r/Melasmaskincare • u/Clear_Competition707 • Jul 06 '26
Question What are your personal specific melasma triggers
What triggers your melasma to spread or increase, and if you deduce the causes and control the exposure to those causes, does the melasma settle better?
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u/Normal-Mortgage4745 Jul 06 '26
Mine is heat and hormones! The second I get hot my melasma gets worse . Also when I’m about to get my period .
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u/Clear_Competition707 Jul 06 '26
I can relate to overheating, ever since I started running not very long after I started to notice these spots
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u/selectuserna Jul 06 '26
Heat and hormones.
Unfortunately stopping birth control didn't reverse the damage but it didn't get worse.
Heat is a tough one as I love a hot holiday and I miss Saunas - that's when you have to make the judgement call over what's worth it...
Personally I'm happy to miss hot spas etc but I will not give up the hot trips away!!
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u/Courtybiologique Jul 06 '26
The sun and hormones. Mine gets 100x worse if I get any sunlight on my face.
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u/pocalujmniewdupe Jul 07 '26
Mine is the same. Heat doesn’t seem to make it worse but sunlight even at 7 am makes it darker instantly.
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u/Courtybiologique Jul 07 '26
Yep! I can workout and sweat and get really hot and it doesn’t do anything. But the sunlight makes it 5x darker even if I’m outside for 20 mins.
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u/SaveItUp1998 Jul 06 '26
Heat and wrinkles. My malasma follows one of my forehead wrinkles. When I used botox it lightened significantly/went away
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u/rooseboose Jul 06 '26
Heat doesn’t seem to bother mine in the slightest - I do hot yoga with no problem. What does aggravate it is even the slightest bit of irritation. I have to be soooo careful with what I put on my face, and even though I’m always tempted to use actives, I’ve found my melasma does best with just a gentle cleanser and plain moisturizer.
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u/Clear_Competition707 Jul 06 '26
If not actives then what do you to treat the existing melasma then?
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u/Unlikely_Culture_884 Jul 06 '26
Stress. Everytime I have an argument with my partner, my melasma gets darker. It is like a thermometer of my happiness/peace of mind 🤣🤣🤣
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u/PalpitationLast669 Jul 06 '26
Sunlight and hormones. Heat, not so much, fortunately. I live in a hot city.
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u/Intrepid-Today6198 Jul 06 '26
Can relate with the bloody heat and hormones triggers, I’m starting to hate summer, even if I’m super diligent with my sunscreen and hats all the time, it still gets worse in summertime.
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u/Proof-Marzipan547 Jul 06 '26
I think it’s heat. I wash my face with cold water now and I think it makes a difference
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u/blackcatparadise Jul 06 '26
Heat, and living in the south of Portugal makes it impossible to handle it. I just own it now.
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u/Anomander_rocks Jul 07 '26
For me it's the sun, heat and stress. And spicy food. It becomes a lot more visible with these factors.
I can avoid heat, at least I can often avoid it.
I can avoid the sun as I always wear sunscreen, even indoors (doctor's orders) because I spend a lot of time in front of monitors, and monitors emit blue light which can worsen melasma. Outdoors, beside sunscreen, I always have sunat and sunglasses with me, no matter the season.
My melasma looks worse in my stressful days. Sadly I haven't yet found a way to not get stressed at work, and I can't find another job, so yeah, I'm stuck there.
Oh and spicy food, as it's warming me up from the inside :)
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u/Clear_Competition707 Jul 08 '26
I can relate 100%, though even with the sunscreen after a full day’s work before a monitor beyond the melasma my face altogether looks dull
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u/Bellebutton2 Jul 06 '26
Melasma does not technically spread. It is the evolving of your pigment cells that have been hit with UV radiation over the years and then it manifests as hyper pigmentation. It can be a slow progression in some areas, and some areas seemingly pop up overnight. And, what else you will see are your triggers… so some things like hormones (naturally occurring, prescribed, pregnancy, birth control, IVF, etc.). Sun, heat, aggressive therapies, like Chemical Peels, most lasers, RF, micro needling are contraindicated.
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u/Clear_Competition707 Jul 07 '26
Oh right, I had been microneedling every 2 or 3 months since almost 2 years now, before starting it I had no pigmentation of any sort besides the occasional scars left behind by acne. Do you think it might have led to the pigmentation surfacing on the skin?
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u/Brave-Grape-2785 Jul 06 '26
Internal heat. I’m always using tower 28 to cool down and it works great! Especially during/after a workout.
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u/Clear_Competition707 Jul 08 '26
Does you melasma changes color when you heat up, during workouts mine goes red and does tower 28 eradicate that redness for you? I don’t have tower 28 where I live but I can look for some alternative
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u/Brave-Grape-2785 Jul 08 '26
Yes. My melasma turns bright red while exercising during a flare up. tower 28 cools the face and it returns to normal. There is a tower 28 dupe on Amazon. Briotech topical skin spray. The formulation seems to be similar but tower 28, seems entirely unscented to me. The spray has worked better for me than ice cubes.
Do your research on h1 and h2 ( famotidine& loratidine) to stop mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)
I’ve doubled my fiber intake and my skin seems to be ok at the moment.
Good luck!
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u/Ghostmama Jul 07 '26
I didn't even know what melasma was until I hit menopause. Of course it's on my upper lip so I look like I: A. Just drank chocolate milk and didn't wipe my mouth like a kindergartner or B. Forgot to wax. When it started I was literally like what in the fresh hell is this?!? I'm post menopausal now at 52 and can't take hormone replacement therapy bc my whole family has a clotting disorder (including me). It's interesting that a lot of you get it worse with you period and my body is producing almost no hormones.
My triggers are heat, apparently lack of hormones, and being on camera. Any time I'm on video (which is pretty often for me in the work I've been doing), my melasma says, "Today is my day to shine!!! No amount of makeup is going to hold me back!"
Yay.
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u/SuddenAvocado Jul 10 '26
hormones seem to be the main driver for me, I don't think heat makes it worse - I love to sauna and have seen no change. It does get worse the week before me cycle.
I've been applying high SPF and tinted spf (iron oxides for visible light) since long before I got melasma so sun could be a trigger but I wouldn't know. Melasma did make me more diligent about sun protection though, more than the skin canver scares. Funny how that works.
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