Went to おばた皮膚科. I wanted to treat my acne because it was getting worse, the dermatologist who “checked” my face gave me a medicine ( クリンダマイシンリン酸) After like using the cream and meds they gave me My acne spreads all over my face. And it’s even much much worse than before (that’s how I found out I have fungal acne ) 💀
she didn’t even touch or gave it a closer look told me to take off my mask and said okay yeah I’ll prescribe you these meds.
Idk what I’m gonna get out of this I’m just so done and depressed
21 comments
With skincare it takes time. It took me months to get whatever infection I had under control. However, my doctor actually took time to listen and check different things for me to try. If you aren’t satisfied with your doctor, find a different one. I used to live in northern Tohoku and still had choices between doctors. Now I have a bunch of doctors I like because I didn’t settle.
In the Japanese medical system, you will find doctors follow an order where they prescribe for the most obvious thing and keep trying stuff until they get it right….
You were prescribed an antibiotic cream for acne. Now its possible that a breakout is a sign the cream is working. But otherwise what you need to do is go back and say ‘this didn’t work’ and they will prescribe something else. Sadly it will be a process of trial and error here. You could ask for a zinc cream or a retinol and they might oblige you.
​
I also had a bad reaction to the creams prescribed here. In the end I found retinol cream at night (the ordinary) and zinc cream (aka sunscreen), was what got rid of the active acne and kept it mostly away. Sadly I have scarring that if I want treated I would have to go to a beauty dermatologist for, but I don’t care at this point due to my age.
Sometimes with acne medications it gets worse before it gets better. It’s called “purging” if you wanted to look it up. But I understand your frustration with the dermatologist, same thing happened to me in Tokyo, where I felt the dermatologist barely even looked at my acne before prescribing a bunch of medications
Go to a 美容皮膚科for real results;)
Recommend Garden Clinic Hiroo if in the Tokyo area.
With acne medication doesn’t it get worse before it gets better typically?
They screwed up with the prescription:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clindamycin
Sounds about right for a Japanese doctor.
Any chance you are near a non-Japanese doctor, or one that was trained abroad?
Your skin is probably just purging, this will happen in the first few months. When did you start the medication? If it has been only a few days or weeks, it’s too soon.
Keep up with the course and you will see that your skin will purge and start recovering to the level that you are desiring. For now of course, if you are feeling self conscious, wear masks as needed and drink lots of water. All the best!
You might want to try Bepio gel or cream. I had severe acne problems related to a separate health condition, and this was the only thing that fixed it.
go to the largest hospital you can find, preferably university one and try to get a female doctor there, preferably younger (more recently educated). my uniform experience is that they’re usually super well-prepared, very competent and much less likely to be dismissive or plain assholes like male doctors.
anecdotal evidence, but: my kid had this weird rash that didn’t want to go away, I heard a lot of dumb shit from the doctors which even I knew couldn’t be right (allergy, heat rash, even varicella, pffff sure) and have had various useless medicine prescribed after just a glance at my kid, none of which worked of course. finally we got a female doctor who immediately took a sample to grow a culture, identified the bacteria in a week and gave us targeted antibiotics which of course completely resolved the issue in 3 days.
edit: mfw I didn’t catch that OPs doctor is a she 💀
I use I herb to import USA acne medications since nothing in Japan works for me. Frankly I’m not going to pay a Japanese derm money just to have him/her give me acne medication that’s OTC in my home country. Bepio is Benzoyl Peroxide 2.5% btw.
I had severe acne problems back in my late teens and started to take the bb chocola ニキビ pills they sell at the drugstore and I rarely have any breakouts now. I’ve been taking 2 pills every morning for the last 15 years.
I went to a dermatologist for what I thought was a secondary infection in mild eczema, they thought was fungal.
Gave me anti fungal, made it worse. Gave me steroid, made it worse. I suggested it might be a secondary infection each time. Third time lucky “ok here’s a script for some mild topical antibiotics but this won’t work”, instantly helped.
I won’t be returning.
I mean, if you know now it’s fungal, go back and get an anti-fungal.
I’ve had pretty bad acne on my scalp for nearly 15 years. Went to tons of doctors in Tokyo. Heard everything from “it’s kafunsho “ to “you are too stressed.” One doctor I went to even recommended I study Buddhism if I really wanted to get better.
So sick of all the dermatologists in this country.
I finally checked around on Reddit for people who had my same condition, saw the medics some of them said worked, and basically told my current dermatologist “please just give me this medicine “.
It worked like a miracle. After 15 years of suffering, I had to be the one to find the medicine myself.
Just buy accutane.
Clindamycin is a common antibiotic prescribed for persistent acne in many countries (I also used it as a teenager); I’m not surprised the doctor would have decided on that as a first-line treatment.
It didn’t have the desired effect, but as long as it leads towards a more effective treatment, I don’t see the need to blame the doctor here.
Acne treatment differs depending on severity.
But the recommended one is to use BPO and/or Adapalene as a base(for regular use in frequent areas, because topical medication will only work on applied area. but preventative antibiotics are not recommended due to causing resistance, plus topicalantibiotics for inflamed acne.
Also it will take a few days to go into effect.
If it is severe oral antibiotics could be used along with them.
Acne, and folliculitis are usually diagnosed by the typical examthema (follicular papules or pustules)
. The differential diagnosis for malassezia folliculitis is usually done by diagnostic treatment due to performance issues.
Everything Japanese doctors prescribed me didn’t work for me.
What did work was bringing like a year supply of 0.1% tret and 15% azelaic acid from America and bringing it to Japan.
In Japan, I buy muji toner and moisturizer as those products have no preservatives nor alcohol in it. Very good shit. Then I use Fancl eye cream and lip moisturizer, also very good shit.
Zero acne and my skin great👍
Japanese dermatologists have a different mindset than their American counterparts: I showed a spot on my arm to the Japanese doctor and she said that it was not skin cancer and to come back in two years to re-evaluate it. The next time I was in the States the doctor also said it was not skin cancer but immediately removed it with liquid nitrogen, for which I was thankful.
I also dealt with severe acne in Japan (and I couldnt even fix it here) only dealt with it back in my home country. My suggestion to you would be to pay great attention to your diet, maybe even take a food intolerance test as it might trigger acne very easily.