3 BHAs: Paula's Choice 2% BHA Liquid, CosRx BHA Blackhead Power Liquid, and Stridex Maximum Strength Medicated Pads

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I've been using Paula's Choice 2% BHA Liquid ($30) as part of my (almost) daily routine for over a decade now. I consider salicylic acid (BHA) one of three staple ingredients that keep my skin in good shape, along with niacinamide and (more recently added) azelaic acid (reviewed here). But with Paula's Choice prices steadily rising (it was less than $20 Canadian when I started to use it!) and my income not keeping pace, I decided to gamble on a couple of more affordable, but equally popular, BHA products. I'll review them here, along with the PC BHA, which (spoiler!) I ultimately went back to. (Hope you like acronyms, everybody!)

CosRx makes a very popular and affordable liquid BHA that is now easily accessible in the US in places like ULTA ($22) and on Amazon ($15). Because I'd previously tried Paula's Choice's BHA gel and found it less effective than the liquid, I decided to try the highly-recommended liquid from CosRx. The consistency is actually significantly thicker than the watery PC BHA, which makes it easier to apply without using a cotton pad. It's decidedly a liquid and not a gel, however. It spreads easily on my skin and soaks in well, without leaving much of a film or a sticky residue. That's nice, because I apply my BHA first thing in the morning after washing my face, and so I want it to play well with makeup and other products.

There's not a lot to say about the CosRx BHA experience, except that it did not play well with my Paula's Choice Niacinamide Booster. When I used them both at the same time, my face flushed. It didn't last more than half an hour, and my skin wasn't irritated--my face just got pink and warm. There's nothing dangerous or damaging about this sort of thing, as far as I know, but it's a little unpleasant. I haven't had that experience mixing either of those products with anything else, and it was solved by just using one in the morning and the other at night.

Otherwise, the CosRx didn't cause any problems for me, but unfortunately it didn't do much for my skin, either. The role of BHA in my routine is to reduce clogged pores and blackheads, and to keep the pimples that result from them away. It doesn't really prevent hormonal/cystic acne for me, but it certainly reduces inflammatory acne when its working. The CosRx might have helped slightly, but I wasn't as satisfied with the state of my skin while using it as I was when I used the PC version.

The main ingredient in the CosRx BHA is probably what makes the difference for me. I know that salicylic acid works for me, but the CosRx contains a different form of BHA: betaine salicylate. This ingredient is sometimes said to be gentler than salicylic acid and is supposedly longer-acting. I don't experience irritation from BHAs in general, so I can't really comment on those qualities. My (admittedly very limited) experience suggests to me that if SA works well for you, you can't necessarily count on BS (ha!) to work as well--but on the other hand, if you've had bad luck with SA, a product with BS might be worth trying.

My second affordable BHA product was a bit of a desperation purchase. I traveled a bunch, visiting family and in-laws and friends, in September, but I somehow didn't pack enough of my PC BHA to last for the whole trip. By the third week, my skin was congested and breaking out, so I picked up a tub of the Stridex BHA pads (in the red packaging!) ($4-7), which had been recommended to me on multiple good authorities. The container holds a lot of pads and a lot of liquid, so they're not likely to dry out before you finish them. In fact, one pad was more than enough for my face, and so I started to cut them in half.

The pads are soaked in a 2% salicylic acid liquid, closer in composition to my PC liquid than to the CosRx product. They also contain a bit of menthol, so you get that medicinal smell and a mild cooling sensation--too mild to call it a "tingle." Still, I could do without it, considering it doesn't add anything. These pads served well enough in a pinch to start clearing up my skin a bit. In the long run, however, after I got home again they just weren't quite as effective as the PC liquid. My breakouts subsided and my pores weren't quite as clogged as they had been, but not as clear as I knew they could be. I ended up, as you know, going back to Paula.

