since we did teeth whitening, how about proactiv?

[RoniMan]

not sure if this belongs in the softer side, but since we talked about teeth whitening here....

anyone use proactiv, or any sort of skin care system? does it work as well as the infomercial claims?

[CornMonkey]

a handful of my friends use it...and they all swear by it. it's one of those few products out there that actually live up to its claims.

[welfareloser]

hmm. that's cool. 99% of skincare claims are crap; most of the expensive products with fancy ingredients don't do anything more than 99 cents worth of soap and moisturizer.

what i have found that works for me is:

wash twice a day without fail; any cleanser (ie, bar of soap) will do.

use a buf puf when washing to make sure the cleaning is deep and my face is fully exfoliated.

follow up with a moisturizer that has alpha-hydroxy in it - it's a gentle acid that i believe has claims of anti-wrinkle properties. i don't care about that, all i know is that it completes the exfoliation, and also reduces redness on any blemishes, and i think cuts down a bit on my skin's oil production.

at night, after the moisturizer, i also use one of any of the many brands of salycilic acid gel, which can dry your skin out if overused - it prevents breakouts.

so long as i do that, my skin stays in pretty good shape. if i skip any of that, even for 12 hours, my skin quickly goes to hell and it takes a week to recover. so, if you have breakout-prone skin, try that first... it's cheaper, and it's worked for several other people i've reccommended it to.