I’ve been using tretinoin (retin-a) for the past 2 years (since Nov 2019). Here’s what I’ve noticed with progress pics and my final thoughts on using tretinoin and if I’m going to continue using it. I also talk a bit about why I got on it in the first place.
Hey so i’ve been getting this question i don’t want to say a lot because that would be a lie i’ve made a note of it that people are wondering if i’m still on tretinoin it’s really funny because i’ll be making a video about how i’m like sad and my life isn’t going well someone will be like are you still on trino and in like caps locks with multiple exclamation
Points like like i guess you didn’t get the point of the video so i’m still on trent knowing i am still using retin-a i gotta say i really don’t love the retin-a containers but they’re in this for a reason to preserve the product this lasts a really long time if you’re using it as directed which is generally just a pea-sized amount for those of you who didn’t
Watch any of my other retin-a videos i’m on right now 0.1 and i’ve been on this for two years now as well not exactly as prescribed but the first year i was doing i did like three months six month and nine month update and then i just stopped and i don’t really know why i stopped because i kept making skincare videos at the time but i just felt like maybe after
Nine months i didn’t see any noticeable changes in my skin and then i also got kind of busy too i was like i kind of feel like maybe this is as good as it gets so now i’ve had a chance to look back at some footage from even a few months ago and i do notice a difference in my skin the problem is that i’ve made lifestyle changes in the same period of time that kind
Of makes it hard to really attribute it to a cream or to just the lifestyle changes they’ve been working out almost every day i’ve been eating have i been eating differently kind of maybe not so much the eating thing i think i’ve been eating less but i don’t think that really had any impact on my skin but i think that maybe you know i get videos people saying oh
You look so good you look so good which you know whatever um i don’t know that i can attribute at all to retin-a but i’ve seen other people’s britney transformations over a period of like one and two years and they look like two different people um and i don’t even name any names because i don’t know if that’s appropriate but that was the reason why i was like
First really interested in retin-a in the first place well okay not true i was prescribed it first and then i did more research on it and i was like wow this is actually so good for so many other things wrinkles files and lines elastin vascular regeneration creation skin tone evening dark spot corrector for like sunspots specifically and it’s a cream that
Can teach your skin cells how to behave after they’ve become damaged from sun damage primarily over the years anyway that’s just a long-winded way of me saying that i’ve definitely noticed the positive aspects of using retin-a and i think that it’s hard when you’re looking at yourself every day it’s hard to really see those changes because they happen on such
A small scale day by day but when you look back at videos of yourself you really notice like a huge difference for me it was like just the dullness of of the skin that was the first thing i saw kind of become corrected when i after i started using it for a few months and then you start noticing like yeah maybe did i have fine lines on my forehead probably i did
But um they weren’t they weren’t very deep ever the place that had the most fine lines were underneath the eye and i still do but maybe it’s just because i’ve been moving around in different airbnbs and the lighting has been more generous or forgiving rather in some of these situations but i feel like the under eye fine lines like maybe more than fine have
Improved somewhat and i’ve been using this every day now the past year up until three months ago i was probably only using it on average every other day and the reason why was because my skin started becoming sensitive i didn’t know if it was the retin-a but i knew that i was just using a lot of different products and so i figured alternating one day on one day
Off would be just as effective and i can’t say for sure not if that’s true because after starting back to use it every single day three months ago i felt like that’s when i started noticing more positive changes in my skin that i initially saw when i first started using retin-a two years ago i’m really happy i got on this it is really expensive and i think it’s
Unjustifiably expensive um but of course if you have insurance that’ll cover the majority of it it’s actually a good price i think i my my insurance like covered it to the point where each one was 10 bucks at the time but without insurance these can be like a hundred dollars per tube and this is like state how big this is how big is this wow they don’t even have to
Say how large the container is that seems odd oh yeah it’s also expired by a month but i feel like it’s milk does it really expire on the expiration date or is that just a conservative date i don’t know how large this container is but it lasts a long long time especially if you’re only using it like every other day because i open this one probably back when i was
Living in california it’s been like a long-ass time since then um when was that i probably opened this in like march march or april and it’s november now so seven months give or take that’s a really long time because all you need is a pea-sized amount and i’ll do a skincare routine video next just as an update so i used to be really conservative about putting
It around my eyes because i was concerned because everyone on the internet is like don’t put it around your eyes your eyes skin around your eyes it’s delicate and thinner than the rest of your face i personally don’t have any issues with irritation around my eyes i do have it on my neck though and i used to put it on my neck way more than i should and the new
Years and like i remember new year’s 2020 is like you know december 31st nearest to 2020 i didn’t need to explain that to you that was a couple months no that was one month after i had started using right now hey why was i putting that on my neck every night that was really stupid i guess i was putting this on my neck every night only one month into or maybe i
Was doing it every other night because i know there’s no way i was doing this every night because i wasn’t even doing that on my face anyway i was somehow using on my neck way too much which is probably putting any on your neck can sometimes do too much especially at 0.1 percent that’s the highest concentration of retin-a for tretinoin hello that’s a lot and then
I put a turtleneck on i don’t even know what it was made out of i thrifted it was probably wool and then um went to this like white party why was i wearing a black turtleneck to a white party i don’t know i never follow instructions also really bad idea don’t wear black to a white party because they’re gonna have a black light and so any lint on you is gonna
Show and even if you don’t think there’s lunch on you there is anyway i was dancing the night away and then did i take pictures of this my neck was just wrecked for the next like week it looked just raw and red and it was itchy and horrible horrible time and even this like i had this retinol that i was using i was like oh this is going to be more mild than
Renee i can maybe try to just use retinol on my neck that didn’t work at all that was really really bad instant just red itchy but and i’m for a dabbling a dabbling didn’t do that to my skin it was adaptable in the over-the-counter 0.2 no 0.025 percent i don’t remember whichever one they saw over the counter that didn’t affect my neck and i was able to use
That every so often i think to this point at this point i think at this point rene i could use my neck this video is not about my neck anyway i’ve been on this for a long ass time and my skin is i feel and i think people in the comment section has have seen has improved but of course i’ve been using sunscreen religiously i’ve been doing toners peptides vitamin
C the gamut of skin care and i’ve been documenting it for the past two years well not really for the past six months because i was totally over it but you know when you’re doing when you have a regimen and you’re incorporating all these things that are supposed to be beneficial to the skin it’s hard to really pinpoint exactly which one but i can say that if i
Was only able to use one one skincare product okay now if i was only able to use two skincare products ever again it would be sunscreen and trinolin so was this an infomercial for trent owen it wasn’t supposed to be but call one eight hundred five six seven now the thing i did want to mention that i still have not gotten to and it’s been 13 minutes since i
Started this recording is i used to break out spontaneously sporadically is the word that i meant i used to break out sporadically and it would just be it’d be like i don’t even know it’d be a few breakouts a month maybe even more and someone would be small someone would be large and they would always leave dark marks especially around the beard area around here
Sometimes like here under the whatever i don’t what is this part of your face called and i just don’t anymore the last time i had a noticeable breakout okay that’s not true because i have one right here and it still has a dark mark kind of but the last time i had a really big breakout it was actually a white head that just hadn’t come to the surface yet um and was
Still just like clogged basically the horror was trapped basically try no one’s supposed to help even those those instances of milia or whiteheads those are two separate things by the way um to free those pores so that they could shed whatever is in there it’s supposed to help with that because it helps with cell turnover helps increase cell turnover which means
That you’re shedding more skin cells things will get unclogged that’s why sometimes people experience more acne at the beginning of using tretinoin it’s like purging but i have had some white heads that drain on just didn’t really help and interestingly these pimple patches i tried putting them over them like a white head i had and it just i think it actually got
Infected as a result because i left that on and who knows if there was like dirt bacteria under there and i left it on for a long time and the poor got in flames an infection triggers an inflammatory response so your body can fight the infection and that’s what a pimple is why was i telling you this again because trinomial didn’t fix everything for me basically
I feel like sometimes people and dermatologists like they use it as a blanket statement like we don’t know what’s wrong with you here’s some tretinoin it’s like the greek dad from my big fat greek wedding using windex and everything a dermatologist’s windex is trinomial and they’re like here you take some trinidad and you take some training it’s like i don’t know
Because i’ve literally only been to one dermatologist in my life and we don’t i don’t like her literally she did not know what was wrong with my skin and she was like here here’s like five refills of tretinoin have a nice day thanks lady i ended up having to diagnose myself and realize that trinomial is actually not even the correct treatment for what was wrong
With my skin but anyway another tangent another video by rotten skin and lastly i don’t know i mentioned it briefly in passing but exercise is actually something you can do to change the appearance of your skin i kind of don’t know what i’m doing here it’s like i just blacked out thanks for watching my show i feel like that was a disaster and i totally forgot
To finish my thought on the acne thing because i just got sidetracked and started talking about a white head that tritone didn’t solve but overall in conjunction with azolic acid in which the two are known to work together well together in a symbiotic relationship i do not break out nearly as much like it’s a significant reduction in breakouts now that i use
Trinomial and azelaic acid which it’s kind of random for me to just throw that in but i do think it’s worth mentioning that trinoen it was actually created as an acne medication and that’s primarily what it’s prescribed as and that is a huge thing that’s done for me because breakouts no one wants to deal with a breakout but the post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation
Is for me it’s it’s way worse than breakout and lasts many many months and so prevention is key and tritone has prevented that bye
Transcribed from video
2 years of tretinoin w/ before and after pics By Raw Tin Skin