I'm still using the Stridex pads, though. I've found over the years that otherwise disappointing BHA and AHA products work great as aftershave on my legs and armpits. If I swipe these on after shaving and before moisturizing, I almost never get razor burn or ingrown hairs. In fact, the price is so good, that I'd recommend picking up a tub of Stridex pads specifically for this purpose if you're a shaver. Their anti-inflammatory and exfoliating properties are ideal.

So now I'm back on the Paula's Choice BHA to stay, I guess. It's a thin liquid about the consistency of water, but it feels a bit sticky on my skin after I apply it. I think the stickiness bothers some people, but since I always follow up with moisturizer and/or sunscreen, I don't mind it (the product on top gets rid of that stickiness). It works perfectly well layered under every other product, skincare or makeup, I've used. And while the bottle is expensive, I only used 4-6 drops at a time, so it lasts me up to six months of daily use. Most importantly, it effectively and significantly reduces clogged pores and inflammatory zits for my skin.

I'll probably never stop testing cheaper alternatives to products I like, even if they fail to impress me half the time, but I suppose there's something satisfying in knowing that I haven't been wasting my money all these years. It's also a reminder that if I had ruled out BHAs entirely after trying the CosRx, I would have been missing out. Just like how glycolic acid doesn't do anything for my face, while lactic acid is excellent--if I had ruled out products called AHAs on the basic of glycolic acid alone, I'd be missing something useful.

Has anyone else tried all three of these? How do they compare for you? I'm also curious about other people's philosophy's on searching for less expensive alternatives to "holy grail" skincare products? Is it worth the gamble, or do you fear you'll almost always end up spending more money in the process?

When Good Skin Goes Bad (or: All About Exfoliants), Part I

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This is a detective story, but also a story about the decisions we make when we're broke. It's a long one, so I'll just jump right in. I've never had flawless skin - occasional breakout, etc. - but the last 6 weeks or so it seemed to be getting progressively worse. Not only worse acne, but rougher texture, bigger pores and lines - not a change I was pleased with. There's a photo below, hidden behind the jump for the squeamish. I mean, it's not nasty or anything, but it's also not pretty.

I felt like there had to be something behind this downturn, but these things are hard to figure out, especially when multiple factors had changed roughly the same period, i.e. late December-early January. What exactly was to blame for the mess? These are the possibilities I came up with:

• I'd been moisturizing a lot more, especially before bed. My skin was extra dry from the weather, combined with the horrible dry heat in my apartment. (I mentioned this frustrating change back in November.) Recently, my skin seems to have acclimatized and doesn't feel nearly as parched, so I've cut back on the moisturizing.
• I ran out of my BHA (beta hydroxy acid) exfoliant and didn't replace it, because I felt like it probably wasn't doing much of anything.
• I had been slowly and steadily adding more and more wheat to my diet, despite knowing that it fucks with my body. More on that later.
• I started using one of those battery-powered rotating face brush thingies. I started by using it 1-2 times a week, and then after a few weeks went up to about every second day when my skin kept getting worse.

I'm sure there are other things, but those changes seemed like the most worthwhile ones to consider. The best way to isolate the cause of a problem like this is, of course, to remove/change one suspect at a time and see if anything improves. That can be difficult if you're impatient, and especially if you don't make a connection immediately between skin problems and some kind of behavior. 

In this case, the first thing I decided to do was try some BHA again (mostly because it was simply the first thing that occurred to me). I'd thought that it hadn't been doing much for my skin, but I realized that maybe I was behaving like someone who stops taking their medication when they feel better, even though the medication is the thing that's actually making them feel better. (Or like people who abolish the VRA because it's effective.) I made the decision to try some BHA again at the end of January - and since it was the end of the month, funds were running low. At the same time, I was annoyed enough at my stupid fucking face that I wanted to do something about it immediately.

I had been using Paula's Choice CLEAR Extra Strength Acne Exfoliant. But that shit costs $23 a bottle, and I just didn't have it in my budget before payday. I started browsing Beautypedia to see if there was a decent, but cheaper, option available. I reasoned that if the Paula's Choice version had actually been working for me, then something else they recommended would be likely to work too. 

