How long does it take to recover from skin problems?

The treatment cycle for most skin problems ranges from 28 days to 1 year, and extreme chronic problems such as hormone-rebound face may even take longer. Those promotions with the slogans of "eliminating stubborn acne in 3 days" and "repairing sensitive skin in 7 days" basically charge an IQ tax.

The 28-day skin metabolism cycle we often talk about is actually the time it takes for keratinocytes in healthy skin to form from the basal layer to finally fall off. If your skin has problems - such as a broken barrier, chronic inflammation, or damage to the dermis, this metabolic rate will continue to drop, and the conditioning cycle will naturally take much longer than healthy skin. A while ago, I helped a sophomore girl to tone her skin. She followed the trend during the summer vacation and bought high-concentration fruit acid to apply on her face to try to close her forehead. As a result, the barrier was damaged. Her face became red and hot when she went out to blow some cold air or eat hot pot. She stocked up on first-aid masks and soothing essences at home for half a year, but nothing improved. Then she stopped as I told her. I used all functional products, applied a simple ceramide repair cream every day and added hard sunscreen, and even used mild amino acid cleanser. It took more than 2 months, which is nearly 3 metabolic cycles of damaged skin, before the redness problem was completely eliminated. After that, it consolidated for almost a month before I dared to slowly use the gentle whitening essence.

At this point, someone is bound to jump out and refute, saying, "I had an acne breakout last time. I applied some adapalene and it faded away in 3 days. How can it last that long?" This is actually a common misunderstanding that everyone has - confusing "temporarily suppressing symptoms" with "thoroughly treating it". Superficial problems such as one or two pimples occasionally, redness and blackness after two days of sun exposure, which do not damage the root cause, can indeed be recovered in a week or two. However, if it is a chronic problem such as repeated acne, redness due to sensitivity all year round, or pigmentation due to age-related inflammation, if you do not consolidate it once it is cured, it will definitely relapse before long. I once met a boy who works as an Internet operator. He had recurring acne breakouts for 3 years. Every time he got acne, he used acne patches and acid to suppress the acne and ignored it. He never adjusted his skin care habits or adjusted the oil secretion and flora status of his skin. Later, he wanted to completely adjust his face when he was taking wedding photos. It took him 8 months to stabilize the problem of recurring acne breakouts. Now, more than half a year has passed and he has not had any large-scale acne breakouts.

In fact, skin conditioning is the same as nourishing the stomach. If you occasionally have diarrhea after eating bad food, you can take a pill and it will be cured on the same day. However, if you have chronic gastritis all year round, you cannot completely recover after drinking millet porridge for two days. You have to slowly adjust your eating habits and take care of yourself slowly to be effective. There are many "quick conditioning" methods on the Internet today. Most of them use products containing instant soothing ingredients such as mint and bisabolol to suppress superficial symptoms such as redness and itchiness. They do not solve the problem of inflammation or barrier damage deep in the skin at all. The product will return to its original shape within two weeks after stopping the product. I have seen many people believe in this method, and the back and forth only makes the skin more and more fragile, and the conditioning cycle is longer.

If you really want to prevent skin problems from reoccurring, you should not be too hasty. I have encountered too many people who failed to see any obvious results after half a month and then blindly changed products and tried folk remedies. Instead, they put extra burden on the skin and made it slower. Sometimes, taking it slowly can actually make it faster.