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I have always been one to avoid medicines and things that I considered not medically necessary. However, I as entered my late teens and early 20s, I started having problems with mild to moderate acne. Not horribly disfiguring, just annoying enough to cause me stress and to force me to always wear a bit of concealer to cover up the spots.
I tried the following: dietary changes, drinking more water, vitamins, naturopathic supplements, elimination diets, expensive cosmed skincare lines, chemical peels, microdermabrasion, Proactive and topical prescription medications (Differein, benzoyl peroxide and Retin-A). Out of breath from reading that sentence? Nothing really helped significantly. I was seeing an awesome dermatologist and he said that based upon everything that I had tried, he thought I should consider trying YAZ for a few months. I waited it out for a few months, not wanting to put additional hormones into my body. After a crazy breakout cycle, I decided to give it 30 days.
From talking to many friends and family members, I have learned that YAZ (and its generics) is a love it or hate it kind of medicine. It ended up being a LOVE IT medicine for me. Within 2 weeks, my skin was the clearest that it had been in years. I did start having headaches when I took the 4 inert pills in each pack. I was told to skip those and take it 365 days a year.
I took it for almost 4 years and to the greatest extent, I never had any complaints. However, I recently decided that I wanted to consider going off of it to see how my body would respond. I have several friends or friends-of-friends that have estrogen-fed forms of breast cancer. I started to get paranoid taking a medication that could increase my cancer risk. This came along with another worry ... I hated the thought of dealing with my face breaking out. I figured that I would once again give it 30 days to see how my body responded without the medication.
"Detox" has better than I expected in terms of breakouts! In over 70 days, I have only had 2 real pimples on my face and 2 on my back (yuck). Honestly, the biggest annoyance has been with my skin and scalp. I feel like my skin and scalp are twice as oily as they were on YAZ. I am always blotting with oil sheets and have to wash my hair more frequently. The other annoyance is that I have to shave more often! On YAZ, I shaved maybe once a week. Now I need to shave every other day. My chest size has also gone down a cup size (that is the SAD part!). However, I can't pin that on YAZ alone, as I have been exercising like crazy so it is probably a mix of both things. Funny how what you fail to consider as a negative outcome often ends up being more annoying than what you actually worried about.
At this point, I am going to take it month-by-month to see how my body continues to readjust. I have talked with many of you about YAZ, acne, hormones and their effect on weight-loss or weigh-gain. I thought you might gain something from my personal experience.
