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Yep that’s me my name is sarah winkler and i suffer with severe cystic acne for about seven years of my life and acne sucks what’s up you guys welcome back to my youtube channel you have no idea how excited i am to be filming this youtube video for you guys today because this has been probably about seven years in the making ever since i got acne i was dreaming
Dreaming of the day i could make this youtube video seeing people who would clear their skin was just such an inspiration and something that i thought would be kind of impossible in the fact that i’m even here today to be giving you my story like i’m i’m getting emotional about it because i didn’t think it would be possible um yeah i’m surprising getting so
Emotional about it wow okay oh my gosh so basically what i’m going to be doing today is i’m going to be breaking this video into kind of three different parts so one’s going to be the history of my skin kind of what i’ve tried my skin type etc what led me to go on accutane and then my accutane process please don’t forget to subscribe to my youtube channel that
Would just mean the world to me if you would do that and without further ado let’s just get right into the video i started getting acne when i was honestly really young i remember always it was just kind of an insecurity of mine fast forward to eighth grade going into freshman year that’s when my acne really started getting bad i started getting hyperpigmentation
Which literally sucks it sucks so much after you get a pimple and then you have a massive red spot that you can’t cover up that’s like the worst thing ever and i pretty much had acne all throughout high school it had periods of getting better periods of being worse i was in and out of the dermatologist’s office for years so over the years i’ve saved pretty much
Everything i used to try to clear my acne for this video i tried a bunch of things from the drugstore which didn’t work then i headed to the dermatologist route and tried a bunch of different creams prescriptions those had varying levels of success but nothing really worked for me also tried minocycline doxycycline bactrum which ended up giving me a allergic
Reaction i was put on birth control which ended up giving me a massive blood clot in my right leg which i had to be hospitalized and i had to take blood thinners for three months so yeah i’ve tried it all fast forward to college freshman year and i thought you know i don’t really have anything to lose i’m going to give acne.org products a try clearly i bought it
I used it i used it for about i want to say a month and a half to two months and dear sweet mary mother of god my skin exploded it was dry it was irritated my skin was peeling it was horrific my skin went from like not great to i had never had acne like this in my entire life it was so embarrassing i remember my freshman year of college too just being like this
Sucks i remember trying to figure out when to go to the bathroom so i could avoid my roommates when i needed to wash off my makeup at night i would wear makeup to the gym i avoided people like crazy because i was just so embarrassed on my skin and i had always been self-conscious but this was the first time where like i knew people were staring at my face they were
Staring at my skin and i knew that they were looking at me and they were seeing my acne they weren’t seeing me first and that really really really hurt myself confident remember calling my mom and we were talking about it and we decided to go back to the dermatologist and that is when the dermatologist recommended accutane and at first i was almost offended that
My skin was that bad that it needed accutane but my dermatologist explained that i had basically tried everything and it was time to go on accutane otherwise i’d have really severe scarring from how bad my acne was but thank goodness for my dermatologist for allowing me to go on it because this is what saved my skin and i was terrified i know a lot of you guys
Are watching this video because you have heard these horror stories you’ve heard like really negative reviews and you want to know is that going to happen to me and i was in the same boat i was terrified to go on it but i can tell you it was single-handedly the best decision i think i’ve ever made it was a piece of cake it was a breeze i had very minimal side
Effects and my skin has been amazing ever since sorry my boyfriend walked into the room and i don’t like filming in front of people because it makes me really awkward i really hate it i hate when people watch my videos in front of me too anyway back to the story my accutane experience so i started accutane my freshman year which was gosh 2018 i got the process
Rolling in january i officially started in february i was on it for six months i started at 40 milligrams bumped up to 60 milligrams for the next two months and then the remaining three months or maybe two months i think i was on 80 milligrams i honestly really can’t remember i probably should have taken better notes but to be honest i was just so thankful to be
Finally on accutane and to have clear skin that i wasn’t really keeping the best track and besides the dosage is completely and utterly dependent on your weight your body how severe your acne is it’s not something like you can’t just go ask your doctor hey can i be on this much medicine no it’s very much individualized i started out i was really really nervous
About dryness chapped lips like really bad side effects honestly i didn’t have any side effects my skin really wasn’t even dry the only thing i had was like chapped lips that was about it as far as going out in the sun i was on it throughout the whole summer so may june and july i ended in july i went to cabo that summer and i didn’t get sunburned i wore 100 spf
The whole time though i also wore those like long sleeve sun protection shirts i wore a hat every day i wore sunscreen on my face every single day i think it’s still super super super important to be really cautious with your skin i did burn my feet like the top of my feet that was the only place i didn’t put sunscreen on my feet got severely burned they were
Peeling that’s the only time i really struggled with it though i definitely recommend neutrogena’s clear face sunscreen it’s an spf 55 that’s what i use i still use it it’s amazing that was really awesome i use that every single day while i was on accutane um but yeah okay other side effects the amazing thing was i didn’t have to wash my hair that much that was
Incredible really loved that the only one thing i didn’t like was that this is so tmi i can’t believe i’m telling the whole air to this right now the only thing i didn’t like was the last like month and a half going numero dos was like painful because my body was so dry and that’s apparently really common that your butt can just get dry because it dries out the
Oil on all of your body um that’s so tmi welcome to my life so i basically just used vaseline and that solved the issue that’s so tmi um but that’s the only side effect i really had that was like bad i never had headaches i never had like muscle aches or joint pain people can have like depressive thoughts i never had any of that literally the only thing was dry
