Hey everyone,
I received my order of Nystatin cream from Germany today, so I’ll keep you guys posted on how it works after a week or two. Will be using it once or twice a day. I figured the more experiences we share here, the more collectively informed we can be about possible treatments. Sorry to hear that Jay’s experience with it so far has been disappointing.
I also ordered the BIOM8 oil, which I intend to incorporate into my routine when I receive it. Between that and Nystatin I’m hoping there will be a noticeable improvement soon. I figured this would be a good combination in the sense that I’ll use the BIOM8 oil on a regular basis all over my face, whereas I’ll concentrate the Nystatin cream on just the problem areas (since I don’t want to apply a fairly thick cream all over my face).
Here’s some background on my situation:
I’m 31, male. I’ve been a long-time sufferer of persistent mild-moderate acne since the beginning of my 20’s (my only concern in my teenage years was a blackhead-ridden nose so I thought I had dodged the acne bullet, but boy was I wrong). While I was studying at uni in the US I went on two 6-month courses of Accutane (at the standard dosage), spaced out by a few years, both of which only managed to temporarily clear it up. Then I discovered the regimen promoted at acne.org (where you apply an overly generous amount of benzoyl peroxide all over your face twice a day). The acne.org regimen didn’t clear me up entirely, but kept me clear enough that I stuck with it religiously for a good 5 years or so. However, it left my skin feeling constantly dry and raw and I wasn’t satisfied with how its effects continued to fluctuate so much, so I went off of it, suffered with some pretty nasty breakouts until I eventually settled into an alternative routine that’s a lot gentler and doesn’t involve heaping an inordinate amount of benzoyl peroxide on my face (now I just use Epiduo gel, which is a mixture of benzoyl peroxide and a retinoid and can be applied as just a pea-sized amount nightly). My acne still pops up much more regularly than I’d like but at least my face isn’t the active volcano that it was at the beginning of the year shortly after quitting the BP regimen.
These past few years I was noticing some flakiness on the sides of my nose. I initially attributed this to the dryness caused by my constant benzoyl peroxide use, but even after making it a point to avoid that area when I applied the BP, the flakiness persisted. Jojoba oil was useful to control the flakes, so it never bothered me much. However, a little over a year ago these areas have gradually become much redder, oilier, and even itch pretty badly at times, and over the past few months it’s reached a new high and I’ve become very self-conscious about it. There’s also a very small pustule on the side of my nose, which I initially thought was just a run-of-the-mill pimple, yet it’s stuck around for 10 months now. If I extract it, it simply comes back. If I leave it alone, it crusts over and flakes off, stays red, and then comes back. It’s like it’s stuck in a time loop. That’s when I realised that what’s happening around my nose isn’t acne but some kind of persistent infection that simply wasn’t resolving on its own. So I spent my 20’s suffering from acne and I’ll get to spend my 30’s suffering from acne AND seb derm? Oh joy.
The reason I mention my constant benzoyl peroxide use following the acne.org regimen is that I noticed that shortly after quitting it at the beginning of this year, my face has started producing an extreme amount of oil. I’ve always been a bit shiny-faced (the only positive being that it means I’m often told I look considerably younger than I am) but now it’s ridiculous. 15-20 minutes after washing and the oil returns in full force until I look like I’m sweating from a heavy workout. I don’t know if my many years of BP overuse have caused this, or if they simply hid the problem because I was routinely drying up my face with so much BP (I did moisturise after each application but my skin sucked up all the moisturiser, I’m guessing because the BP dried it out so much that it needed it). Either way, there seems to be a pretty direct correlation with my face’s excessive oiliness and my seborrheic dermatitis because I noticed where I suffer from it is even oilier than the rest of my face.
I’ve tried many topical treatments (primarily antifungals as I’m trying to avoid corticosteroid creams), but if I don’t find a solution soon I’ll be at my wit’s end and feel compelled to ask for a prescription for a third round of Accutane (albeit this time on a much lower dose spread out over a longer time, which appears to be a lot more common here in Europe) to control this trifecta of oiliness, seb derm, and acne.
So the things I’m trying now are:
1.) Azelaic Acid 10% applied all over the face once a day – seems like a particularly wise choice in my case because azelaic acid appears to be one of the few topicals that can treat seb derm AND acne at the same time with supposedly good results. It’s still too early to tell if it’ll have an effect, though.
2.) Nystatin cream applied only to the problem area once/twice a day.
3.) And when I receive the BIOM8 oil it’ll be applied all over the face right after my morning shower.
As I said I’ll let you know the results. I’m giving it till the end of the year to see if there’s at least some improvement. Then I’ll ask if I can get an oral antifungal. If I ultimately end up going down the low-dose Accutane route, I’ll let you know the results from that as well. I’m pretty fed up, all in all. If this seb derm issue had been my first face problem since adolescence I’d probably have a lot more patience with it, but since it’s coming off the top of a decade-long struggle against acne I feel pretty emotionally drained. -__-