Perioral Dermatitis

I just want to share with you my personal experience and how I'm recovering from POD without any antibiotics. And here is a pic even. I have barely started to recover on this (looks better now):

Yeah, I took it in black and grey webcam quality so I don't disgust myself. lol
But you can clearly see my trouble areas, and the same on the other side.


So, what broke me out? Heavy creams and glygolic leanser. I was 2-3 months in my new skincare regime when I first noticed something wrong on my jawline. It quickly spread to both sides, on the cheek and around my mouth. If this have happened to you now, you probably know how depressed I was over this.

After I found out that it was my facial cream and cleanser that was the cause, I stopped right away and started to use my jojoba oil instead. I just can't go without any moisturiser and jojoba oil is a very gentle all around oil I recommend everyone having in the cabinet.
If you use a cleanser with SLS, parabens and a lot of ingredients, you will want to avoid using that as well. Since I didn't have any cleanser at hand without SLS, I used an all over wash from the pharmacy which didn't contain any of those things. And then I bought African black soap and shea butter.

African black soap is the most amazing stuff ever. Buy it raw and organic, 250gr will last you for ever! It lathers well and removes makeup, all natural. Be aware that it can be a little drying if you have dehydrated skin.

Shea butter also raw and organic, is wonderful as a night cream, or day if you have dry skin. It moisturises well, and I feel it keep the underground acnes away. It feels like rubbing hairwax in your face thou.

Jojoba oil have a low natural SPF in it, so it is great as a day moisturiser if you don't hang much in the sun or on rainy days. I recommend staying out of the sun as much as possible since it can worsen your scars and condition.

Tea tree oil is great at treating perioral dermatitis in my experience. I mix 1 drop for 30ml jojoba oil and use it as a day moisturiser. Tea tree is very antibacterial, so you can moist a Q-tip with it and rub it on acne spots as a treatment.

Aloe vera, use it thickly on your affected areas every night to help heal scarring. You can unfortunately get plenty of scars from a break out like this if you pick on the bumps. Especially if you have thin and sensitive skin like I do. Pure aloe vera gel (96%+) can sting quite a bit, if you find it uncomfortable there are creams with aloe vera. Just make sure there are no nasty preservatives in it.

Glycolic- or salisylic acid. Skip it. It will most likely make it worse.

Applecider vinegar, nomnom. Drink two glasses of water a day with 1 tblsp ACV mixed in it. Also you can use it as a toner, mix 2/4 water and 1/4 ACV and apply with a cotton ball or pad. It sure smells funky. What it's good for? Making your body sour so that cruel bacteria and fungus will enjoy living in your body a little less. Yupp.

I also use Decleor cleansing water in the morning since the ABS (lol, not the brake system) can dry out the skin. I've had no problem using it.

Makeup? Use mineral makeup! Not L'oreal etc, but a pure brand like BareFacedBeauty which is personally use. It's great, and the brush is sooo soft. I use two coats on my face, and two extra rounds on my acne and scars.

Also remember to peel your skin once or twice a week, I just use bakingsoda to scrub with, but be sure to scrub carefully on the infected areas. If there's alot of sebum in the bumps or it's highly irritated don't scrub at all there. Scrubbing will help getting rid of the worst scaling so your makeup looks better on.

"Do I have perioral dermatitis?" To be sure, contact your doctor. Google for more information about the subject also. If I were to write anything about it, it would just be retelling anyway :)