But holy shit, BHA exfoliants are not cheap, folks. Sure, there are lots of products out there with salicylic acid in them, which is what BHA is, but they're not all exfoliants. BHA has been shown not only to exfoliate the surface of the skin, but also the inside of pores, which is what makes it good for both anti-aging purposes and also acne. (AHA, on the other hand, only does the surface exfoliating, which means it's good if you are sensitive to BHA or have clear skin, but not what I personally needed.) Not every product with BHA will act as an exfoliant, however - it has to have the right pH. 

So I was pleased to find a $7 product that Beautypedia says will work as an exfoliant: Clean & Clear Advantage Oil Absorbing Treatment. You can read what they have to say about it here. Sweet, right? I didn't have to spend $23. If you actually break it down, though, the Clean & Clear option actually costs almost as much per unit as the Paula's Choice exfoliant. It's $7 for 1.5 oz. of the C&C stuff (i.e. $4.67 per oz.) and $23 for 4 oz. of the Paula's Choice product (i.e. $5.75 per oz.). There is a difference there, for sure, but it's not as huge as it seems when you initially consider the full price of each product. It's also important to consider that these two exfoliants are very different in terms of formulation. The C&C one is a cream, while the PC one is a clear liquid. I've found that to cover my entire face with the C&C product, I actually need to use significantly more than I would with the thinner PC liquid. The latter only requires a few drops on a cotton ball (maybe 4-5 drops max), which the C&C cream requires an amount between the size of a nickel and a quarter. (Since it's about the same thickness as shampoo or conditioner, just picture that when I describe it in terms of coins.)

Because of these differences, I think that in terms of actual cost per use, the two products are quite close. The Paula's Choice exfoliant might even come out as being the more economical of the two.

Despite that fact, I ultimately chose to buy the $7 tube instead of the $23 bottle. This is what people mean when they say that it is expensive to be poor. Not that I am claiming extreme poverty, but there are definitely months when I'm living paycheck to paycheck. Anyone who has been in that situation knows that you often have to choose something that has a lesser overall value, because it also represents a lesser immediate investment. These things end up being more expensive over time, but usually you can't do anything about that. I was going to get paid, so I could have waited, but I decided to go with the slightly cheaper immediate gratification and hope it would work as well as the more familiar, but more expensive, option.

Here are my results. First, take a look at my skin before:

Why you shouldn't buy products with plastic exfoliating microbeads (from The Beauty Brains)

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It's because they are environmental pollutants. The Beauty Brains helpfully note that you can identify these by looking in the ingredients for "polyethylene". I guess I won't be buying that Freeman scrub again. I'm just going to toss what's left, and go back to my usual homemade brown sugar scrub.

Review: Freeman Pink Grapefruit Facial Exfoliating Scrub

Update: This product contains polyethylene microbeads, which have been determined to be an environmental pollutant. So I'm not recommending it.

I was getting a little bored with my usual method of in-shower facial exfoliation (honey + brown sugar), so I figured I'd give the Freeman Grapefruit Scrub a try. I was surprised when I first squeezed some into my hand, because it didn't look very scrubby. The particles are very fine and sparse, so I was a little disappointed and concerned that it wouldn't be especially effective.

But it won me over.

Fix Your Face: Lip Scrub

People really pay $25 for this stuff? Really?

I mean, from the perspective of the (many, many) companies selling this sort of shit, it's brilliant. People pay $25 for this stuff! GENIUS.

Possibly my favorite gif.

But seriously, just put a little sugar (brown or white) in the palm of your hand and mix it with a few drops of honey or olive oil. Rub that on your lips. I do it when I exfoliate in the shower.

Or use a soft toothbrush.

And then put on some really good moisturizing lip balm. I like this one, because it works extremely well, it's huge, and it smells like buttercream frosting.

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