Reddit mentions of Alpha Skin Care Essential Renewal Gel | Anti-Aging Formula | 10% Glycolic Alpha Hydroxy Acid (AHA) | Reduces the Appearance of Lines & Wrinkles | Oily & Breakout Prone Skin | 1.7 Oz

I would recommend less exfoliating with physical exfoliates and more chemical.

You probably have combination skin, right? Is your face wash drying? Do you feel like your skin is tight after you wash your face?
You want a more gentle face wash. Yes, I'm going to say it only because it works but CeraVe's cleanser is cheap and easy on skin. I doubt you're running around with much makeup on so this will be fine both during the day and night to wash with.

You can also use CeraVe's moisturizer both day and night to help kick start the repairing your skin needs to do.

I would suggest you start throwing in some glycolic acid to speed up the process of clearing everything up. Apply this before the cream.

With the acid though you're going to need sunscreen. They say that 5 minutes in the sun without sunscreen is just as bad as hours. Yes, CeraVe also offers a great sunscreen for a cheap price. This will be your last step. Apply it half an hour or so before you head out anywhere.

Don't do much more than this for a couple weeks. See how your skin reacts to it all. It'll need a bit of an adjustment period before you can start adding more products in. I suggest reading some of the stuff in the sidebar. The people here have great advice to give and have complied it pretty neatly.

Skin type and background:

Combination towards oily side, with one or two pimple monthly around menstrual time.
Also taking Evening Primrose Oil and Cod Liver Oil supplements daily.
Early 30s Asian living in a humid tropical country.

My current routine:

AM:

• HadaLabo AHA/BHA Facewash
  
  
• Stridex Red
  
  
• Mad Hippie Vit C serum - 15min after
  
  
• Bee Natural Oil-free Moisturiser
  
  
• Shiseido Sunscreen
  
  PM:
  
  
• SkinFood Black Sugar cleansing oil
  
  
• HadaLabo AHA/BHA Facewash
  
  
• Mad Hippe Vit A serum
  
  alternate every other night with
  
  
• Alpha Hydrox 10% Glycolic AHA
  
  
• Bee Natural Oil-free Moisturiser (30min after)
  
  
  Happy with my skin so far, I’m realistic with my skin expectation - not looking for poreless porcelain Snow White.
  But less obvious pores would be nice.
  
  I’m open to suggestions and routine improvements if there’s any.
  Thanks in advance!
  
  

Yeah, I looked at the Kiehl Micropeel's price. $56 is expensive. There are cheaper and more proven options.

Some tips:

1. Know your skin type - oily, dry, normal, combination before you buy products. You need to buy products suitable for your skin type. Otherwise it's like an anorexic person taking diet pills because overweight people claim they are so good or overweight people drinking weight gainer shakes because skinny people claim they are effective.
   
   
2. There is no such thing as male skin type or female skin type. In general, men's skin are thicker and oilier. Still this will fall under oily, dry etc. Male skincare products are not really made for men. It's pure marketing. For example, clinique's men moisturizer is the exact same formula as their famous yellow moisturizer targeted to women. They just changed packaging and gave it a manly name. Most skincare range targeted to men smells like axe body cologne and has menthol, peppermint, spearmint, eucalyptus etc in order to market these products as 'cooling', even though they are bad for your skin. It's like if you splash isopropyl alcohol 70% to your face, it will feel cool too, then your face burns. LOL.
   
   My skin type is super oily specially when I was younger. The Kiehl herbal line dried my face out in a bad way. It became dehydrated (dry underneath) while becoming more oily on top. I agree with the other commenter that you should introduce new products slowly. I am still guilty of buying 5-6 items of a brand that I haven't tried (I like trying different brands, from drugstore cheap to super expensive) and then applying all of them in one go. 95% of the time my face rebels. It becomes red, irritated, big pores etc. I cannot pinpoint which product is the culprit.
   
   I'm assuming you have oily skin like me that gets dry depending on weather or how aggressive I am with my skincare regime. I also have acne scars from pimples during my teenage years and my parents not teaching me good hygiene. I think I only washed my face on weekends with water. During weekday, no shower, no face washing. > < It's a miracle I do not have more holes on my face. This is why I am so obsessed with skincare now. I'm a guy btw.
   
