One Month 'Brightening' Challenge!

 So, a big thing I've been getting into is skin brightening/lightning... and before this becomes a racial thing and people insist I'm trying to deny my Asian ancestry, please just stop and do some research...

[here's a good link I found]

Let me just do a quick rundown on the main reason I understand why paler skin among Asians is the more sought after look. From what I understand is that the more well off and richer you are the paler you are. If you are rich you don't have to toil doing manual labor in the sun and you can afford to stay indoors and to protect your skin. So that's equated in most Asian cultures that if you are pale, you are wealthy.

I'm sure there are other reasons but that's the main one I've heard in my family.

For me, I'm pretty pale at the moment but I decided to try lightening because it's used to lighten acne scars which I have a lot of and to even out one's skin tone.

Like a stubborn teenager I picked at my skin and didn't listen to my mum when she told me I'll regret it down the road and all the scars I would develop from that, low and behold five plus years later I regret touching my face and how I have dark scars on my face.

Also, I've gotten so many questions and asks for recommendations about lightening products that I decided to try using a lightening system for myself and to document the results.

Above are my before pictures from April 17 no makeup, nothing to obscure or hide my acne scars and uneven skin tones.

Pictures taken on May 31st.

What I noticed in my skin, lighter and smaller scars have lightened up and my darker larger scars have lightened slightly. My skin tone does look a bit more even but not to the point it's a large difference.

Though, overall my skin did lighten a bit more than a full shade and my skin looks less tired and dull. [On my nose I have a weird scar that re-opens every other month and I should get checked by a dermatologist so I don't count it in with my regular acne scars...]

So, which product line did I use?

I used Skin Food's Tomato Whitening System consisting of and in order of application:

Skin Spot Whitening Serum [link]

Skin Whitening Emulsion [link]

Tomato Whitening Serum [link]

Tomato Whitening Cream [link]

 The reason I chose this line is because though reviews were mixed, they did have a few very positive reviews online, plus I love the Skin Food Black Sugar Foam cleanser. Also, compared to other brands they are on the less expensive end and I can afford the whole system without that much worry.

So let's talk about what makes this a whitening product~ The main active ingredients seem to be Arbutin and Tomato.
So what is Arbutin and what does it do? Reading over this page [link] Arbutin is a chemical that stops the building up of melanin [the thing that produces pigment in your skin] it's a safer of another chemical and doesn't have crazy side effects and 'also has anti-cancer activity on melanoma cells, apparently by regulating expression of the p53 tumor suppressor and cell apoptosis.' 

As for what tomato does, tomato is a natural bleaching agent and has been used to lighten skin by previous generations. [link to a list of natural skin lighteners]

 Starting with the spot treatment which is the thickest consistency of the whole set. With serums they are thicker consistency for the fastest absorption to the skin.

With the spot treatment, a little goes a long way and stays where you pat it into the skin and it doesn't feel too heavy because it's just being applied to small sections of my face. I like it and I think it's what made the difference on my acne scars.

 Now for the all over face routine~ The Emulsion, the serum and the cream.

 I apply the emulsion after the spot treatment and it's the lightest of the whole routine and feels very nice on my skin. Emulsion apparently softens your skin to help absorb creams you put on top of it or so that's what I've been told... The consistency is like whey and is very runny and I pat it into my skin and wait for it to dry a bit more before applying the other steps.

 The next product is the serum which is the in between consistency and a pea sized amount will cover your entire face. Serums apparently get absorbed deeper into the skin than regular lotions and will put the nutrients where they should go.The serum has smaller particles than lotions or creams and work to really penetrate all the layers in your skin.

The final step is the cream. The cream is very thick and day time I only use 1/5 of a pump and that coats my face quite well and at night I'll do 1/2 a pump like above and let that sit on my face when I sleep.

Creams sit on your top layer of your skin and help moisturize and seal everything in.

The cream is kind of funny because after application my face always feels very tingly but I take that as a sign it's working, haha.

In all seriousness, I really love this line, this is the best behaved my skin has been in a very long time. Unlike the last one month challenge when the products were heavily breaking me out, this line was very good to my skin even my cystic acne wasn't acting up! I'll most likely be sticking to this line for a good while because I'm so happy with how my skin is clearing up from it! [and maybe if I keep using it the remaining acne scars will eventually dissipate more!]

A product I didn't use for skin lightening but have accidentally used a few years ago that lightened my skin very quickly was Eskinol face toner in Papaya and I still hear from friends and family that they love using it and it works well from them so that might be something if you're looking for a more dramatic lightening result you can look into..

If a lightening BB cream is something you might be interested in, I've tried Missha BB creams and loved them but the reason I stopped was because they lighten your skin quite dramatically when I used it it lightened my face one full foundation shade in a few weeks so I did stop because the difference between my neck and face was getting quite dramatic.

Besides face products, I tried using the highly raved about Likas Body Soap recommended by my auntie.

I did find a short article about it [here] which lists the ingredients.

So, this soap was very harsh on my skin and made it feel very dry and almost sticky. I feel like it made me paler because my skin looked ashy from the lack of moisture. But for the sake of experimenting I stuck with it for a month and to my surprise my skin is actually as light as the skin on my face! Which it never has been!

I mean it's probably a 2 shade difference from before but it's still a difference... But how I hoped it would fade my scars on my legs and arms from mosquito and spider bites and a gnarly gash scar from highschool it had no difference, it probably lightened as much as my skin but it's still there and noticeable. 

But yay, my skin is even for the most part now~ [my hand tattoo and wrist tattoo is lighten up too with it which wasn't that great...]

If you're looking for some natural skin lightening remedies I found this site here which lists a good assortment:

[link]

But on the grand scale, wearing SPF every day, stop going out tanning and visiting tanning salons and reducing visits to the beach and pool lightened me up a lot.

Three years ago I used to go tanning at a salon once a week and went to the beach like every other day and when I couldn't go out I'd lay out in my back yard for at least fifteen minutes with sun tan lotion on...

 Above was my darkest, most even and gorgeous tan.

But after I realized how it was giving me wrinkles and lines and random spots I decided to start taking care of my skin and treating my skin better so now the difference in my skin tone is insane!

Regardless of your reasons for skin lightening, I hope that my one month trial was helpful to someone.

The main thing is that all skin tones and shades are lovely! If your natural shade is what makes you feel confident and happy you don't have to change it! You have to embrace your skin tone and make it work for you or even just a shade difference won't make you happy. Life has it's fill of quick fixes but a lot of them aren't permanent solutions physically and/or mentally. 

So the pictures are up for you to look at and make your own decisions on if the results are something worth your time or not~

Though it wasn't some magical erase on my scars it's enough of a difference to make me feel a bit more comfortable with my spots.

<3CarisseIris