Is it ok if I use a 12% AHA? Also you used Dermabrasion every day for a month, then applied AHA everyday for how long? Sorry I don't know where you posted this information.

Yes. I see hair growing out of my bumps just on top of them. and then i started noticing the bumps flatening out and now i could see the open pores that the hair is growing out of. Another observation that i have seen is that my arm hair is turning blonde and its not only in the sun, since im asian and have black hair. Its wierd, but i don't mind.

Hi,
in case you haven't seen the holy page yet, here's the link:

http://www.*********.com/******************/KPPictures.html

Is your skin darker now?

I'm asian too and my skin looks pretty bad right now (dark and burnt!), because I think I burned it with the AHA, but I'm hoping when it heals, it will look a lot better.

I burnt myself a few times with the AHA, Hope4thebest. And it was DARK purplish brown and tight and crinkly. My burn healed within a week with moisturization.

Sounds good! It could be that those are "brand new" hairs that have been trapped under your skin for a long time and are just now seeing the light. If this treatment is done correctly, it often results in LOTS of fine, downy hair growth. They are thin and pale because they have never been exposed to shaving (which thickens and darkens them) or other external conditions.

After dermabrasion is done (I recommend keeping at it for at least 6 weeks - more if you can - more is always better) the AHA can get to your pores and unblock them, and you will see *lots* of those little holes with hair growing out of them. But, all in good time. Don't rush it. I say a minimum of 4 weeks of dermabrasion, but 6-8 is really the best. Do it until you no longer see it making improvement on your skin, and that takes a lot more than a month.

The smoothing out is just the first part. It will get rid of the bumps in 4-5 weeks, but if you keep at it, it will do even more, improve your skin texture and even tap some of the follicles and reduce some of the redness. It can actually *treat* mild/moderate KP and eliminate the less serious red bumps. (For instance, it cleared my calves completely.) It is an amazing treatment if you hang with it and let it really do its thing, but people just aren't giving it the time.

I can't remember how long I did it exactly, but it was at least 6 weeks, I think? Anyway, the more the better.


Dermabrasion can be very gentle depending on how you mix it, and then you can gradually increase it. And the 20% is a very strong product and not appropriate until your skin is totally used to AHA. That's another issue, that people keep rushing into 20% and having problems.
I've found that the best way to treat KP is with your focus on the *early* stages of treatment, not the later ones.

For instance, If you did nothing but dermabrasion for 2 whole months, you would have pretty great skin, as smooth as a seal, and only red dots remaining on the areas of KP that were severe to begin with. You would be much farther along in the same amount of time than if you jumped right into AHAs. Two months into that, and you still have tons of bumps, and probably irritation. Skin responds much better (and faster, in the long run) when it's given time in the *beginning* to get used to a gentle, daily exfoliation.


Re: AHA Percentage

I recommend the 10% for starters with sensitive skin or very bad/old KP - again, more gentle at first is always better. Neostrata makes this potency, but I can't find any other brands that do and that specify it. An 8% would be nice as an option for some people, too, but I haven't found one.

Page Update

I have written up specific instructions for treatment that I hope will be clearer and avoid more problems. I am really hoping to get people off this fixation on the harsher treatments (like the 20%), and slow down, do the physical exfoliation right. I am real happy with the results people are getting, but I have also gotten reports of bad results due entirely to rushing through the first stages of treatment.

I just want to say that, in about 2 months, my skin looks a LOT better now. My bumps are gone and the dots are fading... My arms look almost "normal" again except for a little bit of hyper-pigmentation where the dots used to be. This is the best they have looked in years!

I'm waiting for my skin to heal some more, and then I will start re-applying 15% AHA to fade the dots some more ...

This AHA thing really works! (if you do it right, that is ...)

Hey all, how's it going?

Well I lost some ground on my KP treatment after a week of being really sick and not having the energy to keep it up. After that I kicked up to the 20% twice a day and have been taking beta carotene and omega 3 supplements. I don't know how much the supplements are doing but my skin overall seems to be getting better (my imagination? don't know) and it can't hurt! Haven't gotten around to trying oil pulling yet though I'm sure it would help.

I have to say this AHA spoils you! You forget how bad your skin used to be, and you get to the point where any bumps annoy you and you want them all gone! Really though, my skin looks and feels so much better.

Close-ups to show my progress:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...u/KP/kpold.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...u/KP/kpnew.jpg

Those are about 4 months apart.

Thanks to Turquoise for all her wonderful research and trying to help people.

Hi Riz, welcome back.

Thanks for the great photos. Your skin looks so normal now ! Awesome. Congratulations on staying with it for so many months. I don't see much trace of your KP left. Have people in your life noticed and have they been commenting?
AAAAGGGHHH!!! Exactly !!! That is exactly what I say at the site, and what I try to tell people through email. It is crazy how this happens. When your KP goes away, your brain changes. It clicks into a different mode where you forget what it was like to have KP. It becomes foreign and you become annoyed with treatment rather than happy about it, because you just want to have clear skin. When the KP tries to come back - even just a few bumps, you want to scream.
You forget that you used to have it all the time and managed that, somehow, that you should be happy with your results, but instead you just get angry and want to be normal, now that you've gotten a taste of it.
But people don't understand and don't take it seriously. When you have active KP, you are in a whole different place and can't imagine anything else.
There is *so much* on the other side of this disease. It really damages and changes the way you think and feel. It's only when it's gone that you realize how much it changed you and how sinister it really is.
And keeping up with treatment is hard. Especially for those who have it on a lot of areas of their body, because it is even more work to keep up with it. You have it just on your arms, right? (I'm so jealous !!) Having it all over your legs is much harder.
Of all the effects that KP has wrought in my life, one of the worst has been that the mental damage it causes actually destroys your ability to appreciate being "cured" long term. So even when it is gone and you look normal, you are still totally screwed. Firstly, there is no way to repair the injury it caused to your self esteem for all those years (if you had it bad, and over a lot of your body), and, it taints the happiness that should come with being cured. It creates a mental trap where you are so close to being normal, but it takes so much work, and you are constantly reminded that you will never have healthy skin, and now you get to obsess about every little bump, and still not be that happy with yourself. Worse, instead of suffering KP's direct effects, now you are a slave to treatment.