   My recommendations:
   
3. No fragrance. You are using skincare products to improve your complexion. Fragrance at best won't help. More often, it causes irritation that your eyes can't see. If you like fragrance, use cologne. Do not apply fragrance masquerading as skincare on your face. Even if a product says it is fragrance free, check the ingredients for fragrant oils like orange, lemon, bergamot, lavender etc. Companies know people still love nice smelling things so they add these natural oils/extracts so that they can still claim their product to be fragrance free. These fragrant oils make your skin more sensitive to the sun. Bad!
   
   
4. For face wash, the most important thing is ph. You want a liquid face wash with neutral ph. Too alkaline and it strips your face dry. You do NOT want the squeaky feeling after you washed your face. If you do, that face wash is too harsh. No bar soap for face. The chemical that makes the soap solid is going to clog your pore. I can live with acne.org face wash. It's cheap and huge and gets the work done.
   
   
5. The #1 antiaging product is sunscreen. Use it daily, rain or shine. You will not see the results now. 20 years from now you will look much younger than your friends who do not use sunscreen. Old looking skin is not just wrinkles and sagging. It includes clarity, smoothness, even skin color etc. You want at least SPF30 because most people do not apply enough so even though you applied SPF30, more likely you are getting much less protection. SPF only measures protection against UVB, B for burning. The more damaging sunray is UVA, A for aging. UVA does not cause sunburn. It is also pretty steady whole year round. In Europe they measure UVA protection with PPD. European sunscreens with tinosorb and meroyxl are best but they can be thick. These ingredients are still illegal in the US. :< Japan sunscreen also has better UVA protection than US ones and they are non-greasy at the expense of having alcohol added. You can visit /r/asianbeauty to search for japanese sunscreen.
   
   
6. Instead of using that Kiehl micropeel, you can say use 5% glycolic acid, which will increase cell turn over or use retinol, which makes your cell function better. For retinol, I recommend you begin with a low dosage, like 0.15% then gradually increase to 0.25%, 0.5% to 1%. (1% retinol is very strong!) I recommend this: https://www.amazon.com/Alpha-Skin-Care-Enhanced-Wrinkle/dp/B01BW4ZB74/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1480126688&sr=8-1&keywords=retinol+alpha+hydrox (It has 0.15% retinol in a time released formula - similar microsphere technology that my prescription retin-a micro gel uses. The ingredients is also almost exactly the same as this http://www.ulta.com/help-me-retinol-night-treatment?productId=xlsImpprod1490128 which sells for $49. (I think I paid $65 when I bought it years ago. Maybe now the word has spread that there is a cheaper dupe.)
   
   
7. Paulas choice has nice BHA(salicylic acid). BHA is good for unclogging pore because it is oil soluble and thus can penetrate pores. Contrast this to AHA which is oil soluble. Paula has many choices at different strength, for e.g. liquid is strongest, gel is lighter, there is 1%, 2% etc. They increased their price by almost 100% since I started using them from more than 10 years ago. Cheaper alternative is cosrx bha: http://www.wishtrend.com/promotion/1108-bha-blackhead-power-liquid-cosrx.html. Shop around for price. They are available at amazon too. It is 2% but gentler. (Acids - glycolic, salicylic, vitamin c even though at same % can be made stronger or less strong by adjusting the ph)
   
   
8. For some people salicylic acid is good enough for controlling acne. For me it does not work. I need benzo peroxide. Years ago I used Proactiv. The treatment part stated simply is just 2.5% benzo peroxide. They forumalated the technique to apply it all over your face not just on specific pimple. The idea is to kill the acne causing bacteria before they even have the chance to cause pimples. The old school method is you wait for pimple to pop out then apply benzo peroxide on it. If applying to the whole face, only use 2.5% bp. For spot treating erupted pimples, you can go up to 5%. Never use 10%, which are commonly sold in drugstores because they know people think stronger is better. 10% bp does not offer significant advantage over 5%. It will only make your skin peel and the pimple would harden (at least that was the case with me) Cheapest price fo bp is at acne.org. They have a message board too so if you want to read people's battles with acne, you'd enjoy it. Drugstore benzo peroxide sells for like $5 for 1 ounce. Acne.org sells 8 oz at $19.29. If you have back acne, you can apply it on your back too.
   
