I've been doing glycolic peels every once in a while for at least 3 years. Started at very low concentrations (20%, 30%). It never did anything for me. I cautiously tried 50% twice or so. Still nothing.
Recently, I had a really bad flare-up on my stomach, not that it had ever disappeared, but the bumps were more prominent, larger, incredibly itchy and dark. So I took out my 50% bottle out of despair and tried it again. I don't know if it was that my kp was particularly inflammed at that time, but I ended up with crusty patches all over my stomach. They started falling off and it's been about 3 weeks now. But I'm left with bad hyperpigmentation. As if I didn't have it bad enough already! I'm extremely depressed. Went to the derm, and he's prescribed pills (minocycline) for bacterial infections. The very first pill I took stopped the itching on my stomach and reduced the size of the bumps to what it was prior to the flare-up. But the appearance remains bad. In fact, it's worse because of the damage I did with the glycolic acid. People out there, be careful, especially if you have black skin.

The only experience I have had with Gly peels is with a 30% solution that I got.
The bottle says to use it no more than once a week, but I was curious about what it would do, so I used it for three days. It also said that you're supposed to wash it off after ten minutes, but I left it on to see what would happen.
After the third day, it was stinging red and peeling. It took weeks for it to heal up. It is almost a month later and there is still some redness.

Is the hyper caused by inflammation? That is, the skin is not actually *more* pigmented, it just looks darker because there is more blood near the surface? That is what my peel caused - these reddened patches that have taken forever to fade - but on darker skin does it show as a darker discoloration?

This is why I don't recommend peels for KP. We have enough irregular color in our skin from the inflamed follicles. Damaging the skin just causes more discoloration that will take even longer to fade.


I used to hate having no color in my skin, but now I realize I have about a million stretch marks, but they don't even show because my skin is the same color they are!

Did your derm say anything about what might be causing the flare ups? I have heard other people mention that they them, but I wonder if it is common. For me, nothing genuinely affects my KP except environmental changes, like warm days with moist air and cold days with dry air. My KP has gotten significantly worse since I moved to the northwest and out of California. We have winters here, even snow, and the Kp gets quite bad then. It gets so bad that when the warm weather comes again, it takes so long for the KP to improve that by the time it has gotten a little better, winter takes it away again.