My accutane journey 🙂 Why I went on Accutane/Isotretinoin, weekly updates, side effects, dosage & PROGRESS! Woohoo!
If you are new to this channel hello my name is karima it’s like karina but with an m i typically make videos about sparkly eye top coats and glossy blush and sharp winged liner so if that interests you then you should definitely subscribe today’s video is going to be a little bit different though i am documenting my journey with accutane now the reason that i’m
Making this video is because all throughout this process i have watched so much content about accutane i’ve watched so many accutane journeys on youtube and as a content creator myself i feel like this is sort of my way to pay it forward before we go any further let’s just do a quick recap so isotretinoin is a vitamin a derivative you might know it by the name
Accutane or roaccutane though there are many generic versions on the market nowadays isotretinoin treats acne via a few known mechanisms it reduces sebum oil production it shrinks the sebaceous glands it reduces follicular occlusion aka blocked follicles it inhibits the growth of bacteria and it has anti-inflammatory properties so the word accutane i think has
Become very synonymous with a whole set of pretty nasty side effects i’m going to pop them on the screen these side effects are real and they are documented in the science it should be noted that the side effects are often dependent on the person and also on the dosage which i will get onto in a sec okay so now we’re all on the same page just some quick context
On me and my skin i just turned 30 and i had been on birth control pills for a number of years uh primarily to keep my skin in check and birth control pills did that wonderfully for me my skin was beautiful my skin was beautiful almost always eventually i opted to come off birth control pills for a number of reasons my skin began to decline and this is actually
Not abnormal it can take a while for your body and your skin to normalize after coming off birth control pills but my skin never normalized it just continued to decline i’ve been part of the beauty industry now for a decade and i am skin obsessed so i feel like i came into this pretty prepared i had like all of the articles and all the science and all of the
Active ingredients and all of the best products and i attempted to treat my acne with scientifically backed practices including but not limited to topical ahas and bhas benzoyl peroxide various antifungals because i thought it might have been fungal for a bit topical antibiotics oral antibiotics topical retinoids so that’s the cream version kind of of accutane i
Eliminated dairy from my diet this list just goes on my skin continued to steadily decline finally i was just at wit’s end my gp was like go to a dermatologist i waited for months to go to this dermatologist her name is dr nina wines i’ll put her information in the description box if you’re a sydney cider and she said karima i hear you you’ve tried a lot of the
Things i would have uh recommended i can see that you’re distressed thank you and she said i think you might be a good candidate for a low dose accutane so the accutane dosage can depend on a lot of things it can depend on your sex uh your weight your lifestyle the severity of your acne your dermatologist approach there’s there’s lots of variability here but my
Dermatologist prescribed me 20 meg and that was considered a relatively low dose for me the idea here is that a lower dose over a longer period can address that acne while reducing the severity of any side effects i filmed weekly updates to document the progress in my skin and you know the side effects that i experience and that’s what you’re about to see here
If you guys have any comments or questions then leave them in the comment section i read them all and i’ll respond to as many as i possibly can one more thing actually before we before we go on maybe i’m projecting here but i have a funny feeling that some people are going to say that because my acne wasn’t cystic that perhaps it wasn’t serious enough to warrant
Accutane and i brought this up with my dermatologist and she said that when prescribing accutane they consider lots of things the severity of the acne is is one of those things also the persistence of the acne so has the acne persisted beyond all the other forms of treatment and then the third is the distress of the patient some people get more distressed about
The condition of their skin and it would perhaps impact their mental health and maybe impact the opportunities that they take or the way that they live their life and i was definitely distressed so if you are out there feeling really distressed about the condition of your skin i want you to know that i hear you and it’s not your fault and if you can see a doctor
Or a dermatologist um you should do that don’t rule out any modes of treatment until you’ve seen a specialist and i know that i i know that that isn’t available to everyone and it drives me mad but i just wanted just wanted to throw that out there okay enjoy all right test one two test one two day one of isotretinoin aka roaccutane aka accutane and obviously
Day one i don’t have much to report in terms of like symptoms or progress but i thought i would show you the condition of my skin right now this is not the best my skin has been in the past six or seven months and definitely not the worst it’s been it’s kind of somewhere in the middle i have a few active breakouts and definitely i’ve got some congestion along the
Jawline so yes my acne you can see tends to kind of congregate in the periphery of the face which is weird because when i was younger when i was a teenager i mainly got acne down the t-zone we’ve completely flipped the switch and i shall report back in a week isotretinoin week one completed i think i think that i’ve seen a minor improvement in my skin although
