The Tret Purge
the weeks tretinoin makes your skin worse before it makes it better — and how to not quit at the exact wrong moment
Grounded in the research on Wikipedia: Tretinoin / Retinoid; dermatology consensus on retinization (Mukherjee et al., 2006, Clin. Interv. Aging)
the setup
You start tretinoin to fix acne or smooth your skin, and for the first few weeks your face gets visibly worse — more breakouts, redness, peeling. That's the tret purge. The retinization arm of the sibling course covers the slow rebuild; this one is about surviving the ugly opening act, because the purge is exactly when most people panic and quit the thing that was about to work.
the science
Tretinoin is a vitamin-A acid that speeds up how fast your skin cells turn over (Wikipedia: Tretinoin; Mukherjee 2006). Acne that was already forming deep under the surface gets shoved up to the top all at once — so clogged pores that would've surfaced over weeks erupt in days. Dermatologists call the whole adjustment 'retinization.' The purge isn't your skin breaking; it's the backlog clearing on fast-forward.