Winlevi for Acne

[nicolewi]

Has anyone tried this? How did it go? It’s a newer prescription acne product that is a topical cream that reduces hormones at skin level.

My daughter is taking doxycycline, but I don’t love it, and we’re struggling to have her take two pills a day without restricting her dairy intake. It seems insane to me to stop a teenage girl from drinking calcium. But when we just let her take it with calcium, it did seem to have significantly decreased effectiveness for us.

Win Levi was very expensive and not covered by insurance last time we checked, but I might look into it again.

[Saudade]

Why not just put her on birth control? It's cheaper, covered by insurance, easy, and effective.

Winlevi around here is ~$500/month OOP.

[Bad Dingo]

My daughter has been on winlevi for approximately 2 months (covered by her insurance with a prior auth), we haven't noticed any improvement though. She definitely responded much better to doxy. We have a follow up on Friday so I'll see what the derm says. We aren't interested in birth control because of a strong family history of BC.

[egishere]

Is spirolactone an option? Its cheap. I take that for hormonal acne but I'm in my 40s...maybe they don't like that for teens.

[mrspez07]

I’m taking it. I use it somewhat intermittently, but it does seem to work for my hormonal chin acne. I think it’s good for the definitively hormonal acne and just ok for other acne. It is progesterone and therefore a hormone, which I would personally be concerned giving someone of child-bearing age/pre-child-bearing. Same as spironolactone, which I don’t think they give to teens.

It does also have a shelf life of 6 months and notes storage temps. It seems to separate otherwise.

[litskispeciality]

I haven't tried that one. I see my derm in Nov so I'll ask. I use Aczone the cheap (ha still $65+ a month) and Retin A, again the cheap one I forget the name right now. They're ok, but unfortunately I think for hormonal acne you have the best luck with internal meds

I've had bad acne since about 5th grade/10 years old, so my heart goes out. I had no luck with the Cyclines, and agree the no calcium was crazy. Still is an adult since I wasn't great about it in my younger years. The anti-biotics also made me feel awful and really made it hard to eat in the morning.

I've tried Spironolatone in my 30's, but it gave me a bad period every 3 weeks so I stopped. I'm considering trying it again now that I've had a hysterectomy, but I'm a bit nervous about how it made me light headed and such.

[mrspez07]

Oct 12, 2022 13:16:21 GMT -5 litskispeciality said:

I haven't tried that one. I see my derm in Nov so I'll ask. I use Aczone the cheap (ha still $65+ a month) and Retin A, again the cheap one I forget the name right now. They're ok, but unfortunately I think for hormonal acne you have the best luck with internal meds

I've had bad acne since about 5th grade/10 years old, so my heart goes out. I had no luck with the Cyclines, and agree the no calcium was crazy. Still is an adult since I wasn't great about it in my younger years. The anti-biotics also made me feel awful and really made it hard to eat in the morning.

I've tried Spironolatone in my 30's, but it gave me a bad period every 3 weeks so I stopped. I'm considering trying it again now that I've had a hysterectomy, but I'm a bit nervous about how it made me light headed and such.

Can you provide more info on the cheap aczone? I am also using that one and got a discount with a coupon. Is there a generic?
I also didn’t like the way the spiro made me feel and jacked up my cycle

[litskispeciality]

Oct 12, 2022 22:02:43 GMT -5 mrspez07 said:

Oct 12, 2022 13:16:21 GMT -5 litskispeciality said:

I haven't tried that one. I see my derm in Nov so I'll ask. I use Aczone the cheap (ha still $65+ a month) and Retin A, again the cheap one I forget the name right now. They're ok, but unfortunately I think for hormonal acne you have the best luck with internal meds

I've had bad acne since about 5th grade/10 years old, so my heart goes out. I had no luck with the Cyclines, and agree the no calcium was crazy. Still is an adult since I wasn't great about it in my younger years. The anti-biotics also made me feel awful and really made it hard to eat in the morning.

I've tried Spironolatone in my 30's, but it gave me a bad period every 3 weeks so I stopped. I'm considering trying it again now that I've had a hysterectomy, but I'm a bit nervous about how it made me light headed and such.

Can you provide more info on the cheap aczone? I am also using that one and got a discount with a coupon. Is there a generic?
I also didn’t like the way the spiro made me feel and jacked up my cycle

Looking at it at home I use Dapzone...which I thought was cheap Aczone or whatever the brand name is...but I might be wrong. The derm has to put in an order through a special pharmacy to get it to $65 a bottle...but I assume it will be more next refill.

The night cream is Treninoin or however you spell that. If I've exhausted my Rx co-pays (rage!!) I pay about $10 a tube.

Overall it's very expensive to have bad skin

[wildrice]

This may be a ridiculous suggestion but I've been seeing on TikTok that using head and shoulders shampoo as face wash can rid people of acne. Has anyone tried that? It sounds crazy but people are swearing it works.

[mcmel]

Oct 12, 2022 22:49:47 GMT -5 wildrice said:

This may be a ridiculous suggestion but I've been seeing on TikTok that using head and shoulders shampoo as face wash can rid people of acne. Has anyone tried that? It sounds crazy but people are swearing it works.

I just bought it but haven’t started using it yet.

[esdreturns]

Oct 12, 2022 22:49:47 GMT -5 wildrice said:

This may be a ridiculous suggestion but I've been seeing on TikTok that using head and shoulders shampoo as face wash can rid people of acne. Has anyone tried that? It sounds crazy but people are swearing it works.

This only works if you have fungal acne. I'm still not very clear on how to tell the difference, but if you aren't sure, it's worth giving it a shot.

[basilosaurus]

Oct 12, 2022 22:49:47 GMT -5 wildrice said:

This may be a ridiculous suggestion but I've been seeing on TikTok that using head and shoulders shampoo as face wash can rid people of acne. Has anyone tried that? It sounds crazy but people are swearing it works.

This reminds me of using toothpaste in my early acne days.

My heart goes out to the kid. I went in to derm to have a mole looked at, and his response was "you're here for your acne, right?" Ouch. But he did give me a year's worth of samples

I did end up on tetracycline which I think was once a day, and you could have calcium 2 hours after the pill. So a similar med might be something to consider.

[litskispeciality]

Oh the toothpaste on a pimple. I'm still tempted to do it now but risk essential oils, that only leave me more irritated and it peels and anyway ugh why can't there be a cheap and effective way to treat acne without causing serious side effects?

[mommyatty]

My DD10 is on Winlevi, spirolactin, Rhofade, and Amzeeq. She’s been on them about a month and saw her seem today. If she stays away from milk (which is so hard… she loves all things dairy), her skin clears up even without the meds. But since she still wants dairy, and has stuff like ice cream at her grandma’s house, she’s still breaking out. Her dermatologist today said give it one more month and then they want to move to Accutane, which I’m not wild about. I’m thinking I’m likely to push back on that option and seek a second opinion.