaccutane, you should use this. I apply this pretty much every hour and it has been brilliant. I was using Elizabeth Arden’s 8-hour lip balm, but it doesn’t heal them the way that Blistex does and is about £25(!!!). Blistex is also another cheap product for only £2.69.

I love everything about it, I just wish they did it in chap stick form instead of a pot.

Make-Up Removal

I try to work out most days, and if I am going to sweat I will ALWAYS take my make up off beforehand. This is a personal preference because the idea of wearing make up whilst I sweat just doesn’t sit well with me, especially when I am trying to fix the acne. But if you don’t care, neither do I!

Don’t freak out, but to take my make up off I use oil, specifically No.7 Beautiful Skin Cleaning Oil …That’s right, OIL! I started using this about a year ago after reading an article on BuzzFeed about how someone got rid of their acne using an oil cleanser. It didn’t cure my acne, but it stopped the feeling of stripping the skin that you sometimes get with products that contain acids such Salicylic Acid.

Things I love about No.7 Beautiful Skin Cleaning Oil are; that it smells good naturally rather than perfumed, it doesn’t leave a residue, it dissolves every bit of makeup, and is also a great price! It’s £11 for 150ml which will last about 2 months because you only need a pump or two of oil. AND Boots always have the vouchers in store to get money off their skincare range! While I have been using Roaccutane this has been a great added moisture boost for my skin. The strapline says “helps dry skin behave like normal skin”.

To use this, I put a couple of pumps into the palm of my hand and then rub it all over my face and then wipe off with a drenched flannel.

I then follow this with using my Epaderm, which you can read about here . If I haven’t worn make up that day I just use Epaderm.

Evening Routine

Overnight I will use yet more oil. I cover my face in Vitamin E Overnight Serum-In-Oil from the Body Shop and then sleep with my hair tied up so it doesn’t get stuck to my face! This is the higher price point of the products at £16. If you can’t bring yourself to spend that, just use the Ultrabase as a nightly moisturizer, it works just as well, you just need to let in sink in for longer than the oil.

I find the Vitamin E oil brings down the redness of my skin and blemishes by the morning and sinks into the skin quickly. You don’t feel like you have oil on your face. On some occasions when my skin has been especially dry I have put two layers on oil on.

Using oil didn’t cause me any breakouts of further acne, but that is not to say it may do for you.

Oil Up & Drink Up!

Ultimately, you need to do as much research as possible to workout if you can cope with side effects. If you do get put on Roaccutane you will need to experiment with products to help curb the dryness. Your dermatologist may offer their own advice.

My one piece of personal advice is that you cannot leave the dryness to heal itself, because it won’t. As I said, if I skip moisturizing for one day, the dryness is instantly back.

Drink plenty of water and oil up!

Roaccutane | Ending the 10 year battle against acne

At the ripe age of 24, I developed the worst acne of my life. You’ve read how I suffered with eczema, and how Epaderm and antibiotics kept it all under control, but towards the end of my time in the US it all just became too much. I visited my doctor to see if we could do anything to get it back under control. She looked back at my history and saw that I had been suffering with acne on and off for over 10 years.

Over the last 10 years my doctor had prescribed me topical treatments including Zineryt, Panoxyl, all the major acne fighting contraceptive pills and two variations of antibiotics. Aside from this I had tried Proactiv, Kheil’s, Clinique and various cheaper and expensive brands. Only the combination of antibiotics and Epaderm kept my acne under control for a short period of time.

It didn’t matter if I was surrounded by friends, strangers or family, my skin caused me pain, both physically and emotionally. There are people out there with much worse skin than me who embrace it, and I absolutely applaud those that do. But by this point, I had had enough and was willing to try anything and pay the price too.

My doctor decided that it was time to go ahead with Roaccutane (or Accutane) treatment.

Now I won’t go into the ins and outs of what Roaccutane does – there is a great blog here from Get The Gloss where they actually interview a doctor about this in greater detail and I certainly do not have the qualifications do be doing that.

What I do want to talk about is my experience with Roaccutane.

I was first prescribed Roaccutane at the beginning of November at a 60mg dose per day. This is a high dose to start with, most of the people I had spoken to about the treatment started somewhere around 20mg. The dermatologist keeps a very close eye on you through the whole process and will alter the dose from month to month depending on how you are coping with it. In my case, he has kept it the same for 3 months.

Below are some progression pictures from the day I started roaccuatne to the end of my third month.

Now for the negatives… I want to tell you it’s a miracle and it has been super easy, but the reality is, Roaccutane is hard-core.

One of the biggest side effects is the dryness. My lips are constantly chapping; my arms and hands are also unusually dry. I am also experiencing very VERY minor nose bleeds when I blow my nose. An upside of the dryness is that my hair doesn’t seem to get greasy as easily, I don’t need to wash it every single day (BONUS).

In the first week or two, I had some sensitivity to light, but this was mostly artificial lighting that caused me problems, and it has since subsided.

