My $2 Pantry Staple Cured My Hormonal Acne — My Skin Is Still Clear, A Year Later

A SKINCARE fan looking to reduce her acne shared a pantry purchase that brought relief to her skin.

Thanks to the cheap $2 kitchen aid, their skin was still acne-free a year later.

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Reddit user Djmuzrat shared the skin care trick in a post.

“I’ve been suffering from hormonal acne since my early 20s,” they say.

They explained that after trying several 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 scars on my cheeks. At its best it was one to two large red pimples a week,” they said.

However, after applying salt water to their faces, they saw lasting results.

“I know for sure (and I say yes) and I think it’s a LOT of things, but my biggest recommendation for anyone who suffers from acne is this: try rinsing your face with salt water every night,” they said.

When combined with a consistent skin care routine, they explained that the practice helped clear their skin.

“Don’t get me wrong, this is NOT all I do!” they said.

“I have a daily routine of cleansing my face, alternating between AHA, BHA and tretinoin (which I can tolerate by now!), and plenty of hydration.”

“But I recommend rinsing your skin with salt water, because I noticed a huge difference when I started doing it. And it doesn’t hurt.

“It can help to cool your skin down enough so that you can develop a solid and truly beneficial routine.”

Other techniques, they added, actually dried out the skin and made acne worse.

“I can’t even count the times I’ve dried out my skin from bad combinations of blood pressure medications, too many skin care products, too many acids, strange masks, etc., etc.,” they said.

“Yes, sometimes they did help, and once I eased into the BHA/AHAs they really did work, but more often than not I got impatient, over-applied and ruined my skin.”

Initially, they began rinsing themselves with salt water after their skin became dehydrated from a flight.

“How do you know 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 air under a mask, my skin was NOT happy. But I was traveling, so I didn’t have my full arsenal of blood pressure lowering medications, double cleansing oils, spot treatments, etc.

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“I only had cleanser, tret, BHA and moisturizer. And I didn’t want to use the tret or BHA [because] My skin reacted really badly to it and I started getting pimples, but I wanted to do something to treat the pimples.

“So I randomly dumped a bunch of salt from the AirBnb pantry into warm water and rinsed my face. The next day, the pimples looked a little cooler. I continued doing it every day for the rest of the trip and saw results.”

A year later they noticed they had “probably five real pimples.”

“They were much smaller than they used to be and they calm down faster. I still get congestion around my jaw and chin, but they usually just stay small bumps and eventually go away with regular BHA/AHA/tret,” they said.

“What I want to say here is: try something that can help and that definitely (well, almost definitely) won’t hurt.

“I spent so much time scrolling, looking for the miracle acne cure (which we all know doesn’t exist), and learned so many great things that led to the routine I have now.

“I’ve also desperately experimented with bad combinations of products that probably didn’t really help. But a salt rinse is something that is easy to apply and never leads to flaking/dryness/redness.”

Their routine is to wash their face with a “creamy” facial cleanser, then plug the sink, fill it with warm water and dissolve a handful of sea salt in it.

“It’s supposed to feel salty, so don’t get it in your eyes! I do a few good squirts and then apply actives and moisturizer. I don’t rinse after the salt,” they said.