Yesterday, I spent five and a half hours on a cross-country flight from LAX to JFK. This morning, I woke up with six new breakouts. Even though my days of waking up to new breakouts are largely behind me, every few months, like clockwork, I’ll experience an acne flare up. Sometimes it’s from flying, sometimes it’s from not washing my face *immediately* after working out, and sometimes it just happens.
Luckily, after dealing with severe acne for so long, I have developed a tried and true routine to get these sporadic breakouts under control. While the old (uninformed) me would have freaked out and started applying every single spot treatment in my bathroom drawer, the older (more informed) me, recognizes that simple is better. So here’s my six step guide to dealing with acne flare ups:
Step 1: Wash my face with a gentle cleanser. My favorite is the Effaclar Purifying Foaming Gel Cleanser from La Roche Posay because it *actually* leaves my skin feeling clean (unlike most creamy cleansers), but never makes it feel dry.
Step 2: Spray my whole face with hypochlorous acid. Truly my holy grail; I don’t think I’ve gone a day in the last few years without it. While I usually reserve it for after my workouts, when I’m breaking out it becomes the first step of my skincare routine, helping to calm the redness and inflammation and kill any acne-causing bacteria. Just make sure you let it dry down before continuing.
Step 3: Hydrating serum or toner. Back when I started breaking out, I thought I just needed to dry my acne (and therefore my skin) out, and I completely ruined my skin barrier. So now, when I know I’m going to be using actives that can be a bit more drying, I always start with a hydrated base.
Step 4: Lightweight, non pore-clogging moisturizer. Again, a hydrated base is essential here to help reduce redness and inflammation and avoid a damaged barrier.
Step 5: Spot treatment. Now we get to the actual treatment portion. My tried and true spot treatment is the Murad Deep Relief Acne Treatment. I have truly never used something that makes my breakouts shrink overnight the way this does. Plus, it has soothing ingredients so it doesn’t make my sensitive skin flare up (which is rare for an acid).
Step 6: Zinc oxide cream (literally the $4.00 from CVS). Okay now this is where we go a bit rogue but I swear it works. Zinc oxide is a skin protectant that also helps calm redness and swelling. So by putting a dot of zinc oxide over your breakouts (once the spot treatment has completely dried), you’re sealing in the spot treatment, keeping out irritants, *and* helping to calm the inflammation of your breakouts. So yes, tonight you will catch my face dotted in zinc oxide and I swear tomorrow morning I will wake up way less inflamed and red.
Then, I just repeat this process every night until the breakouts subside. During the day, steps 1-4 stay the same and instead of using a spot treatment, I’ll use a dot of Omora’s Soft Cover Concealer. Not only does this cover the redness, but it also provides soothing, skin-supporting ingredients to counteract any dryness from the spot treatment the night before. After years of treating every new breakout like a crisis situation, I’ve learned that sometimes the best thing I can do for my skin is keep things simple, treat it gently, and give it time to heal.