So... It still has you. You can never escape.
This thing is a beast, such a cruel disease.

I know! I feel bad! My legs are perfectly normal but I'm a guy, so it's not like I show them off right? I feel bad for all you girls who have to freak out about never being able to wear skirts or risk getting nasty comments.

Actually I always had some redness/bumps on my cheeks that nothing seemed to clear, but I bought Neostrata 10% PHA face cream and that was simply amazing. Cleared right up. Magical stuff.

You're right though. Before I was like "my arms are hideous, oh well" and that was that. Now I pay attention to every detail. I had a string of bumps randomly pop up recently (it's weird how that happens, is it diet? who knows) and I had to attack it with AHA immediately because it bugged me so much.

AHA can be a pain in the ass but it works for me or you, but for the people with really really bad cases...you can only devote so much time to slathering this stuff all over you. at that point it's like...where's our cure?! It's simply not practical. It sucks. I wish there was more of an effort to find one, especially for such a common ailment.

Yes, this is so frustrating. There are cures and effective treatments - I think dermabrasion/AHA is one of the easier ones, actually- but it is still a lot of work. I read so much around here about how desperate people are to just have clear skin, that they will do "anything" to have it, but it doesn't work that way. They think they mean that, but when you are actually in the situation of having to commit to a ritual (even a simple one that doesn't take too much time), it becomes too much trouble.
The only real cure would have to be a pill of some kind that we (the sufferers) would probably not be able to develop on our own. Something that would halt the excess keratin production, but then you know that would have side effects. Irritation from anything would take weeks to heal, people would injure easily, etc.
Or, just reduce the disease by physically preventing it in the first place- by not passing it on in our genes, and giving future generations a good chance at health. I think all of the severe cases of KP could be eliminated if people made the responsible decision there, but that is probably not going to happen. For how much people claim to hate this thing, they still think nothing of inflicting it on brand new victims. Only the most severe cases who have really suffered for it have the compassion to say "NO, I am not going to let this harm more people. I will do everything I can to stop it."
No one should have to suffer the way the people do around here, especially not kids who have nothing but this miserable future to look forward to.

I agree, for the very severe cases, treatment is just not practical. Putting lotion on all the affected areas, even just once a day, becomes a burden. Treatment is a sad thing that way. Here we finally have an effective way to control the disease, but many people are still going to suffer. Sometimes it feels like much of the work and energy I put into this have been futile, because KP treatment is going to be self-defeating for many people. They think they want a cure, and they think they are willing to work for it, but they have no idea what is coming. When the KP is gone, there is a whole aftermath to deal with that is only a little better. You want to be normal, to redefine yourself, to live normally, but the disease still won't let you.

As the example you gave, people are not equipped to commit to a regimen. KP allows them a lifetime of accepting their disease and not having to do anything about it. It is a huge change to have to treat it, and treat it forever.

Oh lol, I never knew you were a guy! But you know, if you are still applying it twice a day, you should soon get to the point where you only have to apply it once. That is easier, anyway.

It seems Baronster has been able to keep her KP from coming back by treating her LGS and avoiding food she's sensitive to.
That seems like a much better alternative than applying AHA once a day, every day of your life ...

Hi Turquois - I have a couple questions and I apologiz if they are somewhere in here or your pages - I get interrupted by my son a lot and can only concentrate on extended reading if he is otherwise occupied. :-)
You list the time for exfoliation as 30 to 60 minutes depending how much of one's body surface one works on. What about the AHA portion of treatment? If you could give me any idea it would sure help me figure out how I might work this into a hectic life.
Do you moisturize after showering off the crystals? (that might add time)
Do you moisturize after the AHA or what exactly is that procedure? AHA b4 shower? after shower? what's your recommendation?
Thanks for the link to 30glycolic, they have an 8% mint facial cleanser that may be _exactly_ what I have been trying to find as it works GREAT for my chest, back and face acne/KP.
Re: dietary attempts. I tried devotedly eating three big carrots a day, every day for a couple of months last year. It did not clear up my acne or KP. Juicing might get more nutrients out of the carrots I suppose but I have not tried that - no juicer. Greens are a big dietary help for me however. If you're not familiar, I can send you directions for cooking all kinds of greens - chard, collard, beet. They are nutritional powerhouses and I definitely feel their benefits when I eat them a few times a week. And even when I was a strict vegan, eating soy milk and spirulina on my organic quinoa every morning and not drinking alcohol or eating red meat and taking in little to no wheat and bicycling 5 to 15 miles a day, all of this for more than a year, I had the worst KP of my life. In fact, for me I think a bit of wine is a good thing for my KP but I avoid alcohol cause it triggers histamine production in my sinuses.

Again, sorry if if you have this info somewhere else, I'm just having a heck of a time finding it. Regards, BunnyDay

Hi bunnyday,
here's the link to the page Turquoise created.Just in case your son is occupied at the moment

http://www.*********.com/blueparadis...PPictures.html