This week I’m going to try somethig new and that is, making the third week of every month viewer question week. Both on DermTV and BeautyRx Live, which by the way, the next BeautyRx Live is this Wednesday at 2PM eastern standard time at BeautyRxLive.com. So with that said, today I’ll answer a handful of questions from DermTV Youtube viewers and then do the same on Thursday with DermTV.com viewers. This way I’m going to be able to respond to a lot more viewer’s questions so if you’re waiting for an answer to a question you’ve submitted, make sure your tune in the third week of every month. Here we go, and please leave some comments, let me know how you like this new idea.
The first question comes from AlexCS88: is it safe to use AHA between laser hair removal sessions?” Alex, yes it is and as a matter of fact the exfoliants like glycolic help remove the dead cells and the dead hairs from your laser treatment even faster and better. The place where you need to be careful scheduling between your laser hair removal sessions has to do with sun exposure. So, you dont want to have unprotected sun a few days before your laser treatment and certainly not for a good week after your laser treatment.
The next question comes from Dooley0324 and she says: “can you post a video about silicone in make-up? Is it safe in general and what about pregnancy? Really appreciated.” Dooley, I’m happy to tell you that silicone is very safe, its inert, it doesn’t react with anything, it doesn’t react with your skin whether you’re pregnant or not. The whole point here is that the silicone in your make up is not part of your make-up; it’s not part of the pigment that stays on your skin. The silicone is in the form of something called cyclomethacone and cyclomethacone is volatile, it means it evaporates, so it forms a very easy spreading vehicle to distribute the pigments of the make-up very evenly on your skin and then it just evaporates leaving no residue. So, by all means, silicone or silicone based products and vehicles in your make-up are just fine.
SallyZZZZZZZ says: “are salicylic acid peels good for acne scars? And which method do you think works best for red rolling scars and boxcar scars?” First of all Sally, salicylic acid peels aren’t going to go deep enough to help acne scars because acne scars are depressed, theyre pushed into the skin whether they’re rolling or whether they’re boxcar and you need a deeper peeling agent than salicylic acid to help those. Salicylic acid is a suerficial peeling agent, you need something like tri-cholorocedic acid, which is a medium depth peel which goes into the dermis or even phenol which goes into the bottom of the dermis, if you want to correct scars. However, in terms of what are the best ways to correct these scars? For the red rolling scars, the thing that I like the most is laser treatments because laser treatments help you build your own collagen. And if you don’t have the patience for laser treatments, you can actually get collagen injected under your scars to help lift them up and even the surface. Lastly, there’s a procedure that I love and its called subcision where we put a needle into the skin right next to the depressed scar, the needle goes under and it sort of wiggles back and forth underneath the scar separating the bound down part of the scar and the skin below it so it frees it up so the top of the scar can lift back up and that’s a really great way for treating the rolling scars. In terms of boxcar scars, the best way to treat them- cut them out because they have these deep vertical borders, but subcision, which I just described to you, can help those scars also. Yousley asked, the next question, “there are many products to grow lashes, but is that actually possible? Growing your lashes?”
Yousely, you bet there are. The first product that came out on the market was by Allergan called Latisse, and Latisse is really made of a chemical called bimataprost. But there are some other chemicals today that also will help grow eyelash hairs, and the way they do it is by penetrating to the root of the hair and by penetrating down there they actually stimulate that follicle to grow faster, to grow better, to grow longer and it’s a chemical reaction that only effects eyelash hairs because eyelash hairs are in very thin eyelid skin and the only way the chemical can get to that depth, to the depth of a follicle is in very thin skin like your eyelids. In scalp skin where the follicle is much deeper, it would be much much harder for the chemical to get that deep in order to make it work and also for scalp hair the amount you would need would be so expensive because this is an expensive chemical and it just isnt practical. I can tell you that Allergan, the maker of Latisse, is doing experiments trying to see efficacy of bimataprost for eyebrow hairs, because eyebrow hairs arent that deep, and they’re certainly not as deep as the scalp follicles. And preliminary results suggest that this is going to be helpful for helping to grow eyebrow hairs in addition to growing eyelash hairs.
The next question comes from 00DaisyYukadeesSu00: “Dr. Schultz, please respond. Is chemical or manual exfoliation recommended for those with Rosacea?” Well, we all know that people with rosacea have very sensitive skin and certainly any type of physical or mechanical exfoliation is just going to be too potentially irritating for anybody with rosacea, so I really discourage any type of physical exfoliation for rosacea patients. In terms of chemical exfoliation, as long as you’re using a gentle chemical exfoliant in a low concentration, like perhaps 5% glycolic and you test it first on your skin by testing it the way you would test any new skincare product, putting it on an area in front of your ear, maybe the size of a quarter, or 4 or 5cm, doing that two or three days in a row and as long as there’s no irritation then you can start to put it on your whole face, but I would only do that every third or fourth night at the beginning on your whole face and then gradually over a period of weeks, gradually increase the frequency that your using it on your face. But just remember, if you have rosacea, you have very sensitive skin, go easy, don’t be in a hurry, don’t be in a rush, we don’t want you to get irritated.
And lastly, Rachel14604 asks: “how do the celebrities remove their stretch marks?” Rachel, it’s a great question, all of these are great questions. If the celebrities or anybody really are able to remove their stretch marks or at least improve them they’re doing it with laser treatments which causes new collagen to form to help pick them up, theyre doing them with other technologies such as microdermabrasion or even some chemical exfoliants, all of which send a message to the dermis to make new collagen, new ground substance in the dermis, and I bet you, if it seems like the really removed it completely, I bet you they’re using a lot of make-up.
So that’s it for today, and don’t forget the subjects from so many DermTV episodes come from your questions which are great, so please keep sending them in and I’ll keep answering as many as I can.
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