   
9. For facial moisturizer, I like clinique dramtically different moisturing gel (gel not the lotion!) $26 for 4.2oz. http://www.clinique.com/product/1687/5047/skin-care/moisturizers/dramatically-different-moisturizing-gel
   
   
10. During winter if you feel this gel does not provide enough moisture, you can add a few drops of jojoba oil. Actually you can also add jojoba oil to your face cleanser. Oil attracts oil, so it does a good job at removing surface oil from your face. It's also the reason why a lot of women use oil cleanser to remove makeup. Then they use regular cleanser to wash off the oil cleanser just to be safe. This is called double cleanser. I do this too in order to make sure my water resistant sunscreen is removed at the end of the day.
    
    My suggested routine for you would be something like:
    Morning
    
11. Gel fash wash
    
    
12. bha
    
    
13. 2.5% bp all over face
    
    
14. gel moisturizer (add jojoba oil if your skin needs more ummmp, say during winter)
    
    
15. apply sunblock
    
    PM
    
16. gel face wash, add a few drops of jojoba oil
    
    
17. moisturizer (add few drops of jojoba oil if you need more ummmph)
    
    
18. apply retinol (apply it after moisturizer so that the moisturizer acts as a buffer and make retino less strong, when you are used to it, you can switch around and apply retinol first then moisturizer)
    
    You do not necessarily need an eye product unless you have specific issues like dark circles, puffiness.
    
    Once you are doing well in your routine, you may eventually want to add glycolic https://www.amazon.com/Alpha-Skin-Care-Essential-Glycolic/dp/B01D2M4IFA/ref=lp_15766567011_1_7_a_it?srs=15766567011&ie=UTF8&qid=1480128477&sr=8-7&th=1, or http://www.paulaschoice.com/shop/skin-care-categories/aha-and-bha-exfoliants/_/Resist-Daily-Smoothing-Treatment-with-Five-Percent-AHA. Another option is https://store.acne.org/treatment/8-oz-treatment-2-5-benzoyl-peroxide. Even acne.org has descent glycoli products: https://store.acne.org/aha/6-oz-aha-10-glycolic-acid-licochalcone
    
    I cannot empshaized enough to add the acids slowly (AHA, BHA, retinods). You can also so something like only apply once to twice a week only. Then slowly progress.
    
    Retinoids should always be applied at nightg. Do not apply retinoid and aha at the same time, they cancel each other out. Thus use BHA in the morning. I can't remember either BHA won't cause sun sentivity or whether it can even help with inflammation since ibufuren drugs have salicylic component.
    
    I can feel my ambien taking effect. I'm not sure whether I'm even typing sense. Going to bed now. lol.
    
    Edit: i mean do not apply retinoid and benzo peroxide at the same time. They cancel each other pit. Retinoid and aha together wont cancel but may be too harsh.
    
    

I used Alpha Hydrox Oil-Free Essential Renewal Gel 1.70 oz for a year now and I got results at probably 6 months in? I never had texture issues but for discoloration there has been a huge difference. This is a 10% glycolic acid gel that's less $20 USD. They also have a cream version suited more for dry skin. (I prefer gels for my oily skin.)

E: grammar

Most people have luck clearing CCs with AHAs - I like Alpha Skin Care 10% Glycolic Gel. You might see greater results by using a BHA like Stridex alongside your AHA. More stubborn CCs can be treated with retinoids.

It also helps to find out what's clogging your pores and eliminate anything suspicious from your routine. CosDNA is super helpful in flagging potentially clogging ingredients in your makeup and skincare products. Personally I avoid any ingredients that are a "2" or higher, but it all depends on how clog-prone your skin is.

Concerns: https://imgur.com/a/KDf5Waw Reducing hyperpigmentation and acne scarring, getting rid of small skin colored bumps all over the sides of my face and forehead. I get pimples often but I'm certain that's because of my poor diet, I also have a problem with picking but whether I pick or not, it still leaves behind an ugly spot (I have dark skin). I've used Cosrx patches to get rid of pimples but they still leave behind a mark and I'm honestly not entirely sure how I should be caring for pimples at all.

Skin type: Oily forehead and sometimes oily cheeks and chin, though I haven't noticed it anywhere but my forehead lately. I've been noticing lately that when I don't apply anything to my face after washing it, my cheeks start getting flaky. I'm not sure if that happens to everyone or if that means I have dry/dehydrated skin.

