Skin Notes Blog

To anyone who wakes up and checks their skin every morning before getting out of bed — not because they want to, but because they need to know how bad it got overnight — this is why spot removal will never keep pace with what your skin keeps producing. I used to do the morning check automatically. I'd wake up, swing my legs out of bed, and run my hands over my abdomen, my sides, and the back of my arms. I was feeling for the new ones. The small, raised, rough patches that hadn't been there the day before. For three years, I felt like I was fighting a war I was destined to lose. It started in my late 40s. A few small, flat, cornflake-like growths on my back. I ignored them. I thought it was just what happened to skin as you got older. Then, over the course of about six months, they exploded. They spread from my back to my trunk. To my bra line. To my chest. Some stayed flat and dark. Others became raised, hard, and warty. I went from having three or four to having what felt like over a hundred. I went to my dermatologist. I paid $250. She froze fifteen of the worst ones off my back and sides. It hurt. It blistered. It left faint white marks where the growths used to be. But for a few weeks, those spots were flat. Then they came back. Not just the ones she froze. New ones. In the gaps between the old ones. In places I hadn't had them before. I went back. I paid another $250. She froze twenty more. "They do tend to recur," she told me as I put my shirt back on. "It's just the nature of them. We can manage the ones that bother you most, but there's really no way to stop them from forming." I sat in my car in the clinic parking lot and cried. I was 51 years old. I was spending hundreds of dollars to endure painful treatments that left white scars, only to watch the growths return faster than I could freeze them off. I felt like an ogre. I hated my husband touching my back. I was completely losing ground. I started trying everything at home. Wart remover. Apple cider vinegar on cotton pads held down with bandaids. Retinol creams. Salicylic acid body washes. The creams did absolutely nothing. The wart remover burned, and applying it to a hundred different spots on my back every single night was so daunting I usually gave up by Wednesday. I was treating one spot while ten more appeared in the background. I didn't understand why nothing worked until I met my friend Claire for coffee. Claire had struggled with the exact same issue. For years, she had worn high necklines and cardigans in the dead of summer. But that morning, she was wearing a v-neck top. Her chest, which used to be covered in the same dark, raised growths I had, looked entirely different. I asked her what she had done, assuming she had just spent a fortune at the dermatologist. "I stopped trying to freeze them off," she said. "A friend of mine who used to work in skincare explained what we were actually dealing with. We were treating them like they're just surface spots. They aren't. They're structural." She explained that seborrheic keratoses are the result of abnormal keratin buildup. The body produces keratin — the protein that forms skin — faster than it can shed it. It hardens into raised, physical growths. "That's why the creams didn't work," she explained. "They just sit on top of the hardened keratin and get wiped off by your clothes before they can dissolve anything." "That's why the wart remover was impossible," she continued. "You're trying to spot-treat individual growths while the keratin overproduction is happening across your entire back." "And that's why the freezing failed," she said. "The dermatologist destroyed the growth that was already there, but she didn't do anything to stop the keratin buildup forming the next one right beside it." I had been fighting the wrong battle. I was trying to destroy what already existed, instead of dissolving the buildup that was creating them. She told me she had been using something called the Cartivo KeraSolve Body Stick. It wasn't a cream that would rub off on my clothes. It wasn't a painful freeze spray. It was a solid, leave-on balm designed specifically to dissolve keratin. The mechanism made complete sense. It uses 7% glycolic acid to break down the hardened, dead keratin bonds on the surface of the growth. It dissolves the structure from the outside. Then it uses 0.5% salicylic acid to penetrate through the dissolved surface into the follicle underneath, addressing the buildup from within. But the real difference was the delivery system. Because it's a solid stick, you swipe it across the entire affected area — your whole back, your whole trunk — and leave it on. The acids actually get the sustained contact time required to break down the hardened keratin. One swipe. Left on. Working across all of them at once. I ordered it that afternoon. It came with a 60-day guarantee, so I figured if it failed like everything else, I'd just get my money back. When it arrived, I started swiping it across my back, my sides, and my chest every night after my shower. Day 3: Nothing obvious. I expected that. Day 7: The flatter, cornflake-like ones on my chest looked slightly less raised. I ran my fingers over them. The texture was undeniably different. Softer. Day 14: The harder, warty ones on my bra line had begun to flatten around the edges. But more importantly, the new ones that were appearing were much smaller than they used to be. Then came Week 4. I woke up on a Tuesday. I swung my legs out of bed. I walked to the kitchen, made coffee, and sat down at the table. It took me ten minutes to realize I hadn't done the morning check. I hadn't run my hands over my sides. I hadn't braced myself to count the new ones. For the first time in three years, I had just woken up and started my day. I went to the mirror. The flat ones on my chest were almost entirely flush with my skin. The raised ones on my back were significantly softer and flatter. I am not cured. New ones still appear occasionally. That is just the reality of how my skin produces keratin now. But I am finally keeping pace. I catch them early. The stick dissolves the buildup before it can harden into those large, dark, warty growths. I manage all of them at once with one quick swipe after my shower, instead of spending hundreds of dollars to freeze them off one by one. If you are waking up and doing the morning check — if you are looking at dozens or hundreds of growths spread across your body and feeling completely overwhelmed — you need to understand that spot removal is never going to get ahead of them. You have to dissolve the keratin buildup across the entire area. The Cartivo KeraSolve Body Stick gives you a way to finally take back control. Track it yourself. Notice when the flat ones start to fade. Notice when the raised ones soften. Notice the morning you wake up, get out of bed, and realize you didn't even think to check. You deserve to stop losing ground. This is how you start winning. Learn more about the Cartivo KeraSolve Body Stick 👇 https://trycartivostore.com/products/cartivo-kerasolve%E2%84%A2-body-stick P.S. I know exactly how daunting it feels to look at your back and realize the growths are multiplying faster than you can treat them. That feeling of losing control over your own skin is exhausting. But you don't have to keep fighting a losing battle with expensive freezing treatments or messy home remedies. This is the first thing I've found that actually lets you get ahead of the buildup. Give it a few weeks. The morning you realize you forgot to check for new ones is a morning you will never forget.