After extensive reading, searching the web, and finally confirming with a dermatologist, we have finally figured out the cause of the little bumps all over our daughter's cheeks. It was hard to figure out because she is a mouth breather at night and drools a bit so for the longest time I assumed it was a rash from that.

But our older daughter who is 17, has had KP on her upper arms, so I started researching and found out how you can have it on your cheeks and a variety of other places. Our 11 yr old has a bit of it on her arms and upper thighs too. Mostly her face though~~ and I always thought with her lovely olive complexion, she would not be plagued with anything like skin problems.

We have gone the gentle buff puff, LacHydrin route, then the derm prescribed Carmol HC which I thought was so unneccesary to use hydro cortisone since she has barely any redness at all. So we skipped that after a few days. She was rubbing a bit harder with the buff puff last week and all of a sudden got these huge KP plugs, almost looked like white heads, but really I think they were inflamed KP....she was so frustrated, as was I.

Her sister's KP on her arms is virtually gone, she has been using Totally juicy grapefruit sugar scrub on her arms every day in the shower. It is the best results I have seen, but think it would be way to strong for my 11 yr old's face.....

We have settled into an approach of gently using a white washcloth to gently wash the face with cetaphil ( were using St Ives pore cleanser with tea tree oil and salicylic acid, then switched to purpose gentle face wash) and apply LacHydrin in the AM. Same cleanser at night and then apply Paula's choice 1% BHA....we backed off of using anything for a few days when she was getting these new inflamed huge bumps every morning( I think a reaction to over zealous buff puffing)

I would love to see more on the Mom's board...hopefully it will pick up...

PS~~ what is CP soap????

Also, anyone have any results with taking GLA supps, like black currant oil daily(obviously for the older kiddos..)???

Thanks in advance,
Cee

Keratosis Pilaris on the face, bites! My Mol has this and we have had pretty good luck using Differin Gel (prescribed). She doesn't use any moisturizing lotion on her face, just this. It has helped a lot, although I think her skin is getting used to it as she is getting more zits here recently (its an acne med). She's been on this for about a year now. Its done wonders for the kp around her eyebrow area and sides of cheeks.
CP soap is cold process soap. Like all soaps, this is made with lye. When the lye water (or milk-lye combo) and various oils are around the same temp, you mix these 2 together to saponify, and this is cp soap. Hp soap is hot process, mp soap is melt and pour (glycerin soaps, sometimes translucent or opaque). Cp soap, hp soap, are excellent to use on skin, as they are completely homemade. Mp soap, it really depends on the person using it and alot of the soap bases do have detergents in them.
Best of luck for your daughter. I hope you find something that works.
Molsmom

Hi Mols mom,
We have made great progress in just a short time!


I have to say that it is almost completely gone. The secret for us was to stop using the gentle buff puff completely! We switched to plain white washcloths. The buff puff was making her KP worse, she was probably irritating the condition. Anyway, we have gone from cheeks completely covered in KP, to just a few left down by her jaw.Her routine is:

Wash gently with a washcloth with cetaphil AM, apply LacHydrin, and Paula's Choice completely non greasy moisturizing lotion. ( I really should have her start to use some sunscreen instead because of the extra exfoliating with the BHA....)
Evening: wash with cetaphil using washcloth, apply Paula's choice 1% BHA then apply moisturizer.

I am so pleased with the results. We are going to try to wean off the LacHydrin and switch to Skin Bios exfol serum in the AM and
PC BHA in the evening. A friend of mine says Skin Bios exfol serum is gentler than PC BHA...

Thanks for your help re: the CP soap and your input, so far so good. But we will see how it goes when winter hits, though in TX it is not too too cold,
thanks again
Cee

My 11 daughter was recently diagnosed with KP. It appears on her arms and face. I have read all of your suggested remedies but some are described by initials only. Would someone more particularly describe the full names of the topical remedies, or indicate whether the initials are, in fact, the only identification of these products? Also, has anyone considered or had any success with chemical peel treatments, Retinol, Alpha Hydroxy, Laser or other skin layer removal treatments? Since KP relates to plugged hair follicles and old skin cells, it occurred to me that a peel or laser hair removal on the arms might help. The pediatric dermotologist suggested Ellidel cream but it has produced no success since it is essentially a treatment for Excema. I was also wondering if the ProActive skin treatment for acne has any properties that might help KP. Please advise of any successes or failures.

My daughter has a pretty bad case of KP on her cheeks (she is 11) and we have been trying new products for over a month now. At first we didn't realize it was KP, even though it is in the family everyone pretty much has varying degrees of it on their arms.

I have noticed this week that her face was looking really aggrevated, this was after a few weeks of really looking great. The KP was almost gone, only a few remained around the lower edge of her cheeks at her jawline...

I asked if she was doing anything different and found out that she was rubbing harder with her washcloth...this really seems to cause her to have more KP breakouts. The more she manually exfoliates during the face washing , the more she "breaks out".

Also~ I can tell if she isn't using her moisturizer, she will breakout more too.

So for us, less aggressive manually rubbing the skin, and more (up to 3 times a day) applying her moisturizer.

BTW, she washes with cetaphil using a white washcloth, uses paula's choice BHA1% lotion in the A.M and P.M.Then uses moisturizer after washing at night~~specifically Paula's Choice oil free moisturizer. We tried Paula's choice 2%BHa but it made her KP worse. The exfoliating properties of the BHA lotion seem to work better than trying to manually rubbing to exfoliate. The extra gentle Buff Puff was too irritating also. Am trying to get her to use sunscreen (neutrogena dry touch 45 spf) daily, but it is hard to get an 11 yr old to add another step...
HTH someone else out there,

Here's Paula's choice website http://www.cosmeticscop.com/
Cee



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08-01-2003 07:08 AM

Hi, my daughter is almost 12, and we've been dealing with her KP for as long as I can remember. She has it on her face, arms, and thighs.
I can't believe I didn't figure out that the gentle buff puff exacerbates KP before reading it on this site, but now I realize that is exactly right. I believe that fits with my daughter's experiences.
We have had some success with Tend Skin, a strong, alcohol-smelling product made to prevent ingrown hairs. She applies it at night with a cotton ball, but it can be very drying. Doing it twice a day keeps the KP under better control, but she rarely does that. It is noticabe, though, if she skips a few days, so I know it does work. For the past few weeks, we have been experimenting with other products: sulpher soap (jury's out), KP duty (HUGE waste of money), and Keralac 35% Urea lotion (little help). In the past we have tried LacHydrin and a couple of other prescriptions to no avail.
We will try the washcloth/cetaphil/Paula's choice route and re-post. Thanks, everyone, for the good information!

I found the 1% BHA cleansing lotion but not moisturising lotion on the web site. Is it a cleanser or a moisturizing lotion. Thanks for all the info.

Hi Myra,
It's the lotion you want, and you can find it through pasting this link in your browser:

http://www.cosmeticcop.com/shop/prod...200&PAGETYPE=S

My dermatologist sold me a KP kit by Glytone that we're trying now (since last week). It contains a cleanser, lotion, and soft webby srubber thing. She says to give it a month...

Good luck!

Melissa