Purging, ingredient by ingredient
Does yours purge?
Pick the ingredient you have just started. Each page says what the trials measured, what they did not, and what to expect instead. The wider story is inthe skin purging essay.
Somebody looked, and could not find it
Retinoids are the only class anyone has checked. A review of the trial record went hunting for the purge and reported that the data are not there.
Nobody has looked at all
Their trials count spots from week two onward and the counts go down. No trial has ever defined an initial flare as something to measure.
It cannot do this in the first place
These do not speed up cell turnover, which is the entire mechanism purging is supposed to run on. If your skin is reacting, something else is happening.
What every page here rests on
Three sources, each read in full rather than cited from a summary. Five more supplied by the research pass were dropped for being unreadable, unresolvable, or a summary of a summary.
- Yentzer BA, McClain RW, Feldman SR. Do topical retinoids cause acne to "flare"? J Drugs Dermatol. 2009 Sep;8(9):799-801.PMID 19746671The load-bearing source. Somebody went looking for the purge in the trial record and reported that it is not there.
- Leyden JJ, Preston N, Johnson LA, Gottschalk R. Effects of topical retinoid therapy on acne lesions: a psychometric assessment. Cutis. 2012.PMID 22908733The check on Yentzer. Not "no evidence was reported" but "we defined a flare three ways and looked for it".
- Del Rosso JQ. Retinoid-induced flaring in patients with acne vulgaris: does it really exist? J Clin Aesthet Dermatol. 2008 May.PMID 21103310The only place a number exists. It is also the source that undercuts the whole idea, which is why it is quoted rather than summarised.
Four ingredients today, chosen on measured demand of 23,300 searches a month between them. Six more are measured and waiting; they go up once these prove the pattern works, not before.