Current Routine:

AM:

• Garnier Micellar Water
  
  
• Etude House Aloe Vera Gel (Has hyaluronic acid and ceramides. Sometimes I mix it with Rosehip oil but doing so makes it warm, I prefer the cool feeling of it when applied alone)
  
  
• LifeFlo Rosehip Oil
  
  
• Coppertone Oil Free Faces Sunscreen (I started using it 2 weeks ago for when I go out. It's greasy but leaves no white cast.)
  
  PM:
  
  
• CeraVe Foaming Face Wash
  
  
• Aloe Vera Gel
  
  
• Rosehip Oil
  
  Products I no longer use:
  
  
• CeraVe Hydrating Wash (Made my face tight)
  
  
• Clinique Cleansing Bar for Oily/Dry Skin (Both made my face tight)
  
  
• CeraVe PM (Ran out. It made my face blotchy red for a few minutes after use)
  
  
• Queen Helene Mint Julup Mask
  
  
• Thayer's Witch Hazel (I've gone through 3 bottles of this. I wanted to use it in place of CeraVe PM because I was under the impression that the CeraVe made me look greasy until I realized I had to apply it over water. I started to apply the CeraVe after Thayer's but I don't think it did much.)
  
  
• Paula's Choice Skin Perfecting 2% BHA Liquid (Didn't use consistently enough or with an actual routine to comment on)
  
  
• OLAY COMPLETE LOTION ALL DAY MOISTURIZER WITH SPF 15 (Expired. It left a slight white cast on my skin, felt greasy, and I don't think SPF 15 is enough anyway)
  
  Products I have but don't use/use infrequently:
  
  
• Aztec Indian Healing Clay (Last used a month ago, I like how bright it makes my face look)
  
  
• Stidex in the red box (I've used this off an on for awhile. I've applied it daily for the last 3 days)
  
  
• Alpha Skin Care 10% Glycolic AHA (I want to use this but it's been sitting around for over a year and I don't know if it's expired)
  
  
• Sunday Riley C.E.O. Rapid Flash Brightening Serum (vitamin c)
  
  
  Questions
  
  
• If I want to incorporate Vitamin C and Niacinamide in my routine, where should those products go? At what time (AM or PM) and for how long before applying anything else? How should they be used when using BHAs or AHAs? Or if I get CeraVe PM again or another moisturizer? Mock routines would be really useful!
  
  
• I read somewhere that Glycolic Acid can worsen hyperpigmentation on those with darker skin. The AHA I own has Glycolic Acid in it and I've been looking into other products that have it. I haven't use it yet but should I be worried about this?
  
  
• Should I be incorporating another moisturizing product after the Aloe/Rosehip oil? A toner/essence? Barring the days where I'm too depressed to take care of myself, I've been on this routine since last December. It seems like my skin has gotten worse (more dark spots and bumps) but as I mentioned previously the food I eat makes me break out.
  
  
• Is it necessary to use suncreen when I'm inside? I don't go out often and I can usually avoid the windows in my house.
  
  
• Can anyone give me general skin care tips? Just as an example... I thought the CeraVe PM lotion and rosehip oil were making my skin oily until I found out I should be applying those things on top of damp face, and I should be patting them on.
  
  Random products I've looked into but don't know if they would "useful" right now are The Ordinary's Alpha Arbutin, Lactic Acid, Azelaic Acid, Stratia products (Liquid Gold, Fortify, etc.), Holy Snails Shark Sauce, Curology.
  
  

I like Alpha Hydrox oil free gel. It's 10% glycolic acid and works very well. Minimal ingredients, proper pH for exfoliation, unscented and cheap on Amazon. I would start with every other day useage and absolutely use a sunscreen during the day as with any AHA.

https://www.amazon.com/Alpha-Skin-Care-Essential-Glycolic/dp/B01D2M4IFA?th=1

I tried searching for the answer to this question and haven't found it yet.

I have Alpha Skin Care - Essential Renewal Gel, 10% Glycolic AHA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D2M4IFA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Mun1CbD129NPP

it doesn't have an expiration date on it. I got it in November 2017. Do you think it has expired by now?