I don’t know if perhaps that is just wishful thinking they say when you start accutane that initially actually your skin might get worse before it gets better it’s a phenomena known as purging which is essentially all of the congestion in the deeper layers of the skin making its way to the surface and it’s it’s a common uh common phenomena with accutane and
I was expecting my skin to blow up in the first month i did get a few kind of blemishes on the side of my neck weird neck blemishes and this one here which hurts like a mofo uh in terms of symptoms the only thing that i’m noticing is that my lips are super duper fragile i already i already have a little bit of a nervous tic where i tug at my lips and i’ve got
To catch myself and like stop tugging at my lips because just a little tug and my entire lip unravels like there’s just sheets and sheets of skin coming off my lips um so i’ve been using the bite beauty agave lip mask one of my favorites but aside from that i haven’t noticed any other symptoms yet i shall report back in another week week two of isotretinoin
Accutane now completed so i think definitely my skin is clearing up i think it’s visibly clearer now that’s not to say that i didn’t break out i reckon i got about six sore blemishes over the past week since we last spoke but these blemishes are unlike any other blemishes that i’ve had in the past they resolve so quickly so previously when i would get a sore
Blemish it would take like you know a week to come to the surface and then another week to heal not now these blemishes like i’ll notice a little lump 12 hours later it’s become a sore blemish that’s breaking the surface of the skin and then 12 hours later it’s completely healed i’m also noticing that my skin is perhaps a little less oily than it was before and
Sometimes it feels a little bit tight but not excessively dry yet in terms of symptoms um my only really symptom is is the dry lips and they are dry but i found that if i keep a lip balm in my car in my handbag at my filming station at my vanity in my bathroom next to my front door and i’m just constantly reapplying lip balm then it’s totally doable and bearable
Other than that i don’t really have any other symptoms to report i feel great did i have stuff in my teeth look how white my teeth are i had them whitened um at the dental lounge sydney with dr v i can’t stop looking at them they’re so white isotretinoin week three is completed i broke out a lot this week i think you can see i think six or seven blemishes that
Have aligned themselves across my jawline the good news is i haven’t really broken out anywhere else on my face so i was getting blemishes in the hairline and across the temples that appears to have really cleared up my skin type is less oily now it’s more of a normal skin type i notice that my makeup lasts a lot longer my lips are shredded you guys shredded i’m
Going to put a photo on the screen this is a photo i took today without any lip balm it is gnarly but you know what it’s a small price to pay also a good thing that happened this week is my scalp caught up so everyone says on on accutane like i didn’t have to wash my hair as much and i am finally there i don’t have to wash my hair every second day without fail
Otherwise it looks gross like i can give it a few more days so yeah that’s a that’s a nice silver lining i shall see you next week week five of accutane completed we missed week four in all of the xmas festivities but i will catch you up i think that my face has actually cleared almost entirely even though like small little bits of congestion on my phone have
Completely resolved but over the past few weeks i got a ton of really painful um breakouts on my neck honestly these neck these neck pimples they are killing me i don’t think just to clarify i don’t think that accutane is causing my neck breakouts i think my body is doing that and accutane is just sort of working through it and bringing it to the surface i do
Actually think that some of these ones on my neck and and my jawline would classify as cystic they’re kind of blind they’re not going to come to a head they’re really sore in terms of side effects i honestly i feel pretty good aside from the lips which i feel like we can stop talking about now the lips are going to be shredded the entire time aside from that
I i feel pretty good i have had some sort of intermittent on and off dermatitis on my wrists but it’s hard to tell whether that’s from the accutane or maybe it’s from covert sanitizing religious hand washing kind of kind of stuff i’m actually really glad that i’ve been taking this footage even for me personally because it’s helped me kind of track you know
On days when i feel like oh like maybe it’s not getting any better i can look back at that footage and say it is clearly improving and i think if you are on an accutane journey i would recommend maybe taking some photos if only you feel comfortable because i know it’s not it’s not nice to like track your acne that was it was never going to be nice but i think
It can be helpful six weeks on isotretinoin complete 10 meg in the morning 10 meg in the evening every day for six weeks and my face is completely clear even the small kind of congestion that i would get on my t-zone is completely clear i did break out on a few occasions across my jawline and also quite far down here on my neck um these are sort of quite sore
Blind blemishes i’m super pleased about the condition of my skin like i don’t feel like i need to kind of conceal all these blemishes before i leave the house i leave the house without makeup i don’t care i don’t think about it it’s a massive massive relief i would say that my skin type now could probably be classified as normal to dry so i don’t really get much
