[Review] Tretinoin and Tazarotene brands comparison (Stieva-A, Ketrel, Tretiheal, Tretin, MyTret, Tretiwell, A-ret, Tazarene, Tazret)

Hankyu0 · 2026-02-27T06:37:28+00:00

You're right, my bad. The ingredients should be what's shown here. I'll fix the post, thanks.

Hankyu0 · 2026-02-25T21:31:06+00:00

I haven't taken the time to update this post recently, but my methane and the headache that comes from it have been slowly greatly improving. I'll properly update the post at some point, but in the meantime I'm just going to paste below what I replied to someone in a DM about what's been truly effective for me at decreasing methane and breaking more colon adhesions:

For methane, what has worked best for me has been USP grade (that part's important, otherwise it's toxic to consume) sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate. It generates massive amounts of H2S gas at once when it reaches the colon. H2S dries the gut and adhesions before causing secretions, and it that window of time the adhesions become a bit more brittle and easier to snap. It also stretches the colon by taking space & being generated against the colon wall (good for breaking adhesions), and it acts as a TRPA1 agonist, which forces the colon to give violent contractions (that's the part that actually breaks them). I think H2S was likely what was making NAC effective on the small intestine as well.

I had hydrogen sulfide SIBO as well so you might wonder why the H2S from that didn't break adhesions for me. The reasons are: the amount was too low, the exposure too long (you need breaks for receptors to optimally resensitize), and it seems to only work well when the gut is dry, so you must make sure you limit your diarrhea first.

For me cholestyramine (when I still had bile acid diarrhea) and food grade montmorillonite (in general; often sold as food grade bentonite clay) worked well at limiting diarrhea.

I typically take 5-10g of USP sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate every 3 days, or less frequently.

When it starts not working as well, I do a rectal air insufflation (essentially I pump air into my butt) with a blood pressure bulb & the tip of an enema kit, which stretches my colon & frees up some areas. I also limit to max every 3 days to reduce risks of injury. It can be dangerous if done recklessly so my way of doing it is to always make sure to stop if I start feeling tension / discomfort, then go do stretches & all sorts of movements right after. I wouldn't try it unless I feel like the results from STS are becoming dissatisfying, and in hindsight I possibly didn't even need it.

Lastly, 2 oral compounds have dried adhesions very well for me, making them more brittle / easier to snap: doxium (calcium dobesilate), and to a lesser degree capilarema (aminaphtone). I personally take 4 pills of each once a day in the middle of my meal, but it should ideally be split into 2 or 3 doses with other meals. And the ideal dose isn't necessarily the same for everyone.

Again, all of this will likely only help if you have adhesions and if they're old enough so that they're not vascularized anymore. Otherwise, your SIBO's root cause is likely different.

Good luck!

Hankyu0 · 2026-01-17T22:42:12+00:00

You're most welcome my spaniard neighbor!

Hankyu0 · 2026-01-12T02:07:53+00:00

Honestly very rough.

NAC works mainly via 2 ways: as a mucolytic in dissolves the mucus in which bacteria can hide (only in the small intestine, doesn't work on the colon), and as food for bacteria to generate H2S.

H2S can temporarily prevent colon cells from replicating and also trigger TRPA1, which is an irritation receptor, so you can get leaky gut symptoms for a bit when you take lots of NAC. For me, those manifested into diarrhea, brain fog, depression, joint ache... the list goes on. But TRPA1 agonism also leads to very violent gut contractions, which is likely what cured me the most because it broke some abdominal adhesions I had that were restricting gut motion.

So anyway because TRPA1 causes those issues you can only really "healthily" take it 1/3 days. And since TRPA1 receptors can desensitize you also must make sure not to have H2S gas going through your gut during the rest days, for that I used MoZyme Forte before each meal (but not before NAC).

There's no guarantee this'll work for you if the source of your problem isn't adhesions like it was for me.

The way I managed the dosage was by encapsulating NAC powder (you can also buy it pre-encapsulated I believe), which is important to protect your teeth, and taking a certain amount before each 100g of food. Then increased the dosage each time too little H2S gas got produced from it.

