Re: i bought the lactic acid…
Its this statement that makes me scared for you…lol.
Now onto frosting: this usually is expected with TCA and of course, salicylic. Remember that frosting I got from salicylic peel took 3 weeks to heal b/c it went so deep. I did a 12.5%, 2 layer TCA peel over Christmas and it took my face literally 1 week to heal. You see hints of whilte on the skin. As soon as the hints of appear…frosting has started. You need to neutralize while there is plenty of pink still showing through. You don’t want the skin to be stark white. Yes, the “whitish areas” disspear after 30 minutes or so. But within the next few days…the skin will turn brown/leathery, and literally scab over. You’ll need to completely leave the skin alone and allow it to heal on its own. The frosting basically burned off the top layer. It will scab and peel like snake skin on its own. You can not apply any other acids, or RA while its healing. Going outside, you need to completely slather your skin in sunscreen.
The only thing you can do while the skin is healing is keep it moisturized. If the frosting is deep enough…you may even need to apply neosporin to keep it from getting infected. If you physically peel the skin off (instead of allowing it to peel on its own)…you risk hyperpigmentation. As I mentioned…frosting basically means you burned the top layer of skin and want it to fall off, and reveal new “baby skin”. Depending on the level of frosting…healing can take 1 week to several weeks. So if you’re planning on allowing your skin to frost…make sure you have the downtime to heal (ie. I’m assuming you won’t want to go to work or school looking like a burn victim). Plus to be totally honest…when the skin is peeling for a few days…it looks nasty.
The link below will show you some peeling pics of an arm. Now let me state that her claim that these pics are from a 50% TCA seems ridiculous to me. 50% TCA is not safe. And when I did 12.5% TCA…my skin got more brown/leathery than what’s shown on this pic. To anyone reading this, please don’t even consider doing a 50% TCA! But nevertheless…this will give you a good idea on what your face will look like for 1-2 weeks if you frost. And I will repeat again…you can’t “speed up” the healing after a frost b/c it increases the chances of hyperpigmentation big time (again, think healing from a burn).
Chemical Peels for Acne and Anti Aging: TCA 50% Chemical peel - before and after pictures
Oh…as for the face washes you use…I assume it probably has 2% salicylic acid. Believe me…2% is NOTHING when it comes to SA compared to 20%. If you’re comfortable dealing with frosting and have the downtime, then go for it. But I think it might be a lot less hassle for you if you started off with like 40% glycolic peel…and used a lesser % salicylic in the routine. I know MUAC has a 8% salicylic serum that you can keep on for upto 8 minutes before rinsing off (kinda like a mini-peel). You may want to find something like that…where the product has more than what a face wash or toner has. You can use that 2-3 times a week to keep the pores unclogged. And meanwhile do the glycolic peel once every 1 or 2 weeks. Actually, if the current salicylic face wash and RA is doing a good job at controlling the acne…then I think you can even go with just doing glycolic.
Oh also…since you’re using RA…the first 1 or 2 times you do a peel…stop using the RA 2-3 days before the peel. RA makes the skin more sensitive so don’t use it like the day before or something until you learn how your skin handles the peel. And IF you frost, you can not use RA until skin is 100% healed.
On a side note…LOL…yep…fiance has also sold many of his(and my!) books on Amazon.
You are officially the peel queen
And now that i’ve taken Frosting 101 i’ve decided that I don’t want my face to frost. I don’t want the chemical to go in so deep that I frost, scab and flake off. Picturing all that sounds terrifying to me and my mom will freak out even more than I will lol. If peels “work” and improve the condition of the skin overtime even if they don’t frost, then i’d rather keep them on for a shorter amount of time and not let them frost. I’d rather use them for a longer period of time but I don’t want to risk frosting because i’m afraid of damaging my skin. I’ll consider the glycolic ones as per your suggestion if they’re a bit milder. I used to use DDF’s toner that had 10% glycolic acid and I liked it…so i’m curious to see what a higher percentage of GA will do for my skin. However, that too i’m going to look for on Amazon lol! I will probably order from the MUAC website also after I figure out how to work with these things. Again, thank you so much for your detailed reply!