Shininess my foundation doesn’t migrate or anything like that throughout the day another thing that i notice and if you have if you’ve ever used topical retin-a you’ll you’ll know what i mean when i cleanse my face i can feel kind of a fine layer of skin just sort of rolling off the surface of my face and then my face is like super smooth and and shiny and it’s
Like a baby’s butt i have a baby butt face i have an appointment with my dermatologist next week and she’s going to look through all of my blood work make sure everything’s looking good uh also a pregnancy test that’s a thing with accutane and also assess my dosage so i will report back then okay seven weeks of oral isotretinoin completes it’s actually been
About seven and a half weeks but you know potato potato my face is still relatively clear i did get actually a handful of sore blemishes down the lower half of my face but my face is relatively clear the neck acne continues it is now moved from the outer portion of my neck to the center of my neck where i’m getting these kind of sore blind blemishes they’re
Um they’re hurting and they’re so annoying to conceal it’s like my pet peeve having to put makeup on my neck i just yeah i don’t i don’t love that it seems as though everyone is on a travel band except for my acne my acne is traveling all around my neck i also went back to my dermatologist who took a look at some of my recent blood work and she said everything
Was perfect which makes me so happy i actually appreciate getting that blood work done because it gives you some peace of mind that everything you know every everything in the body is behaving as it should in terms of my dose my dermatologist said that since i am tolerating this dough so beautifully that we would just continue on this way she’s given me now a
Prescription for a single 20 meg gel capsule which i will be taking every night with dinner which serves me much better than two capsules a day because i’m not really a breakfast person and it it’s better to take your isotretinoin with a meal it helps with absorption i want to finish off this video by going through all the side effects on the roaccutane pamphlet
The one that actually comes in the box and just to let you know whether or not i’ve experienced any of these so the first one is dryness of the lips mouth nose and skin yes my skin has been a little bit dry um but i was anticipating that actually it’s not as dry as i was anticipating i expected to have super flaky skin it’s only moderately dry fragile skin yes
I would say so i’ve been careful not to use like scrubs or any sort of abrasive abrasive things on my body because my skin is feeling a little bit fragile change in color of the skin i don’t think so peeling of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet actually when i am at pt and i’m doing like chin ups chin ups i’m suddenly the person who does chin ups i
Do find that i get a little bit appealing on my palms probably because my skin is a little bit fragile and when i run i get a little bit appealing on the bottom of my feet but again it’s very minor itchy skin rash uh no but i did have a um a little bit of reoccurring dermatitis on my arms i’m actually prone to dermatitis already so all i did was i reduced the
The soaps and the stuff that i was using in my shower in my bath and that completely resolved the issue increased susceptibility to sunburn i’ve been very particular with sbf flaring of acne usually at the start of treatment i think this refers to purging i don’t really think that i experience a purge and i suspect that the reason for that is because i was on a
Topical retinoid before i started accutane and i think any of the kind of dwelling blemishes had already kind of made their way to the surface sweating no changes to the nails no my nails have always been eye problems such as dry sores swollen or itchy eyes discharge or trouble seeing at night um i sometimes feel like my eyes are perhaps a little bit irritated
Again i wouldn’t have noticed that had i you know had i not had this information in front of me i did find that sometimes my eyes were a little bit more sensitive to the sun although when i mentioned this to adrian he laughed and he said your eyes are always sensitive to the sun sexual dysfunction including impaired sexual function in males no nose bleeds no
I didn’t get any nosebleeds but i did notice this is perhaps tmi i did notice that i would get like a little bit crusty in my nose it’s like the mucous membranes would get a bit dry in my nose so all i do is i put a bit of lip balm on a q-tip and then i just line the inside of my nose and that completely solved the problem tenderness or stiffness in the bones
Joints and muscles none and i work out quite a lot i feel like i would have noticed that tiredness no not beyond what is normal for an adult headache no hair loss no excessive hairiness no and hoarseness lack of the throat no these side effects are usually mild and dose related there you go i’ll be honest i was a little bit nervous to talk about accutane online
Because it appears as though people have very strong opinions on accutane but i mentioned a few times on my instagram and also a few times in recent videos and actually no one’s attacked me yet which is a pleasant surprise the internet has pleasantly surprised me and i received a minimal amount of pseudo-science so yeah please be respectful in the comments but by
All means i am down there uh answering all of your questions i read all of the comments let me know also if you found this video helpful and if you’d like me to continue documenting this maybe i can do another video in say three months to to update you guys and yeah i hope you guys are having the best day and i shall speak to you all very soon bye
Transcribed from video
Why I Started Accutane 💊 Acne Diary & Weekly Updates ✖️ Low Dose Isotretinoin | Karima McKimmie By Karima McKimmie