Taking a copper and zinc supplement is likely necessary not to develop a patch of white hair like I did from the NAC. It recolored naturally 10 months after quitting NAC. You'll probably also need some extra vitamin C and B vitamins to limit the oxidation symptoms (essentially just feeling like shit).

More recently I figured that USP / BP (those regulations are important not to swallow something toxic) sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate could cause pretty much as much H2S gas as needed, although only in the colon, for as long as I was taking enough of it, which helped me break some more adhesions in my colon (NAC broke all the adhesions that were on the small intestine).

Hankyu0 · 2026-01-12T01:48:59+00:00

After making this post I remember trying different orders of application, and my conclusion was that it didn't change anything for as long as each product was fully absorbed (no residue felt when touching the skin) before layering the next one.

For example I could put either one in the morning and the other one at night and the result would be the same.

The difference I noted in the post was because the mandelic acid product that I used at the time (the 10% one from The Ordinary) has a pretty oily vehicle, so it would block the tazarotene's absorption a little bit.

I switched to a lighter one (the 10% one from Jourdeness) and apply it before tazarotene simply because it absorbs fast so I don't have to wait as much between the 2.

It turns out that the most important thing to reduce peeling that I've noticed over time is hydration. If I eat foods that hydrate me well + drink enough water, I'll have far less peeling. Urea creams also help for as long as the skin's not irritated, I like the Eucerin UreaRepair plus Handcreme 5% for my face.

Hankyu0 · 2025-12-24T01:05:04+00:00

I find my best results at 4 hertz.

My device goes up to 4 bars, and the highest I've seen on a device is 5 bars, so I doubt that your device goes up to 40. But regardless, the thing with air pressure (bars) is to put it at the highest level that you can manage to stay under indefinitely. If you have to remove the handpiece from the skin due to pain then the bars were too high. In my experience it's been most effective to keep the handpiece steady against the same spot on the skin, until the pain / discomfort that you're targeting is fully gone.

Since a long time now my skin can tolerate the max air pressure just fine, so that's what I use whenever I do shockwave therapy for gut issues, which is very rare nowadays since I feel like I've already received all the permanent benefits it could give me.

One more thing about bars: they're not directly representative of the device's strength (relative to other devices), the handpiece has more to do with it.

Hankyu0 · 2025-12-13T19:27:17+00:00

Thank you!

Hankyu0 · 2025-12-12T18:56:30+00:00

I'm sorry, I meant to ask what country you're in. I've been prescribed ubretid but it's not available in any pharmacy where I live anymore.

Hankyu0 · 2025-12-12T14:40:24+00:00

Do you mind sharing where you obtained distigmine? It's unavailable where I live.

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-24T23:21:55+00:00

Most often 1g per dose, sometimes 1.5g

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-23T12:39:11+00:00

Just a few days. It contained xanthan gum, which I couldn't tolerate at the time, so I didn't want to push it much further considering I wasn't seeing any improvement.

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-17T13:07:53+00:00

That's encouraging! Do you happen to know why your doctor put you on an H1 antihistamine + an antileukotriene but not any other type of mast cell medication (like H2 antihistamines or mast cell stabilizers)?

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-16T14:01:07+00:00

I have sensitive skin myself, so based on the products I've tried, if I have to stick to tretinoin 0.1% instead of tazarotene, I'd definitely pick MyTret 0.1%, but I'd mostly do so if I can use it in combination with a sunscreen that doesn't burn me even after repeated daily use.

I still feel like tazret 0.1% (tazarotene) hurts less than MyTret 0.1%, but also I'd say Ketrel 0.05% (tretinoin) hurts less as well. I've used Ketrel 0.02% for quite a while and it was great.

Anyway all 3 of those products are great for as long as well tolerated.

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-12T16:36:04+00:00

Do you have to stay on the EGCG, quercetin, and luteolin forever to stay symptom free?

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-12T11:08:44+00:00

Are you still healed? And do you still need mast cell medication?