Lips and a dry butt the only thing long term side effect that i had was i noticed i had a little bit of hair loss actually about four ish months after ending accutane and that kind of wasn’t a fun thing i was remembering in the shower like oh that’s a lot of hair coming out that’s not good and brushing my hair it just you look at the brush for like that’s a lot of
Hair in the hairbrush but i went to my dermatologist that’s actually really normal she recommended these hair vitamins i took them i’ll put a picture of the ones i used here i use those for a few months and my hair really like bounced back i started getting a lot new growth even my hairdresser was like you can literally feel like you have so much new hair growing
So those pills are amazing i will recommend those below another side effect i got afterwards was i have keratosis polaris on my arms which is like those tiny little bumps all over my arms and it was really bad but i went back to my dermatologist she prescribed me a cream i have been completely clear of that since then that was pretty much my accutane experience
All right so this was the first day i started accutane and my skin actually got a lot clearer because i stopped using acme.org products and i went on epiduo forte and spironolactone that helped a lot with my skin just to kind of calm down a lot of the inflammation a lot of the big acne was gone at this point but still definitely not good by any stretch of the
Imagination and here we have two weeks on accutane i definitely had a couple new breakouts some pretty larger ones actually you can see i was not very happy about it but what can you do that’s kind of the process it wasn’t the best but that is the way accutane works i really didn’t notice any changes as far as dryness or dry lips at this point just a lot of new
Breakouts the rest of these pictures were throughout february and into march i would say throughout march my skin definitely kind of purged and throughout march into the end of march that’s really when i noticed my skin clearing and by april my skin was pretty much on the track towards clear skin so that was two months on accutane i noticed pretty fast results
And here you can see definitely with makeup it looks very smooth very clear and these are pictures throughout the rest of the end i took these on an app i kind of look like mug shots but they’re all good they’re all good this was one year later and this picture is from today general tips for going on accutane just things i guess maybe i wish i would have known
Or things that are super important to do number one drink a ton of water this is just gonna help with the medicine absorbing into your body just keeping you healthy keeping everything moisturized internally that’s just super important and something you should be doing every single day always take accutane with a fatty meal there’s actually studies that show that
Accutane is more effective if you eat it with i think about 20 grams of protein per meal studies show that eating it with a high fat meal minimizes the chance that you have to take accutane again and makes it more effective number three kind of like i said earlier always always always wear your sunscreen i wear sunscreen my face every single day since it can just
Make you super super sensitive to the sun number four be really diligent about your appointments write them down when i went to go i either had to do a blood test or just a urine sample um only like two or three months i had to do a blood test and honestly getting your blood drawn is really not that bad it’s pretty painless but be really diligent write down those
Appointments make sure you’re keeping track of when you have everything so you don’t miss a month tip number five so when you’re done with accutane it stays in your system for about another month so during that month still be really diligent about wearing your sunscreen drinking a lot of water um just keeping care of your body and doing all the things you did on
Accutane because the product is still the medicine is still in your system it’s not like it’s completely gone yet yes that’s my experience i wish i would have gone on it sooner that’s probably my only regret i understand there are horror stories and i’m not you know saying that those horses are untrue i i know everybody else has a different experience but people
Are more likely to write a negative review about a product than a positive one so take the other grain of salt it is now 20 20 my skin’s still super clear i struggled a little bit with breakouts the beginning of this year but that was mainly due to like weird dermatitis i got on my skin so it wasn’t really acne it was stress related moving into a new apartment
I don’t know weird combination of things but my skin has been amazing i am not wearing any makeup right now except for eye makeup that’s the only thing i’m wearing i can pretty much go out without makeup every single day if i want i don’t have to think about my skin all the time i wash my face put on my lotion and i still use an acne treatment just to kind of
Keep my skin tip top shape but that’s literally it if you are struggling with acne i know it feels like this long eternal dark hole that you just can’t get out of and seriously i want to give you a big hug and just like oh my gosh i want to just let you know that it’s going to get better i know so many youtubers say that and you just don’t believe them but it
Does it took me seven years for my skin to get better but here i am here is the day that i finally get to make this video for you guys and say i have clear skin and literally i can’t even tell you how damn good that feels and i so know the feeling of like dodging looks trying to avoid eye contact feeling like everybody’s staring at your skin i remember there
Was this one time this little girl we were at like an ice cream shop and i wasn’t wearing makeup and this little girl looks at me and then turns to her mom and says mommy what’s wrong with that girl’s face and comments like that like kids just don’t know or even people your age they just don’t realize how those comments really freaking hurt you know what my skin
Sucks but i have the choice to decide i like me no matter what i look like while yes i want my skin to not be like this at the end of the day i still really love myself now that my skin’s clear i really can’t say that accutane brought out my outgoing my really just energetic side that i’ve always had but i hid for a greater part of my life because my acne and i
Really hope that none of you guys feel like that i hope none of you guys hide your personality or put yourself down because of your acne never let your acne stop you from doing things from doing the things that you love thank you guys so much for watching this video if you need anything if you want advice if you want just to talk or um to kind of get my input on
Anything please leave a comment down below please subscribe to my youtube channel for more content from me and i hope you have an amazing day i love you all so so so much and i’ll see you guys my next video bye friends uh
Transcribed from video
HOW I CLEARED 7 YEARS OF SEVERE ACNE | ACCUTANE JOURNEY By Sara Winkler
