My Melasma Story 😊

It’s been a minute. I had promised to follow on with my progress after my groundnut attack! Lol. As I clearly failed to practice what I preached., I was plagued with very congested, and unhappy skin. To top it off, my Melasma came back with a vengeance.

So much has happened since my last post, and a tonne of lessons learned. I will have to break them down into a series of posts over the next couple of weeks. Today I want to focus on how I stumbled upon a product which appears to have done the downright miraculous for my melasma. My next post will focus on how I got rid of my congestion and the pigmentation that followed.

I have suffered from Melasma most of my adult life. It’s comes and it goes.. and over the years I’ve realised various hormonal and or stress factors bring it on. What is Melasma?

Melasma is a very common patchy brown, tan, or blue-gray facial skin discoloration, usually seen in women in the reproductive years. It typically appears on the upper cheeks, upper lip, forehead, and chin of women 20-50 years of age. It is thought to be primarily related to external sun exposure, external hormones like birth control pills, and internal hormonal changes as seen in pregnancy. Mine is almost always on my upper cheek and lower eye . Basically I look like a panda 😊. No.. I’m not pregnant (phew)… but asides being a practicing aesthetician, I also work as a project manager and my stress levels can peak during busy periods.

I was back home in Nigeria for 2 weeks in January/February, and as glorious as the Sun was ..sun exposure can cause or exacerbate melasma because ultraviolet rays affect the cells that control pigment (melanocytes).

My skin went from sad and angry to furious and miserable and surprisingly, none of my normal go to products were working, as a matter of fact, things were getting worse. I’ll do a separate post on how it’s important to adapt your skin routine when visiting different climates- it was a sobering lesson I need to share ha ha.

As chance would have it… I literally stumbled upon this product in Nigeria, on my sisters dresser. I passively asked her to decant a tiny sample in a pot for me ( I always have empty sample pots in a bag- #junkieparaphenalia).

I started using this product once a day, at night, on the areas of the Melasma and saw a marked difference within 4 days!!!! Within 2 weeks, my Melasma was all but gone. As I mentioned, I only decanted a tiny bit of this product and at the end of the 2 weeks, I had run out 😢😢!!! Will I order this product for myself ?? MOST DEF! I used it once a day, night time only, and continued with my daily routine, which includes daily SPF.

Now, this is not a paid post, and whilst I didn’t purchase the product before leaving Nigeria, I have every intention of ordering it and keeping it on my shelf for use if and when my Melasma reoccurs. I know there is a lot of negative hype about ‘lightening products’ and this clearly is one.. but I for one, will try most things once before giving an opinion, and for me? This worked, and I recommend you find out for yourself.

The product is pictured below and links to purchase can be found here: http://youtopiabeauty.com. Or check out @youtopiabeauty on Instagram.