Hey there, I’m Conor. I’m a software engineer, I like to make indie music, and I’m an alumni of suffering from some pretty bad acne.
Living with acne has been a humbling test of confidence. Talking about it this openly on the internet is something I don’t find easy, even though I no longer really have any acne. I’d like to share my success story of how I started thinking scientifically and tracking my acne.
Here’s what I used to look like
So, here I am on April 25, 2013. I’m 21 years old and a junior in University of Pittsburgh. My face hurts me, both mentally and physically. I had intense cystic acne that was deep enough to continue causing new pimples. Some days, I would leave class early because I felt gross and my face hurt.
Bad Acne Can Be Hard To Get Rid Of
I was looking for anything that would solve my acne. I was constantly trying new regimens and routines: regimens I’d found online, advice from my dermatologist, regimens that I’d concocted out of thin air, etc. There are an enormous amount of resources/communities online where I ‘d sourced these ideas from acne.org, reddit.com/r/skincareaddiction, bloggers/youtube. While these communities were great for inspiration, they also created an information overload.
Each community would have their own regimens to try, some of which would contradict one another, some regimens were straight up paid celebrity/blogger propaganda, some regimens were just placebos. Forums could be filled with people saying, “This product is a miracle cure!”, while others said the product had flared up their acne. It was tough to find scientific, unbiased reviews of regimens to try on my own skin.
To compound this, trying a new routine on skin is a frustratingly slow process. Unfortunately, overnight cures don’t yet exist for acne. Changes in skin from a new regimen can take days or weeks to be seen and sometimes the skin will get worse before it gets better. There are also external forces working on your skin, like stress in school or work, sweating from working out, and climate (like warmer weather). I needed to experiment with my own skin and environment to accurately understand what was causing my acne.
Solving My Acne Scientifically
It’s an understatement to say that tackling my acne seemed like a daunting challenge. It felt hopeless some days. I would try different regimens, my acne would flare, and I’d have no clue as to why. So I’d switch to a different regimen after a few days and still have no luck. Eventually I would return, cyclically to the same non-working regimens and never get anywhere.
I was still in college at this time, studying mainly Computer Science. I really dug my CS degree. Everyone has seen all the wild stuff that comes out of CS like machine learning and what not, but I think CS gave me something something else: a process for solving complex problems.
In the abstract, students of Computer Science are taught logical ways of problem solving. We are taught multiple sets of rules which we will use for transforming raw data inputs into our ideal and repeatable data outputs. What started as completely impossible problems (i.e reversed linked list problems) became trivial with these processes of algorithmic thinking. [1]
My Acne Management Method
Side Note: See the below section: Making The Method Easier for a better experience.
With these newfound algorithmic ways of thinking, it was time logically get rid of my acne. Using the scientific method as a guideline, I decided to narrow down what factors affected my skin and try different product regimens to find my cure. Basically, I started to conciously track my acne. The process looked like so:
- Create a Hypothesis: I would choose a regimen to follow for some amount of time. Maybe I’d try a regimen I’d found on acne.org.
- e.g “Benzoyl Peroxide on left side of face, 1x a day; Moisturize 1x a day for 2 weeks.”
- Run the Experiment: Every day or two I would:
- Take pictures of the affected areas with my new regimen.
- Write a log in a private Google Doc the status of my skin and how the experiment was going. This log includes how my skin looks and feels, and any externalities that could affect the experiment. These logs would allow me to pinpoint how I felt about my skin over time.
- e.g “I have 10 pimples today and a good bit of redness. Mostly on the right side of my face. They do feel a bit less inflamed today. I also forgot to shower after working out yesterday, and woke up feeling sweaty. OOF 😕”
- Analyze the Results: After a solid time period (and 2 weeks may not always be enough!), I would compare my photos and logs from today to before I began this regimen’s experiment. If I showed some improvement, I would keep up the regimen. If I was getting worse, I would tweak the regimen or completely change to a new one with a day or 2 of buffer in between.
I began to take a secret joy in doing my acne tracking method. Firstly, I felt like I was actively working towards clearing my acne every night. I would come up with new ideas through the week and save them for later to try. Secondly, I felt like I wasn’t completely lost with my acne anymore. I used to get overwhelmed trying to keep all of my past treatments and externalities (food, sleep schedules, stress, etc.) together in my head. I would recurrently try regimens that I’d already attempted and forgot about to see if they’d work this time. Now, I had a mental map, process, and actual log of what worked and what didn’t.
Issues
The above method worked, but it is definitely rudimentary and so I’d found a few acne tracking annoyances.
- Google Docs and Flickr (where I stored my photos) were completely unlinked. They are 2 different apps. I would have to date entries in the Google Doc and find them in another tab on Flickr to find the photos.
- I had to use Flickr to store my photos because I now had nightly acne selfies showing up in my phone’s gallery. If I were then trying to show a friend another picture, all these acne photos would pop up. 😐 Also, Flickr, now has a 1k picture upload limit. 😐
Making Acne Tracking Easier: The SkinTheory App
As someone who was able to beat their acne by thinking this way, I wanted to share this scientific process with kindred spirits who I knew were suffering as well. Unfortunately, my home-brewed process felt kinda janky.
In my free time I decided to learn React-Native to make an app (with some help of course) to streamline this process. It took loads of work between coding, making art assets, making a website, etc. but I think the acne solving method above is now much more straight forward. Especially for people who don’t consider themselves “technical”. Anyone with problem skin can now find a solution using this SkinTheory Method without the PITA overhead of managing a huge Google Doc and Flickr Library. Also, photos are sneakily hidden away in the app in order to not peskily show up in the phone gallery when you’re showing friends your cute dog pics.
Skin Success
So, if you like to see the results of my “Before & After pics” here’s a pic with some of the fam below. I’ve moved to Ireland since I graduated so we’re out on my cousin’s farm.
I’m completely clear now and most of the scarring has healed. It’s a liberating feeling to be past acne but it did take time to find the correct regimen.
To wrap up what worked for me, I have crazy sensitive skin. The normal benzoyl peroxides and salicylic acids for solving acne would irritate my skin and cause more acne. I learned that I had to be moisturizing daily (thanks Acne.org!), using gentle non-comedogenic moisturizers and soaps, and managing my stress. College caused huge stress and also affected my sleeping/eating habits which seemed to be causing more acne for me.
In the end, the SkinTheory Method helped me act as a scientist, testing and isolating factors affecting my own skin. It gave me the peace of mind that I was doing something at each step to control my acne. It paid off. Best of luck with your own experiments. 🔬
Extra Notes
[1]: Whether you have Computer Science know-how or not: I highly recommend this book on thinking about algorithms in day-to-day life (non-affiliate link): Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian
