I’m seeing more irritation in clinic this week when people layer petrolatum over nightly tretinoin, especially at the corners of the mouth. If you slug, do you buffer with a ceramide moisturizer or skip tret on those nights, and has it reduced the peeling for you?
I dab a rice-grain of petrolatum on the mouth corners and around the nostrils before tret so it can’t creep there, then moisturize after; full-face slugging made me peel more, but this little “sandwich” and spot-occlusion cut the flakes. Have you tried pre-protecting just the corners?
I only slug on off nights; on tret nights I wait about 30 minutes, then do a thin ceramide layer and tap petrolatum just on the mouth corners and around the nostrils. Full-face occlusion over fresh tret ramps diffusion and gave me worse peeling than buffering. @emmasmith99’s spot-occlusion trick helps — have you tried the moisturizer–tret–moisturizer “sandwich” to calm those corners?
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Short-contact tret has been the least irritating for me: pea-size on bone-dry skin for about 45 minutes, rinse, then a ceramide cream, no petrolatum that night. @skinrx switching to a silicone-based barrier on regular nights kept the gains without the soggy over-exfoliated look.
Occlusion over nightly tret upped my sting; i buffer with ceramides and use plain Vaseline; peeling improved. @gbaldwin09 thoughts?