My feeling towards the treatment so far has been that; because I have suffered with acne for a long period, suffering slight side effects for up to 6 months is a small price to pay to be comfortable in my own skin.

I still have another 3 months left taking roaccutane and plan to post again about the products I used to keep the side effects at bay.

Check out some other Roaccutane stories:

More Roaccutane blogs/stories :

• The Daily Mail - Beauty blogger who battled severe acne for 10 years reveals how she transformed her skin in an emotional video diary

• Lydia Elise Millen – The Naked Truth – A Year Since Roaccutane

• Orlagh Claire – My Acne Story: How Roaccutane Changed My Life

**Word of advice: you cannot get Roaccutance/Accutane prescribed by a GP, you must be referred to a dermatologist. I would recommend you go private if you can, the NHS took 3 months to acknowledge my need, 5 months later, still no appointment.**

No!No! Skin | It’s a No!No! from me

I’ve been in constant battle with my skin since I was 14. Between eczema and acne it’s been a rough ride. It has also meant that I have been willing to try anything to calm my acne down. Sometimes I get bored of products if I don’t see an instant result and sometimes I like to ride it out and see what happens.

After being in the US for 6 months my acne flared up to the worst it has ever been. A combination of bad food, drinking, hormones and coming off antibiotics, which had kept the acne under control, is where I saw the root cause of this nasty flare up. So on the plane journey home, after weeks of crying and hiding my face, I saw the No!No! Skin advertised in the catalogue. I’d heard good things and thought it wouldn’t hurt to see how it goes.

First of all, the packaging and branding is very sleek and girly with the pink and silver detailing.  The device itself is also silver and quite lightweight which I (for some reason) was quite disappointed by because it was expensive (£129.95) and thought there would be a bit more weight to it.

There’s a quick guide included to get you started, you need to charge the No!No! for a couple of hours before you use it.

You then simply place the nossel on the spot or “pimple” and press the button, after 2 beeps you take the nossel away, wait 5 seconds and repeat on the sample spot.

The description of the product says “Safe, pain free and effective treatment for acne. Based on professional phototherapy technology, no!no! Skin destroys bacteria, soothes pain and reduces inflammation. Sending gentle pulses of light and heat energy deep into the pore. The ultimate emergency pimple care you can take anywhere”

It hurts. Way more than you think it is going to. It gets hot and a little unbearable, at one point my eyes started watering. I also didn’t see any improvement as an “emergency” resolution to having a spot. This might have been because my skin is quite bad and this is only a treatment for mild-moderate acne.

For now, it’s a No!No! from me for No!No! Skin.

I am currently taking Roaccutane under the supervision of a dermatologist to try and clear my acne up once and for all (look out for a post on that), so maybe I will revisit this device once it clears up to see if it helps with the off one or two spots.

An unglamorous solution for Stress-ema | Epaderm

Like most kids I suffered from eczema but as I got older it subsided and seemed to almost disappear.

However, when I started my GCSEs, progressed through to my A-Levels and started my first full time job, the eczema came back. Except this time it was on my face. More specifically, my eyelids. I referred to this type of eczema as “Stess-ema” due to its propensity to flare up in times of stress.

As you can imagine this was pretty nasty (and actually quite difficult to itch at times). My GP gave me steroid cream which helped but it can’t be used for long periods of time as it thins the skin, not something you want to happen on your eyelids. Over the years they prescribed and advised me to use the usual suspects; Double Base, Centraben, Diprobase, Ultra Base, E45, Oilatum and varying levels of Hydrocortisone creams. After several trips to the GP, crying in a pharmacy, cutting out wheat, dairy and even sugar for a (very) brief period of time, it still had not disappeared.

Eventually I was referred to a Dermatologist who prescribed something which I can only describe as a miracle cream and since starting to use this almost three years ago now, I haven’t had a Stress-ema flare up since.

It’s not pretty, it’s not glamorous and it definitely isn’t sexy, but boy does it work.

Epaderm 2 in1 Emollient Skin Cleanser

I use this as a wash to remove makeup and to cleanse my skin. Using a wet flannel I pump the cream on to the flannel and use circular motions to wipe my make up off. I then rinse my face and use the clean side of the flannel to remove any excess make up. I also use it every time I shower to cleanse my face.

If my legs and hands get particularly dry (mainly in the Winter) I also use this straight onto the skin as a moisturiser.

It comes in two sizes; 500g which will last about two months and 50g which is really handy for travelling and will last you about one to two weeks (depending on how much you use each time).

Considering the price point it is definitely worth trying if you have struggled with eczema and even acne. Since using this my acne has calmed down, it hasn’t disappeared, but I have seen an improvement.  

The best part about Epaderm is that you don’t have to have a prescription. You can buy it over the counter for £12.20 for the 500g tub and £3.49 for the 50g pump. However, with a prescription the prices may vary depending on what you usually pay/if you are under 16 in the UK.

There are several videos on YouTube which highlight the benefits of Epaderm, but I continue to use this purely based on my own personal experience and currently can’t go a day without it.