My first ever at-home 35% Glycolic Peel: procedure & experience

I have been reading so much about at-home peels and thier amazing results, finally decided to try for myself. But did my research first. Went with very low strenght, 35% glocolic peel from skin  beauty solution. Figured out once I start slow, I can build up a tolerance and then go higher and maybe try stronger peels like TCA later.

So I have been prepping my skin for this peel first. I stopped using retin-a for 6-7 days. Been using 12% Aha every night so my skin gets used to glycolic acid to some extent.
Finaly last night did my first application.

• Started with cleansing my face with Body Shop Vitamin E bar saop ( soap is good here since I am going to be using acid later). You need to make sure your face is completely stripped off oil during any acid peel procedure.

• Then waited for my skin to get 100% dry. Then I used 100% witch hazel to tone my face. It will restore the ph balacne. Be careful never to use any commercial toners before acid peels. Witch hazel is most recommended. 

• After The witch hazel dried, I used a fan brush to apply very thin layer of glycolic acid all over my face. I started with nose, forehead, chin and then cheek and rest of my face.

• And it stings!!!! Didn't really burn but felt like something pinching me OOOO. 

• I set a timer in my cell phone to make-sure I dont over-do it. You can do glycolic peel upto 8 minutes but since it was my first time, i settled for 1 minute and 40 seconds. I stood in-front of AC the whole time and the cold air helped. 

• After that, I dilluted some baking soda and water and gently applied on my face. Even this stinged a little but but after a few second it stopped. Baking soda neutralizes the acid and it is one of the most important step for any acid peels. sometimes some product provides their own neutralizers with peels but these neutralizers have realy little self-time and can deteriorate like crazy. So you're better off making your own neutralizers than using the ones that comes with your product.

• Then I washed my face with water and used the vitmin e soap again to take off all the residue. Using soap in this kind of procedure is optional but I felt safer to know that i dont have any leftover reside.

• After that I broke open a vitmin e capsule and applied with all over my face. I dont normally like applying oil as a moisturizer. I have some heavy duty moisturizers too, like Bodyshop vit e sink-in moisture mask or garnier moisture rescue gel but decided to go with vit e oil because it has only 1 ingredient instead of those creams that have a lot more and I did not wanted to expose my skin to too much after the acid.

So I woke up today and skin isn't sore or anything. I didn't expericen any frosting. I dont think 35% is strong enough for that. So I am pretty sure there will not be any peeling, maybe some flaking like retin-a. Anyway, it is too early to see what it is doing for my skin, but rest assured its doing something, they way it stings!!! I am going to do this once every month for a while to build up tolerance and maybe after 4-5 application will see some result.

Will make an update post then :)

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