Good evening everybody!
Today was my last Tuesday of Doom. Tuesday was the most horrible day of this semester: I had to get up at 9AM (which is kinda early when you go to bed at 3AM..) and then class for almost 8 hours straight. Plain horrible. Oh and completely in Japanese which resulted in brain melt after 4+ hours. For some odd reason, instead of normal classes (in clusters of, say 60 – 120 minutes in most universities) in Korea, most (all?) classes are 3 hour clusters. THREE HOURS. You get one tiny single pee break of 10 minutes in the middle if you’re lucky. Needless to say, I find this very contraproductive. Yes, I get more points for that (because more hours obviously) but it means I have less variety in classes I can take and I absolutely cannot concentrate for such a long time, it’s impossible. I honestly prefer having more classes and hence more variety of topics instead of one super topic per term, but well. To my own surprise, I skipped classes on Tuesday only once when I was feeling sick. Only Korean class on Friday and then my Korean final exam next Monday, and I will be free! FREE~
Ahem. In the light of the excitement I feel over „almost no university anymore“ I want to share a product with you that I have been particularly excited about, the C20 Vitamin Serum (formerly known under OST vitamin C serum)!
I present to you… the vitamin C serum. As the name indicates, this is a serum that contains 20% of vitamin C. Vitamin C is not only good for our health when consumed in forms of lemon and oranges but being an antioxidiant it has also various benefits for our skin. Antioxidants are very good for anti-ageing (especially in terms of prevention, start early!) which can never hurt, but the reason why I was interested was that it is helpful in lightening acne marks/blemishes/discoloration of the skin (such as sun damage etc.) which we will refer to from now on as PIH (Post Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation). Spoiler: It works!
This serum is sold via Wishtrend or Jolse and with an average price of 12 ~ 17$ it’s a really good bang for your buck! This is the most affordable vitamin C serum that I know of, most others retail from 40$ or much higher. I did buy mine from Wishtrend and it comes carefully wrapped with a seperate dropper for hygienical reasons and also to avoid leaking of the product.
Things to know when using a vitamin C serum:
– Being an antioxidiant, vitamin C oxidizes when it comes in contact with light or air. During oxidiation process, the serum turns from almost clear/champagne colored to yellow and dark orange. You should not use an oxidized product. A bit of yellow is fine but if it turns dark yellow/orange please throw it away as it can damage your skin.
– Accordingly, it is best to minimize exposure of air and light; store it in a dark and cool place. I put my serum in a plastic bag inside my fridge. Always make sure to screw it back tightly in order to minimize contact with air. I use my serum for almost 2 months now and the color has only changed a tiny little bit it is still almost clear.
– Application can sting a bit at first but should go away after 30 seconds ~ 1 minute. The stinging is normal and most people get used to it fairly quickly. It’s not hurtful, it just tingles a bit. If the tingling continues or it stings quite bad you might be sensitive to this product.
-While L-ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) is not photosensitising to the skin itself (it is actually photoprotective as a kind reader told me), the L-ascorbic acid molecule itself is photosensitive so you should wear sunscreen, especially if you use the serum in the morning. (But then again, you really should always wear sunscreen in the daytime if you want the best anti-ageing method 🙂 )
– Vitamin C is also an exfoliant, so you should ease into application, maybe start with 2-3 times a week and build up to daily if your skin reacts positively. You can use it together with other exfoliants such as AHA and BHA if your skin can take it. (I personally alternate between Vitamin C and AHA every other day.)
Now that we got all the basics down….. does it work? I religiously took pictures over the course when I started using it, here is my 3-week progress:
Yes, yes it surely does. Please note that 3 weeks is not a long time and best results will be seen after continued use of 3-6 months. Also note that my acne is not healed, I still get a lot of breakouts which of course makes it hard for my PIH to heal. However, despite all the odds, my skintone did even out a lot in the course of last month. There is noticeably less redness and most red spots are smaller. PIH takes reallyyy long to heal, some of my spots I have for 6+ months so these will of course take a lot longer to lighten. I also noticed that my skin is a lot more firm than it used to be. Of course it was quite firm before, as I’m still in my twenties, but I noticed a difference in skin texture very soon.
Final verdict: I really really like this product, especially for its price. Some people might be sensitive to the high concentration of vitamin C but for me, I didn’t notice any bad side effects and had no breakouts from this product. I will def. buy this again and hopefully show even better results after using this a few months!
I hope this was helpful for anyone interested in lightening PIH and what to realistically expect from this product. If you have any questions, say hi in the comments! 🙂
Love,
Sam
