Daily Skin Care Family: Fighting Acne (Or Not.) A La Roche Posay Effaclar Review.

Juni 3, 2014

Hej my dear ones,

I hope you are all doing well? I finished almost all of my presentations (only one left, yes!) which means I can start to work seriously on my Japanese thesis (the point why I’m always stressing my Japanese thesis is because I also need to write an additional German thesis. But the Japanese one is due 4 months earlier and since I am in Japan atm it’s totally logical to work on that.) My thesis will actually be a cross-cultural analysis on German, Japanese and Korean blogs! I can talk a bit about it in detail if you’re interested, so let me know if you are ๐Ÿ™‚
After posting my experiences with the Clarisonic Mia + Hormonal Acne consider this post an additional part II: I’ll introduce my daily skin care routine I’ve been doing for about half a year; I have a lot of empties so I will stock on something new which is why I want to share my experiences with the products I used.
After struggling with bad breakouts for a long time I was really determined to try something new: After using up all the samples that I gathered from La Roche Posay I decided to make the jump and get some of their products that I liked from the samples. I am usually no one who uses a single series; I like to combine products of different brands. However, my skin was in a really bad place and I know that it takes a long time before changes can be seen in the skin – so I decided I will only use these products to see if my skin liked them and if they could change something. It couldn’t get so much worse. 
When I moved from Berlin to the small town Bonn it was a lot of stress for me – living somewhere else in Germany was actually a lot more awkward for me than moving to Japan. Being somehow close to my friends and family but being not really able to see them regularly resultet in a lot of breakouts. My cousin who visited me after Christmas really helped a lot with that.
Important note: Everything you see on this picture is what I use now. I only got the Clarisonic Mia and the Yรผli serum recently so this post is focusin on the review of the La Roche Posay products; I’ll make a different post about the Yรผli Cell Perfecto PM serum (and the lovely store who sold it to me!)
This is actually the second batch of the LRP-products; I used them for about 3-4 months when I was in Bonn and stocked up everything before I went to Japan – mostly because I knew I would be travelling the first month and probably not be able to find any drugstore (I was right with that. Didn’t even have internet the first month which drove me crazy.)
La Roche Posay Effaclar Duo / approx. 15โ‚ฌ
The Effaclar Duo is a spot treatment for pimples and breakouts. It took me a while to figure that out because every pharmacy would tell me different – use in the morning/evening/as spot treatment/on whole face…. that really was NOT helpful. To clear things up once and for all: This is a spot treatment and should be applied in the evening. Do not put this on your whole face, it is very drying! I actually quite like this product (after I figured out how to use it.) I almost always have a breakout somewhere so I use this on a daily basis but only when there is a spot that didn’t heal yet. 
Sadly, this product doesn’t prevent breakouts; when I put this on areas where I know a breakout is coming it is doing close to nothing. It helps with already broken out pimples though; they heal a lot faster with this! It basically dries out the pimples and leaves a lot of gross dead skin (that’s where I’m happy I have the Clarisonic.) When you use it the pimple will disappear BUT there will be a „hole“ in your skin where the pimple was until new skin was developed (I hope this makes sense in your head.) So if you don’t mind patchy areas feel free to use this. (I certainly prefer dry areas over pimples.) I personally feel this works very well with the additional Clarisonic since it gets rid of all the dead skin and speeds up the healing process. Oh and since it is a spot treatment it lasts FOREVER. Didn’t even use half of it in 5 months.
Overall: โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜† (Good results + price, lasts forever, leaves the skin areas dry + patchy though)
La Roche Posay Effaclar Wash Gel / approx. 12โ‚ฌ.
Okay, this will be short: I love this product. I think this is something I will buy again and again and again. This wash gel gets very foamy which I love. This is a really gentle wash gel; I feel very clean after using this and my skin is and stays soft. I have no feeling of residue on my skin (which I had with almost every cleanser so far.) I never break out and it doesn’t dry out the skin. This is my second bottle and I’m already wondering where I get my third one here in Japan. Love it!
Overall: โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… (Amazing products, nothing bad to say about it. Deep love.)
La Roche Posay Effaclar K (Face Cream) / approx. 14โ‚ฌ
Last, but not least?  Sadly, my least liked product of this range. From the time I bought this, I had mixed feelings about this. Up until today I am not sure if it does something or not. It is a quite thin facial cream that I used morning and evening. It absorbs extremely quickly which left me wondering if my skin got any moisturizer at all – somehow, this cream doesn’t feel moisturizing. I think it was moisturizing since I never had dry skin – but I didn’t like the feeling it gave me. I think this could be a good cream if you have very oily skin – I would certainly not recommend if you have dry skin. 
Actually, the whole range is for oily and/or acne-prone skin. Although I suffer from acne, I have not oily skin; I have pretty normal skin, only with hormonal breakouts. Which sucks because most of all acne products are designed for oily skin. I only bought this cream twice because I had to leave for Japan and was running out of time (I bought everthing one day before I took off.). Now I emptied the second one (in less than 2 months which is not a good ratio if you ask me.) and I will certainly not buy this product again since I felt it has done nothing to my skin.
Overall: โ˜…โ˜…โ˜†โ˜†โ˜† (Two stars because I think it never broke me out; however I didn’t like this product very much.)
I wanted to make a blog post about the La Roche Posay Effaclar series for a long time but somehow never got around to it. Glad that I did now! I have read some reviews where the author achieved great results with some of these products so with every skin care, this is just my personal tendency and everyone could be different (get that wash gel though, it’s amazing!) Hope this was helpful to you and I will make a review about the Yรผli Cell Perfecto PM serum quite soon, in case you’re interested ๐Ÿ™‚
Love,
Sam
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