Welcome to DermTV viewer questions week for February 2012. Today’s episode will feature questions from DermTV.com viewers. And don’t forget, as part of viewer question week I’ll be answering viewer questions over live streaming video on BeautyRxLive.com, so if you have a question tune in this Wednesday at 2PM Eastern Standard time.
The first question today comes from Jordan, Jordan’s 19 years old from Manchester, England; “I’ve suffered very bad with acne, for the past few months my acnes calmed down and it’s under control. I’ve been left with lots of red spots around the bottom of the cheeks and my mouth. How can I get rid of these red spots and get rid of them permanently?” Jordan, great news now that your acne’s under control, these red spots are whats left over after your pimples and cysts have gone away, they’re red because the body is still trying to continue healing your skin by bringing in more nutrients, but the body has really finished healing. So if you want to make those red spots go away a little bit faster, although they’ll go away by themselves over time, if you want to help them a little bit try getting an over the counter topical 1% cortisone cream and use a very small amount 2 or 3 times a day for up to a week to make those red spots fade a lot faster.
The second question comes from Ullia, and Ullia says, “I have such different information about using sunscreen. On one hand my cosmotologist insists on using it in a daily moisturizing cream, she says it prevents skin aging. On the other hand, I’ve heard that using sunscreen ages skin because it has some components that soak into the deeper layers of our skin and with time causes aging. I’m 27, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know whether to use sunscreen” Ullia, I’m very happy to tell you that using sunscreen will prevent you from aging your skin, sunscreen will prevent you from premature wrinkling and also from skin cancer. There are no ingredients in sunscreen that will cause aging of the skin and in fact the only way you can get premature aging of your skin is by not using sunscreen when you’re out in the sun. So this is very simple, and I agree 100% with your cosmotologist, use a sunscreen with an SPF of between 15-30 with UVA or broad spectrum protection everyday, 365 days a year.
This question comes from Anna Hack, and she says, “I’d like to know where I can find a glycolic acid serum to add to my bedtime beauty regimine. You always talk about using an exfoliant and I’ve looked everywhere from drugstores to the Internet and haven’t found anything, where should I look, what should I be looking for?” Anna, after you asked me that question I googled glycolic exfoliants and came up with several pages of suggestions. On the vey first page there was several products that indicated the percentage and the vehicle, so I found glycolic lotions and gels going from 8% to 12%, all different brands from all different sources. So let me give you every reassuarnce that if you want to find something on the Internet that is much easier perhaps than stores, depending of course on where you live, just google glycolic exfoliants and you’ll have an ample supply of products. In addition, if you’re at the DermTV.com website, on those episodes we have related products, in the episodes dealing with exfoliants you’ll have examples of and where to find particular glycolic exfoliants. Remember, exfoliants are the single most important therapeudic treatments that you can use on your skin so it’s really, really important, please make sure you get one.
The next question comes from Lonnie, he says “I’m thinking about using an antioxidant but I’m not sure if I should use Vitamin-C or retinol. Which is best? I’d like to prevent aging and spots?” Lonnie, antioxidants are very important in preventing aging and partcularly in protecting against ultraviolet damage, which leads to premature aging of the skin. Vitamin-C is an antioxidant, the retinol you asked about actually is an exfoliant. Let’s talk about the Vitamin-C first. I believe that Vitamin-C based antioxidants are the best ones to use, but Vitamin-C by itself which is ascorbic acid is difficult to penetrate into the skin and isnt very stable, so chemicals that are esthers of Vitamin-C such as methylsilanol ascorbate and tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate are esthers of Vitamin-C that are geat antioxidant ingredients and they can be found in many products, in terms of your retinol, retinol as in exfoliant becomes Retin-A and its absorbtion is not that predictable nor are its effects in topical skin care products so if you want to use an exfoliant and I urge you to, in conjunction with your antioxidant I would recommend glycolic based exfoliants because I believe that glycolic is the gold standard when it comes to chemical exfoliants.
And the last question of the day comes from Annabelle, and she says, “Both of my ovaries were removed during a hysterectomy last year, which hormones prevent sagging, wrinkled skin and how long will it take after that hormones removed from your body to show an effect on your face.” Annabelles referring to the fact that most of your female hormones and estrogens come from your ovaries and of course, unfortunately, shes lost her natural estrogen sources as a result of her hysterectomy. But when it comes to sagging skin, sagging skin has very little to do with the effect of female hormones on your skin. Sagging skin is caused by loss of fat, which is age related and loss of elasticity in the skin, which is caused by unprotected exposure to ultraviolet radiation. And that sagging caused by loss of elastic tissue in fact really is what causes the sagging that we see in an aging face. The protective effects of the estrogens really are in a different part of your skin and they’re on the epidermis and the dermis. So your supply of estrogen which isnt present at this time, really plumps up the dermis, causes a thickening of the epidermis and that helps improve the texture and color of your skin, it has nothing to do with sagging. There are a lot of products that are recommended to help sagging skin, especially sagging neck skin and I wanted you to know that in my experience I have never found any topical that really do help with sagging although estrogen supplements will help with the texture and color of your skin. So that’s it for today and don’t forget the subjects of many DermTV episodes comes from your questions which are great. So please keep sending them in, and I’ll keep answering as many of them as I can.
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