A SKINCARE fan hellbent on improving their acne shared a pantry buy that relieved their skin.
The cheap $2 kitchen essential kept their skin acne-free a year later.
Redditor Djmuzrat shared the skincare hack in a post.
“I’ve struggled with hormonal acne since my early 20s,” they said.
They explained that after trying various techniques and products, including tretinoin and oil cleansing, they were frustrated with their “varying degrees of success.”
“At its worst, it was painful cystic acne that left scarring on my cheeks. At its best, it was one to two big red pimples every week,” they said.
After using salt water on their face, however, they noticed lasting results.
“Now, I’m pretty much clear (massive yay), and I attribute it to a BUNCH of stuff, but my one main recommendation to anyone struggling with acne is this: Try rinsing your face in salt water every night,” they said.
In conjunction with a consistent skincare routine, they explained that the practice helped clear their skin.
“Don’t get me wrong, this is NOT the only thing I do AT ALL!” they said.
“I have a nightly routine of face wash, alternating AHA, BHA, and tretinoin (which I dutifully worked my way up to tolerating!), and adequate moisturizing.”
“But I recommend a salt water rinse because I noticed a massive difference once I started doing it, and it’s not going to hurt.
“It might help to chill your skin out enough to let you develop a solid and actually helpful routine.”
Other techniques, they added, tended to dry their skin out and make their acne worse.
“I can’t even count the times I dried my skin out with bad combinations of BP, overapplied tret, used too heavy acids, did weird masks etc, etc.,” they said.
“Sure, sometimes they helped, and once I actually chilled out on the BHA/AHAs, they really worked, but more often than not, I’d be impatient, apply too much, and f**k my skin.”
They initially began doing salt water rinses after a flight dehydrated their skin.
“How do you know that salt water did anything, I hear you ask? Well, I started rinsing my face with salt water after a flight to Europe,” they said.
“After many hours in the sky under a mask, my skin was NOT happy, but I was traveling, so I didn’t have my full arsenal of BP, oil for double cleansing, spot treatments, etc.
“I just had face wash, tret, BHA, and moisturizer. And I didn’t want to use the tret or BHA [because] my skin was really reacting and I had some fat pimples developing, but I wanted to do something to treat the pimples.
“So I randomly dumped a bunch of salt from the pantry of the AirBnb into warm water and rinsed my face. The next day the pimples looked a bit more chill. I kept doing it every day for the rest of the trip and saw results.”
A year later, they noticed that they’d had “probably five proper pimples, maybe.”
“They were way smaller than they used to be and tend to calm down quicker. I still get clogs around my jaw and chin, but they tend to just stay as little bumps and eventually work their way out with regular BHA/AHA/tret,” they said.
“I’m here to say — try something that might help and definitely (well, almost definitely) won’t hurt.
“I spent so much time scrolling, looking for the silver bullet for acne (which obviously we all know doesn’t exist), and learned so much good stuff that led to the routine I have now.
“I also desperately experimented with bad combos of products that actually probably didn’t help. But a salt rinse is something that’s easy to incorporate and never leads to flaking/drying/redness.”
Their routine is to wash the face with a “creamy” face wash, then plug the sink basin, fill it up with warm water, and dissolve a palm’s worth of sea salt in it.
“It should feel salty, so don’t get it in your eyes! I do a few good splashes and then do actives and moisturize. I don’t rinse again after the salt,” they said.