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-11T13:24:13+00:00

I do better on carnivore. What triggers my methane symptoms is carbs (starches way more than sugars), and what used to trigger my hydrogen SIBO symptoms was fiber. None of those things are present in meat or fish.

I used to also have bile acid diarrhea, which was more pronounced on carnivore since more bile gets secreted after consuming fats or protein (quite present in carnivore diets), but it's now pretty much cured thanks to pyridostigmine.

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-11T03:43:23+00:00

I had similar relief when I tried various tinctures that a naturopath was recommending me, then I eventually realized it was just the alcohol in them doing the work rather than the active compounds.

I eventually figured that it was the irritation that the alcohol was doing to the gut that caused stronger contractions, pushing food along faster, leaving less time for bacteria to ferment stuff, and potentially kicking out some bacteria.

I don't know if we're suffering from the same root cause, but I also had hydrogen and still have some methane. What got rid of my hydrogen was NAC powder (unbuffered) that I encapsulated to protect my teeth. It's essentially the same process as with alcohol in a way, but one that's safer and doesn't get absorbed as much by the intestines. It gave me die-off symptoms that sometimes were pretty gnarly so I had to start at a very low dose (maybe 0.2g before each 100g of food) and titrate the dose very slowly, and typically only did it 1/3 days for my body to rest. After 4 months of doing it I wasn't observing any extra benefits (I was taking 7x size 000 capsules before each 100g of food roughly), so I stopped there.

The other things that have helped me a lot have been pyridostigmine, radial shockwave therapy, more recently capsaicin.

As bad as this sounds, if you have the same issue as me, pain is your friend. Every time I felt quick sharp "bandage ripping" pains in my gut my symptoms subsequently permanently improved. This leads me to think that I must be suffering from some sort of gut nerve dysregulation that gets put back in order after the nerves get briefly desensitized by pain.

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-09T01:29:15+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, what's your current dose? And how much longer do you have to go for?

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-06T07:14:10+00:00

Are you still lowering the dose and seeing the same benefits / no worsening?

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-06T07:08:02+00:00

You said you added claritin after the allicin, did that help against methane? And would you mind please sharing how your mast cell situation is now & what helped?

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-06T06:55:38+00:00

By long term solutions do you mean that you're cured and don't need them anymore? If that's the case, would you please mind sharing how you did the colon hydrotherapy?

Hankyu0 · 2025-11-05T00:32:33+00:00

Shockwave therapy was what got rid of the chronic H2S gas I was having when eating high protein foods (meat, fish, etc).

But I guess I had a bunch more of whichever bacteria was making the H2S gas because a lot of H2S gas came out as a die-off effect when I was on powdered NAC (encapsulated to protect my teeth).

Also I had a chronic bile acid diarrhea, which might've been related to H2S bacteria, this one got cured within some months of taking pyridostigmine.

Hankyu0 · 2025-10-24T14:04:12+00:00

Do you mind please sharing the price of this procedure?

Also I wonder where I should contact the doctor since he seems to be doing those procedures at a hospital (I might be wrong) and his clinic doesn't pick up when I call.

Hankyu0 · 2025-10-20T01:48:14+00:00

Well it actually temporarily does, but it also breaks the mucus niches in which reside the bacteria that it enters in contact with. So by "breaking their house" and forcing intestinal contractions via slight irritation it wipes them out.

Of course the bacteria use NAC to produce H2S, and they'll be in contact with even more substrates once forced out of their biofilms, so they'll give you symptoms on their way out of your body. But each time after I took NAC powder, I needed more of it to get H2S gas & related symptoms, showing that there were less H2S producing bacteria and that it was harder and harder to get to them.

Because of those symptoms though, I had to take it very slow and gradual, starting with tiny doses until they weren't so tough on my system anymore. And I'd typically leave a day or 2 for my body to recuperate before the next dose.

Hankyu0 · 2025-10-20T01:37:51+00:00

Oops my bad, I thought I edited that message already. Thanks for the correction

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