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I found monthly facials really helped. I’ve also started doing a mask every day (rotating between clay, hydrating, etc). If acne is hormonal I’ve found drinking spearmint or green tea every day REALLY helps. I know that sounds odd but it’s helped me a lot and wasn’t hard to do
I tried Proactive back in the day, not worth it.
I strongly recommend seeing a dermatologist and getting professional advice. I did, and he took one look at me, determined I had multiple types of acne, and prescribed a couple of different things that cleared it all up in a couple months (not Accutane, but it can be worth it, my brother had great success with it).
Look into Curology. My trip to a dermatologist was weird and he literally told me to keep using proactiv. It worked for me in my teens but Curology has really really helped at this stage in life - also 28 - I still get one or two but usually around my period and clear through the rest of the month
Two more thoughts: I hate the smell of clean and clear. Other products with 10% benzoyl peroxide are Oxy (which I use in the shower every day) and target’s up & up brand has a proactive knockoff for $12. I didn’t find their knockoff of step 1 to work as well as proactiv or Oxy, but worth trying before blowing a lot more $ on proactiv. But I still emphasize Curology bc it’s prescriptions based
Try oral antibiotics - when everything failed, it fixed me! Check with your dermatologist (sorry didn’t answer your proactiv question, no experience with that)
Proactive is benzoyl peroxide, you can find it in clean and clean, too. Proactive is 90% marketing. It works for killing bacteria. Def see a dermatologist. There are other options, birth control, differin (this is otc now too), topical and oral antibiotics and combinations there of, etc
Yes you should see a dermatologist to determine what type of acne you are getting. It could be hormonal, cystic, bacteria related, etc. Even using too intense of products (say 2% salicylic acid instead of 0.5-1%) can make your acne worse. I still suffer from getting cystic, hormonal acne but also get dry skin. I’ve been taking spironolactone for the past several years (oral medication originally developed for BP but also works for hormonal acne), using differin and clinadmycin lotion. For me, this helps although does not completely fix everything. Bottom line is understanding what type of acne you are working with so you can tailor your regimen.
My derm prescribed me spironolactone and it’s been a miracle worker!
Tretinoin by the way doesn’t take care of acne, you still need something to target acne. I couldn’t take spironolactone because of increased risk of cancer due to my family history, but am taking doxycycline mono. I guess this really just points you to going to a dermatologist to give you targeted guidance!