So after having beautiful, pretty much flawless skin through high school (mercifully), I started to get adult-onset acne when I was 21, 22. Nothing major, but as it progressively got worse I progressively began to pick at it...and so then the acne itself would get worse, and it was a vicious cycle.
Before I knew it I had a face full of red marks (post-acne macules) that embarrassed me. They tended to fade over time, but it took forrrrrrrrrrrever...and I'm the type of skin that shows every scar for a long time. (I'm pale, but I do tan easily...I'm somewhere between a Skin Type II and III.)
So I decided to do IPL to zap the red marks quickly. Actually, first I was doing microdermabrasion, but that mostly didn't help the pigmentation, just made my pores smaller and smoothed my skin overall.
Then it was recommended I try laser genesis, which I did (like 2-3 times). I saw a marginal improvement but it wasn't worth the money.
Then my laser aesthetician said I should try IPL. The first couple of times I did it, I was blown away. The red marks almost completely disappeared from my face in 2-3 weeks. Over the next couple of years I continued to get IPL, usually once every 3-4 months. I was never burned or blistered. But eventually the damaging side effects started to come out: horrible hyperpigmentation (dark brown patches) and hypopigmentation (white patches) on my skin.
Thinking this was still temporary, I slathered sunscreen on every day and continued with the IPL. (In fact, my laser aesthetician -- a different one this time, said more IPL would actually help my mottled light and dark areas.)
Well, after about my 6th or 7th IPL, I decided to stop it altogether. I'm seeing horrible, horrible mottled skin now. New round spots of hypopigmentation come out every week and they're not going away. My oldest hypopigmentation is 9 months old and if anything it looks worse now than it did before.
I'm done with laser treatments to my face. I feel like I've basically ruined my face (and wasted a lot of money) treating a problem that would have gone away on its own if I had just been patient (that is, the original acne red marks).
I will try to do regular updates on here to let you guys know how it's going. I know a lot of people have been damaged by lasers and are feeling as terrible as I am about their decisions to have laser or IPL treatment in the first place. Hopefully, something about my regimen will help improve my face and maybe give other people some ideas too!
Before Picture:
