0.025% cream, three nights a week, on dry skin twenty minutes after cleansing. The flaking never settles. By morning there are dry patches along both cheekbones that catch every foundation I own. Everything I read says it improves by four to six weeks. Is my routine wrong or is my skin just going to be like this?
Physically remove the flakes first, gently. A damp flannel, one soft pass, no scrubbing. Moisturiser over loose dead skin gives you the patchy makeup problem even when the skin underneath is fine. Took me embarrassingly long to work out that my dryness was mostly texture sitting on the surface.
Six weeks is genuinely early. Mine took about four months to stop protesting and the last two of those were fine, just slightly tight. Flaking without redness, stinging or itch is the ordinary version of this.
Agreed on the timeline, but still flaking daily at six weeks is worth a message to whoever prescribed it, even just to confirm the plan. Five minutes, not a big deal.
The completely-dry-skin rule is doing you no favours at 0.025%. It exists to slow absorption when you're irritated, and plenty of people find applying over a moisturiser on slightly damp skin is far more tolerable with no obvious loss. I stopped waiting twenty minutes and everything got easier.
Check the sunscreen too. Some of the high-alcohol ones feel great on oily skin and are miserable on anything compromised. Mine was making the flaking look twice as bad by mid-morning.
@porosity_nerd · 4mo ago · 3 replies
Cheekbones flaking at six weeks usually means frequency, not strength. What worked for me after two failed starts was dropping to twice a week for three weeks and sandwiching it: plain moisturiser, wait ten minutes, tretinoin, wait ten, moisturiser again. That blunts the peak irritation and the flaking settled inside a fortnight.
Also look at what else is in the routine. An exfoliating acid, a vitamin C, or a foaming cleanser with sulphates is usually the actual culprit and the tretinoin gets blamed. Strip back to cleanser, moisturiser, tretinoin, sunscreen for a month.
This is just what got me through it, and your prescriber is the right person to check the plan with.
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@porosity_nerd · 4mo ago
Almost certainly. Park it entirely for a month, then reintroduce at most once a week if you still want it.
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@bootstrap_nadia · 4mo ago
I have a glycolic toner in there four nights a week. That's probably my answer, isn't it.
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